Joe Miller, Staff Writer
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As you take in the natural beauty of Virginia's Grand Caverns' Cathedral Hall or any of the region's other show caves, keep in mind that hundreds of thousands of people have experienced this sight before you. Ken Walsh has been in an underground "room" about the same size -- and been the first person to lay eyes on it. Ever.
"Caving is all about exploring, about seeing things no one has ever seen before," says Walsh, secretary of the Triangle Troglodytes caving club. "There's a hole in the wall. I wonder what's on other side."
Being the first -- or at least among the few -- to explore a cave is what separates bona fide cavers like Walsh from casual spelunkers who stumble upon a roadside tourist cave on their summer vacation. That and the fact that the typical tourist doesn't have to squeeze through a hole the size of a basketball to get inside.
The openings are not always that small, says Walsh. But walk-in entrances to noncommercial caves are rare.
Typically, cavers enter by dropping through an inconspicuous hole in the ground or a subtle hillside crevasse. It's usually not long, though, before the cave opens and passage through spacious "rooms" and more generous passages is the norm.
That initial entry concerned Melanie McCullough of Cary on her first caving trip, Halloween weekend of 2005.
"I was concerned about claustrophobia," admits McCullough, 35. "I don't like being closed in in an elevator."
But the natural beauty within soon overruled her discomfort, and she found herself slithering through passages no more than a foot tall. It wasn't until her third caving expedition that McCullough, petite at 5 feet, 4 inches, encountered a passage -- "it was 7 or 8 inches" -- that she passed on.
Walsh's 6-foot-3-inch, 210-pound frame, however, didn't keep him from one of his big discoveries.
He and three other cavers were probing a noncommercial area of Grand Caverns when they came upon an opening about 8 1/2 inches high and maybe 12 feet long. Walsh's fellow cavers managed to scooch through; Walsh was thwarted on his first two attempts.
"My clothes kept grabbing on the ground," recalls Walsh, a 41-year-old environmental consultant. He laid down some plastic and just managed to slip through.
His determination paid off. He emerged into a room an acre big.
That possibility of discovery, of stumbling upon a room no human has set foot in and being the first to take in its unique features, is caving's big draw.
"People like to go rock climbing," Walsh says. "But you know what's at the top."
In fact, there's a fair amount of climbing involved in caving.
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