by Roppelcaver » Sep 23, 2013 7:45 pm
I think the real reasons have less to do with old habits of secrecy and more with the ways things seem to work. I am only speaking from my experience in the caves in and around Mammoth Cave (eastern Kentucky is very different).
Some observations over many years:
Unlike many cave areas with lots of caves, there are a dearth of caves open for general sport caving. There just are not a lot of caves (beyond the mega-project caves) of significant lenght. You have a few large ones (totalling over 600 miles), and a bunch of FROs (For the record only). This seems odd when looking at the number of caves in Tennessee and elsewhere that have a significant enough length to make caving in those places full of variety.
There is a lot of crummy passages in the Mammoth Cave area. As a rule, many of the small ones are largely terrible (One cave we have worked "is a cave comprised totally of obstacles" -- James Wells, credit). Another is a three hour water crawl to get in that is a death trap if the weather even thinks of rain. etc.
All of us in the area know each other and do cross projects occassionally. But, for the most part we stick with our own projects which makes us de facto isolationists. A cave project draws it members from all over, so there is not usually an opportunity to socialize the project among other cavers. We are not adverse to new cavers, and welcome them, but it is not as easy as that...
Project Cave trips are long and hard, and require "big cave" techniques. People move fast, have learned to be efficient, and know the cave well enough to economize on energy. For the unpracticed, it appears like a sprint. Parties get strung out for the sake of efficiency (avoids clogging up at obstacles) and can operate as an independent unit during travel (although we always adhere to the concept of the strong trailer to push people along, and we keep tabs on those behind, pausing as we pass obstacles to ensure the party member behind us is okay).
Trips are an enormous investment and we are are weary of the unknown, new person who might sink the trip. When folks fly in, drive tremendous distances, and assemble that "crack" team for some far flung objective, they are risk adverse. New people are a risk. Sounds arrogant, I know, but that is the way it is. We have less patience than we should for developing new people, but we do try. When you are miles into the cave traveling to an objective with just the right party with just the right conditions, an abort is expensive and we avoid it.
Yes, we are a little secretive. Our caves are gated, we guard our data carefully, and are aware of all maps that go out. Fortunately for our paranoid sakes, the enormity of the cave is its best protection. Hardly anyone is going to blunder into our leads unless they know where they are going. They are too complicated
I think our "closedness" is somewhat justified. For many of these projects, they have been a significant part of our lives and we want to protect it. Allowing open visitation creates headaches for owners and they might close the cave (and shut down our life's investment). And, these caves are somewhat fragile and don't hold up to lots of visitation well. In Roppel, we still have single file foot trails that have endured for 35 years due to close attention to who goes in.
Most of us have websites or social media pages, and generally welcome interested people to have access. All of us welcome cavers that can contribute, and I know many of us have parts of the project that serve many levels of caving skills. At Roppel, there is cartography activity close to the entrances, and is a great training ground for aspiring project cavers.
We all wince at the idea of recreational caving in our project caves, and we all worry about messing up our projects if we have too many people running around.
Unarguably getting new project cavers is a good investment, but we are arguably not as atuned to making the investment as we should or could. I know we have never turned anyone away that has wanted to step up to participate. We could be guilty of being slow, but rarely, if ever, do we say no.
On a more light note, reliving the cave wars seemed to be the order of the day in the 80s -- Mammoth/Roppel Connection intrigue, Roppel getting within a stone's throw of Fisher Ridge (300-400 feet), "competition" for caving territory, secret meetings among rival cave projects, etc. For good and bad (mostly good), this stuff has moved to the dustbin of history. We have grown up some, and maybe the stakes are differnt. Nowadays, we all just work our projects, share an occasional barbeque, share our knowledge. And we keep finding cave!
Kecntucky Caving dead? No, absolutely not. It just is not there for all to see, but it is there for those who want to look and are persist a little bit.
Roppel Caver guy