Posted by Scott Yost:
There is a big cave system not far north of the Kentucky-Tennessee border, near I-75, which has been the site of more than one of Chris's infamous "beginner's caving" trips. The one in the fall of '93 was my personal introduction to caving.
We had a rather large group consisting of several experienced cavers and a number of beginners. The idea was to go in one entrance, and find our way out another entrance that someone had told Chris about. Chris had a map, but had never been through this alleged entrance personally, so the challenge was to find it.
The route was not a particularly easy one: Chris's beginner's trips make few concessions for people who haven't been in a cave before. One particularly narrow crawl (see the picture) had an opening you could barely fit your helmet through if you turned your head sideways. Other passages involved long crawls along streams, and I quickly wished I hadn't believed Chris when he listed knee-pads among the "optional" equipment.
We wandered around a while, stopping occasionally so Chris could pore over his map. (Cave maps make little sense unless you have already been there, usually, at least to me.) Sometimes we would wait for long periods while Chris explored tunnels trying to see which would be the route to the mysterious second entrance. He moves amazingly fast through a cave when he is alone.
Finally, after waiting for Chris a long time, standing around getting cold, we had a mutiny. Half the group decided to return to the original entrance, while Chris and the remaining group went on in search of the second entrance. My knees were way to sore by now to continue, so I headed back. It was still a long way out, and I was crawling on my butt most of the way to keep the pressure off my knees. (I bought some very nice roller-blade knee pads before my next trip.)
We went out and waited for Chris's group to emerge. And waited. And slept. And waited. It got dark and we built a fire and waited some more. The trip had been estimated to take 3-5 hours, and was already going on 8. Eventually the adventurous group started to emerge - not from the entrance they wanted to, but from a 50 foot deep pit down the hill from where we were waiting.
Angus was the first up: he had free-climbed out the pit and rigged a rope so the others (including some first-time cavers) could climb out by the rope. It was well after dark by the time we headed back to Knoxville, arriving home after midnight, hours later than any of us expected. Well - any of us who didn't know Chris. It doesn't take many trips with him to learn that his return times are mostly wild guesses.
The surprising thing is that this would turn out to be far from Chris's most infamous beginner's trip. That distinction would be reserved for Chris's return to Sloan Valley two years later, when he made a second attempt to find the mysterious entrance, again, not telling anyone in advance that he didn't know the route. That time, he succeeded: after a grueling 12 hours or so underground and numerous threats of mutiny. You can read Mychal's account:
Caving Trip Reports