TENNESSEE CAVE UPDATE
By Bill Walker

[Ed. note: This is the follow up to this story: Virgin Found in Central Tennessee. Read this first.]

Two weeks after finding the "Virgin Cave", The Roberts and I went back up to Tennessee to probe this virgin some more. Actually we had a Blue Springs trip planned for that Saturday with Adam and Noah. I drove up with Sean and Becky Friday morning and we arrived in Sparta around midnight. Becky and Brandon stayed at the hotel while Sean and I drove down to the cave, which is south of Lost Creek.

We got into the cave and the first thing we noticed were the arrows on the wall. "Those weren't there last week," Sean said. It also looked like the cave had footprints all over the place. "I know that those weren't there last week either." We believe that the locals that were with us the week earlier returned and "explored" the cave.

We started walking down the breakdown pile from the entrance. I stepped on a slab and the entire pile started to move. I jumped to the right and Sean jumped to the left while an avalanche of huge flat slabs crashed to the bottom of the pile. That really spooked us. I've never experienced unstable breakdown like that and it makes a horrible, almost metallic ringing sound as it echoes through the chamber.

We walked around the room and noticed a trail leading over a mud hill. We didn't see that last time either. I poked my head over the pile and felt a rush of wind. We followed it through a passage and up another breakdown pile where the air was really kicking. Then I heard Sean say yell a few expletives as he pointed to a survey station smoked on the wall. Well it's not virgin.

We continued to climb up the pile and we popped into a large decorated room. On the far side of the room we saw a rope hanging out of a hole in the ceiling. That was interesting, but we didn't have our vertical gear to ascend the rope. I still don't know what's up that rope. We walked through a few more dome rooms and all of a sudden the air changed - it smelled different and it was colder. Sean said, "I think we're outside, dude." We had walked right out of a large shelter entrance. A through trip!

We decided that we had not discovered a new cave, but merely the back door into an already known system. We drove back to Sparta and stopped at the "mine" south of Lost Creek. This is a small cave that someone has basically mined with explosives because of all the airflow. I showed this to Sean because he had never seen it. This night the cave was heavily decorated with ice formations.