Discovery in the Saltpeter Cave of Grassy Cove

Website design By BotEap.comOn a cool Friday in March 1972, John Wallace checked into his four-seat plane at Atlanta’s Charlie Brown Airport for a flight to Tennessee. The plan was for John’s wife, Youlanda, and her children Paul and Erika, along with Art Smith and Jack Pace, to drive to Cumberland Mountain State Park in Crossville, Tennessee, and rent a cabin for the weekend. My wife Kathy, our six-year-old daughter, Deanna, and I would fly with John to Crossville Memorial Airport in Crossville and spend a day caving the next day.

Website design By BotEap.comWe would alternate driving and flying in order to have transportation from the airport to the caves we visited in the southeast. Half the group would fly and the other half would drive. This ride was pretty nice along the interstate and then we followed the state highway to Crossville. It was night when we arrived and the airport lights were not on. The airport is on top of a mountain and we were a little nervous about finding a place to land. John’s wife was there but she was unable to communicate with anyone at the airport. John finally managed to get someone on the radio and they turned on the lights.

Website design By BotEap.comIt was a large cabin in the park and we settled in for a good night’s rest before the next day’s journey. We planned to visit Devils Sink Hole with the family and then the four of us would explore Grassy Cove Saltpeter Cave on the other side of the mountain. Kathy and Deanna spent a lovely day walking through the park while we spelunked.

Website design By BotEap.comA few miles southeast of Crossville is Grassy Cove, a depression between two mountains that by all rights should be a large natural lake. Rainwater that falls into the cove runs north into a cave, then emerges at Devils Sink Hole, south of the cove and over the mountain. This long mountain contains many caves and a large stream that flows entirely below it. Grassy Cove Saltpeter Cave is well known for being a dusty cave and dust masks are helpful in avoiding histoplasmosis, a lung disease common in dusty caves and chicken coops. I came down with a light case of this later and it very well could have been from this cave. The doctor wanted to know if he had been in a chicken coop.

Website design By BotEap.comWe entered the cave and debated whether to explore the dry passages to the west or venture up the waterfall at the eastern end of the cave. It was reported that there were more caves below the waterfall. However, ropes would be required and we weren’t prepared for that. The waterfall room sounded too good to pass up, so we opted to go down the chasm and get to the waterfall.

Website design By BotEap.comThe Chasm is a short drop that can be climbed if you chimney out to a narrow part of the drop. However, we chose to use the rope for the fall. We continue to the waterfall room and rummage around looking for an easy clue to continue. John was checking behind a large rock on the north side of the passage when he noticed air coming out of the rocks. We all got excited and started helping with the easy digging.

Website design By BotEap.comIn less than an hour we had a small hole that seemed to open below. They chose me to give it a try, not sure why I went first but I was grateful. I stepped feet first into the hole and removed my helmet to get through. At the bottom was a low crop that went northeast for about 50 feet and then a ledge with a small drop of about 5 feet into a large room that sloped down. I studied the floor and couldn’t make out any footprints. I sat there encouraging the others to come down. We had found something big.

Website design By BotEap.comI felt like Neil Armstrong on the moon when I took that first step downstairs and left that first footprint where no one had stepped before. The mud had a black layer on top and when you lifted your foot it left a very light orange track about 1 inch deep. It felt strange to walk into that huge room and then look back at the lonely set of footprints that would soon become a well-trodden path.

Website design By BotEap.comWe explored the thousand-foot, sixty-foot-wide, nine-foot passage for the rest of the day, finding formations along the west wall and crystalline gypsum flowers covering the floor as the ceiling got lower near the bottom. final. We crawled through a breakdown to a much smaller room at the end and couldn’t figure out how to continue.

Website design By BotEap.comWe were all very excited about our new find and plan to re-map this new section the following month. We returned on Saturday April 22, 1972 with additional help from my wife’s cousin, Bill Meier, and mapped the March 18 Discovery. He was working for Eastman Kodak Co. at the time and had access to the latest home theater cameras. He was testing a new model with very low light capability for taking movies in the cave. We used a Coleman flashlight as our light source and the shutter speed was adjusted slowly to capture as much light as possible. These short films can be viewed on my cave website.

Website design By BotEap.comWhen Jack Pace moved to Nashville, he told the caving group about the discovery. Three years later, in 1975, a group of Nashville cavers pushed off the end of the Georgia Room and discovered the Nashville Extension, a stream passage that extended the cave far below the mountain. This is the reason why we go into caves, to see what is there.

Website design By BotEap.comAs of close of 2013, the largest room in Grassy Cove Saltpeter Cave is unnamed. As the first person to set foot there, I take pleasure in naming the passageway, which averages thirty feet high by sixty feet wide and a thousand feet long, the “Georgia Room.”

Website design By BotEap.comGrassy Cove Saltpeter Cave now ranks 11th in the state of Tennessee for longest cave. I’d like to think we made it a little easier for future spelunkers to figure out the cave miles that followed in this big cave. Great discoveries were made in the years that followed, and then in the late ’70s the Smoky Mountains Grotto sealed our little hole with a concrete slab marked “SMG.”

Website design By BotEap.com1 Blue Spring Cave 33 miles

Website design By BotEap.com2 Cumberland Caverns 27 miles

Website design By BotEap.com3 Xanadu Cave System 23 miles

Website design By BotEap.com4 Rumbling Falls Cave 15 miles

Website design By BotEap.com5 Nunley Mountain Cave System 15 miles

Website design By BotEap.com6 Big Bone Cave 15 miles

Website design By BotEap.com7 Conch Shell Cave System 9 miles

Website design By BotEap.com8 Rice Cave 9 miles

Website design By BotEap.com9 Cuyler’s Cave 8 miles

Website design By BotEap.com10 Dunbar’s Cave 8 miles

Website design By BotEap.com11 Grassy Cove Saltpeter Cave 8 miles

Website design By BotEap.com12 Wolf River 7 miles

Website design By BotEap.com13 Haws Spring Cave 7 miles

Website design By BotEap.com14 Zarathustra 7 miles

Website design By BotEap.com15 Gulf Cave Camps 6 miles

Website design By BotEap.comThis was the first major discovery I was involved in and I am more excited than ever about spelunking and the challenge of not only exploring but also documenting caves with maps, images, film and articles.