By Lambe Lamis 
On a great March Friday in 1972, John Wallace checked out his four seat plane at the Charlie Brown Airport in Atlanta for a flight to Tennessee. The system was for John’s spouse Youlanda, and their children Paul and Erika along with Art Smith, and Jack Pace to generate up to the Cumberland Mountain State Park in Crossville, Tennessee and rent a cabin for the weekend. My wife Kathy, our 6-year-previous daughter, Deanna and I would fly with John to the Crossville Memorial Airport in Crossville and we would expend a working day of caving the future working day.
We would alternate driving and traveling in get to have transportation from the airport to the caves we frequented in the southeast. Half of the team would fly and the other half would generate. This excursion was rather a wonderful one along the interstate and then we adopted the condition street into Crossville. It was just after dim when we arrived and the airport’s lights were not on. The airport is on top rated of a mountain and we ended up a tiny anxious about finding a position to land. John’s wife was there but could not contact everyone at the airport. John at very last managed to radio somebody and they turned on the lights.
It was a substantial cabin at the park and we settled in for a fantastic night of rest ahead of the vacation the up coming working day. We planned to go to Devils Sink Gap with the family members and then the four of us would take a look at Grassy Cove Saltpeter Cave on the other side of the mountain. Kathy and Deanna spent a pretty working day hiking all over the park though we went caving.
A several miles southeast of Crossville is located Grassy Cove, A despair concerning two mountains that by all legal rights should really be a large purely natural lake. The rain drinking water that falls in the cove operates north into a cave, then emerges at the Devils Sink Hole, south of the cove and in excess of the mountain. This extended mountain includes a lot of caves and a major stream that flow totally less than it. Grassy Cove Saltpeter Cave is properly identified for becoming a dusty cave and dust masks are useful to stay clear of histoplasmosis, a lung illness common in dusty caves and rooster properties. I did come down with a light situation of this later and it could very well have been from this cave. The health practitioner required to know if I had been all over any rooster homes.
We entered the cave and debated about exploring the west dry passages or to venture down the waterfall at the east conclusion of the cave. There ended up documented to be extra caves down below the water slide. However, ropes would be required and we were not geared up for that. The water drop place sounded way too superior to go up so we opted for going down by means of the chasm and to the water tumble.
The Chasm is a short fall that can be climbed if you chimney out to a slim part of the fall. We having said that chose to use the rope for the drop. We continued down to the waterfall space and poked all over searching for any straightforward lead to carry on on. John was examining behind a substantial rock on the north aspect of the passage when he noticed air blowing from the rocks. We all received psyched and started off aiding with the easy dig.
In a lot less than an hour we experienced a modest gap that looked to open up beneath. I was elected to give it a try, I am not sure why I was 1st but I was grateful. I went toes first into the hole getting rid of my difficult hat in purchase to squeeze through. At the bottom there was a low craw that went to the northeast for about 50 toes and then a ledge with a brief drop of about 5 ft into a huge area sloping downward. I review the floor and could not make out any tracks. I sat there yelling encouragement to the others to appear on down. We experienced identified a little something huge.
I felt like Neil Armstrong on the moon when I created that first step on the ground underneath and still left that very first foot print exactly where no a single had ever stepped in advance of. The mud experienced a black coating on leading and when you raised your foot it still left a pretty apparent orange print about 1 inch deep. It felt unusual to wander down into that substantial area and then search back at the lonely established of foot prints that would shortly change into a nicely-worn route.
We explored the a person thousand ft of sixty toes extensive and thirty ft large passage for the relaxation of the working day, obtaining formations alongside the west wall and crystal gypsum flowers masking the floor as the ceiling turned decreased in the vicinity of the finish. We crawled by means of some breakdown into a much smaller space at the finish and could locate no way to proceed.
We were being all extremely energized about our new discover and planned to return to map this new area the adhering to thirty day period. We returned on Saturday, April 22, 1972 with the further aid of my wife’s cousin, Monthly bill Meier, and mapped the March 18th Discovery. I was performing for Eastman Kodak Co. At the time and had obtain to the latest residence film cameras. I was striving out a new design with incredibly reduced light capacity for getting movies in the cave. We employed a Coleman Lantern for the mild source and the shutter speed established gradual to seize as significantly mild as possible. These short videos can be seen on my caving net web page.
When Jack Pace moved to Nashville he informed the caving team there about the discovery. 3 a long time afterwards in 1975 a group of Nashville cavers pushed the stop of the Ga Home and found the Nashville Extension, a stream passage that prolonged the cave far underneath the mountain. This is the cause we go into caves, to see what is there.
As of the close of 2013, the largest home in Grassy Cove Saltpeter Cave does not have a name. As I was the first human being to set foot there, I choose enjoyment in naming the passage that averages thirty toes significant by sixty feet extensive, and a single thousand toes prolonged, the “Georgia Place.”
Grassy Cove Saltpeter Cave now ranks eleventh in the state of Tennessee for the longest cave. I would like to think that we produced it a tiny simpler for future cavers to find the miles of cave that adopted in this great cave. Excellent discoveries were being created in the pursuing years, and then in the late 70’s the Smoky Mountain Grotto sealed our little hole with a slab of concrete marked “S.M.G.”
1 Blue Spring Cave 33 miles
2 Cumberland Caverns 27 miles
3 Xanadu Cave Program 23 miles
4 Rumbling falls Cave 15 miles
5 Nunley Mountain Cave Procedure 15 miles
6 Major Bone Cave 15 miles
7 Snail Shell Cave System 9 miles
8 Rice Cave 9 miles
9 Cuyler Cave 8 miles
10 Dunbar Cave 8 miles
11 Grassy Cove Saltpeter Cave 8 miles
12 Wolf River 7 miles
13 Haws Spring Cave 7 miles
14 Zarathustra 7 miles
15 Camps Gulf Cave 6 miles
This was the initially main discovery that I was concerned with and I have been more excited about caving than ever and the challenge of not only exploring but documenting caves with maps, photos, videos, and content articles.