THE SPELUNKERS

[Music] [Music] so and now your true adventure host bill bird hi there this is bill bird saying welcome to adventure true adventure filmed as it happens throughout our fascinating world you know it's been quite a few thousand years since the human race moved out of the caves into history but recently some people have been moving back in not looking for a place to live of course but in search of excitement and that's something that cave exploring provides in abundance this is a rugged sport not recommended for people with claustrophobia to go in for it you need iron muscles and nerves to match there's an estimated half million caves scattered around the globe 30 000 of them in the united states alone there are narrow torturous passages like this one huge vaulted caverns fantastic rock formations underground rivers and waterfalls in some of the best known caves there are literally miles of deeper passages still unexplored now we'll talk to a special guest with his own slant on cave exploration later in the show now this is not only an exciting and dangerous sport it's become an organized branch of science called speleology but you don't have to be a scientific expert to respond to the challenge in the mystery of this underground world all it takes is nerve know-how and an appetite for true adventure [Music] true adventure can begin anywhere this one begins at a popular tourist attraction just a few miles east of tucson arizona surrounded by this dramatic desert landscape is the entrance to colossal cave [Music] regular visitors see only a fraction of colossal cave beyond the tourist routes beyond the miles of passageways already explored are deeper areas no one has ever penetrated joe meyerhauser a spelunker or cave explorer with years of experience has agreed to help our camera crew find their way to one of those fantastic sections going with him will be buddy noonan and miles hinshaw both experienced photographers accustomed to using motion picture equipment in almost impossible circumstances there is one worry our camera crew is going to be spared on this trip colossal cave is dry so there's no need for elaborate waterproof cases and covers for the photographic gear they'll have enough to pack in as it is there's no light where they'll be going so they'll have to take their own and of course all this is in addition to the regular equipment hard hats are a must complete with carbide lamps you never know when a rope may save your life and in spite of modern high-speed film they'll need power from this generator to provide enough light to film by colossal cave first became a tourist attraction back in the twenties and now thousands of people every month take guided tours along this route here joe meyerhauser points out a narrow crawl way leading off the main route this is where we're going used for centuries by indians then forgotten colossal cave was rediscovered in 1879 by a mr ross and a mr solomon lick they'd hardly recognize it now though at least not here near the entrance the state of arizona acquired the cave during the depression of the 30s and installed trails and electric lights to make it more of a tourist attraction then in 1956 it was leased to joe meyerhauser and earl brocklesby for further development colossal cave draws more than 70 000 visitors a year to see sites like this [Music] this is where we leave the regular trails though [Music] in a cramped confining passage like this even an experienced cave explorer or spelunker can get a case of jitters or someone with little or no experience it doesn't take a great deal to push those jitters over the edge and panic [Music] just suppose your light should fail it's not only dark down here this is a place where daylight has never penetrated never in all the thousands of years this labyrinth has existed [Music] some of the stories about colossal cave are pretty fantastic too a wild chapter of western history was written in this part of the cave system back in 1884 through the same crawl way our expedition is carrying its equipment and cameras four bandits dragged sixty-two thousand dollars in gold coins the proceeds from a union pacific train robbery somehow they found their way through here while a tucson sheriff's posse camped at the cave's entrance waiting to starve them out they might have made a clean getaway if they'd been able to keep their mouths shut but two weeks later a cowboy brought word to sheriff bob leatherwood that four men and then a nearby town were boasting how they'd made a fool of him he trailed him three died in an old-fashioned western gun battle and one went to jail [Music] it was actually years before anyone discovered their escape route and the exit it led to what happened to the loot no one knows to this day [Music] but the route isn't all crawl away at times the passage widens suddenly into rooms like this [Music] the problems involved in making a trip like this are nothing compared to the problems you face when you try to film it um joe and the camera crew leave the bandits escape route here down below they enter an unexplored section about 39 miles of passages have been explored but geologists estimate that this may be as little as 10 percent of the total whoever gave colossal cave its name had no idea how colossal it really is [Music] so [Music] colossal cave arizona a complex of underground rooms connected by a maze of chimneys and passages the whole cave system perhaps even bigger than the famous carlsbad caverns here the members of our true adventure team stand on the edge of the unknown there's little to mark the passage of time in colossal cave it supports no life the bats that shelter here find their food outside even the graceful drip stone formations have stopped growing because there's no water our true adventure expedition is moving deeper into the heart of colossal cave [Music] here you need to know a thorough knowledge of mountain climbing techniques the one joe meyerhauser is using is called chimney [Music] every passageway in this bewildering labyrinth every tiny room or huge underground chamber was created thousands upon thousands of years ago by action of water water that seeped down between the joints and the cracks and the native limestone dissolving it away particle by particle [Music] as long as water continued to seep down the shape and the decoration of the cave went on changing producing forms like these [Music] so [Music] so [Music] some stalag tights have this odd characteristic [Music] there are no echoes instead of bouncing back sounds get lost in the endless crannies and passages [Music] [Music] stalagmites joe meyerhauser explains are formed by dripping water it has seeped through limestone and dissolved some of it in the form of calcium bicarbonate as each drop of water evaporates it deposits microscopic amount of calcium carbonate overhead meantime providing the water isn't dripping too quickly tiny amounts are also being deposited on the ceiling forming stalagtites after many centuries and countless millions of drops of water stalag tight and stalagmites can grow together forming a column like this [Music] stalactites and stalagmites are just two of the many different types of formations built up by deposits of calcium carbonate here joe shows us how water dripping from the stalagtites above and landing on vertical rock instead of onto a flat surface created this formation called flowstone cave air is usually so pure and free of dust and pollen that caves are a paradise for people with hay fever usually but don't gamble on it there's always the chance that a hole like this one will contain no breathable air at all before going down there joe insists on checking it for the presence of carbon dioxide a cave in texas kaiser cave pours out a constant stream of carbon dioxide from its mouth one of the many unsolved mysteries of american caves it's not a poisonous gas but it's heavy and collects at low levels underneath the oxygen supply anyone stumbling into a pocket of it is likely to die of asphyxiation [Music] if the bright yellow chemical released from the capsule turns black they'll know the air down there is no good [Music] this three-minute precaution might save a life time's up [Music] no change it's still bright yellow the air below is okay so down we go what'll they find down there deeper caverns a continuation of the maze of passages and crawl aways a dead end there's only one way to find out this is the thrill of cave exploration [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] here is what our expedition finds at the bottom of the hole [Music] and there's a further passage leading deeper still this could literally go on for days the party that explored 39 miles of colossal cave was underground for six days and seven nights not having brought in supplies for that long and stay it's soon time to turn back rejoining the bandit's escape route to the outside [Music] there on the ceiling traces of smoke someone at some time apparently lit a small fire here it may have even been the train robbers themselves all the way back in 1884 after all craighead caverns in eastern tennessee preserve not just the bones but the footprint of a jaguar the animal must have died at least centuries ago but the print was as fresh as if it had been made yesterday fines like that add a special excitement to the dangers of spelunking you never know when some lucky discovery is going to take you back hundreds or even thousands of years illuminating something of the human race's history or perhaps telling a story from the ages before men walked upon the earth so [Music] there it is almost the end of the line up there's a tiny opening into daylight this is the exit at the end of the bandits escape route ironically when the four bandits made their way through this opening to temporary freedom way back in 1884 they were only a quarter of a mile from the sheriff's posse lying and wait for them the main entrance [Music] the expedition is over but the strange spell of that underground world isn't easy to shake off down there in the labyrinth called colossal cave there's more than total darkness and danger there's a fascination about caving and it's caught men like joe meyerhauser and many others like him impel them to make careers out of caves exploring them studying them trying to ferret off their secrets [Music] what's in store for us and the unexplored miles under that hill [Music] perhaps the answers to some scientific questions perhaps only more puzzles more to the point a cave is an invitation to true adventure [Music] well ladies and gentlemen i said speleology is a science as well as an exciting sport as we saw in our film story i have a special guest his name is charles rozer he happens to be the assistant curator of the southwest museum in southern california and his scientific studies have taken him many times in the fascinating caves charles uh first of all why do you go into caves for science well because there are many things that we can find in caves that we can't find on the surface outside such as perishable material uh basketry matting or even mummies occasionally gee that must be quite exciting uh now for instance uh well let's perhaps show some of the things that you've actually found in exploring some of these caves the southwest museum of course has mostly indian artifacts so that's right would you explain well one of the things that we have found in a cave is this sandal and here you can see that it's made out of tules and here are the actual wear marks that's why it's roughened on this surface i'm going to hold it like that so that you can see two leads you mean that's just uh the truly is that they would collect along the edge of the lakes now how old is this item that we're holding or that you're holding well this particular one is from northern nevada and nate's around 5 000 years ago 5 000 years ago that cave uh has lasted that long probably go all the way through the atomic age won't it yes what else do you have well one other thing that i have here is a piece of matting that they used to uh cover themselves at night or to lay down to make a bed was that found in the same cave yes this was found in the same cave in indiana also would be about 5 000 years old these would be about contemporaneous in the deposit now you were telling me an interesting story about a scientist who went into a cave and got into some considerable problems what what was that well our curator at the museum went into a cave where he crawled in a very narrow passage and then dropped down into a room and then he found that he had dropped down too far and he couldn't scramble out so one of the things you have to realize is not to panic so he realized this and looked around to see if there was some rocks or something that he could pile up which he was able to do fortunately and then by piling the rocks up he was able to climb up uh to a position where he could climb out of the hole that he came through well but he was glad to get out now i suppose that you concentrate on indian artifacts but let's ask this question what are some of the greatest archaeological finds in caves perhaps in other parts of the world that you can recall well there are the dead sea scrolls were found in the cave in the near east and in china some of the earliest remains uh known to the world were found in a cave at uh chiukutian boy that must have been exciting to find the dead sea scrolls now that was not found by a scientist though the the scrolls were found just by some wandering nomads that's right and a lot of times things are found by people who are not professionals because there are so few of us that sometimes we have to rely on others to give us the information charles we have a lot of young uh people watching and i'd like to have you give them one warning about going into caves what's that well one of the things you have to be careful of is like the gentleman i mentioned that you have to know where you are going and have light and also beware of animals or rattlesnakes well i think they'll take that advice and thank you charles for being on our program and i want to thank you for sharing this true adventure with us until we meet once again this is bill bird saying may all your adventures be happy ones [Music] [Applause] so [Music] you