by gindling » May 12, 2014 10:22 am
Somehow, around the early 2000's, we were approached by Ken Ballew and his dreams of a 800ft pit inside of Lookout Mountain overlooking Chattanooga. He said that Bynum's Cave had SOME crawling, but that the last explorers in the late 80's had turned around in "subway sized borehole". We should have questioned things right there, like why hadn't anyone gone back if there was virgin borehole to be had, but Kent was very persuasive and we were hooked. So the night before the trip we called M.O.S. to see what it was really like seeing how he was one of the last people in there and what we should expect. He just sat there laughing and laughing, being vague, and told us to have fun and to come over and tell him about the trip when/if we returned, that was the second time that we should have questioned what we were about to undertake.
We met Ken and headed to the cave. He first handed out a good chunk of fresh 'sang for us to chew, for the energy he said, and we began our trip. I went first, through a crawl/squeeze of gravel and trash and broken glass and then I heard some exasperated grunting from behind and noticed the next in line was stuck. Luckily I had a shovel with me and by sliding the shovel under his chest I could slowly take out scoops of gravel until he dropped a few inches and made it through. There were many crawls after that in water, mud, sand, round cobble, sharp cobble, etc. After a few hours of this I come around a corner and find Ken, munching 'sang, and getting ready to take a nap. I start looking around at leads, wondering where the "borehole" is. Ken snaps out of his pre-nap, barks at me about how I'm climbing up the branches of the cave instead of scaling the trunk, and lays back down. I ask where the borehole is and he opens an eye and says "yer standing in it!". Funny idea of a borehole I think to myself and then realize we were swindled! He was just trying to get some foolhardy youths to push the grim leads, you could hardly drive a Tonka truck through here let alone a subway!
We pushed and pushed but never came out on top of Lookout Mountain like Ken said we were going to. And as we were heading back, into the horror, I look at my friends face, contorted in terror, as he whispers that he left his kneepads at the entrance!!! He apparently did't believe Ken about the crawling and said to himself, how bad could it be? The way out was long, and epic, and a full story in itself.