The largest cave owner in the U.S.
outsideonline.com
outsideonline.com
I visited two of Ackerman's caves (Spring Valley and Temple of Doom) in May of 2002. It was a few days shy of high school graduation and summer was starting to arrive in Minnesota.
My future Firebase co-founder, Andrew, and our high school classmate, Bob, made the drive down there one Saturday. Bob had been a sort-of pupil of Ackerman's, helping him explore and map the various caves he had found.
The day started innocuously enough with a visit to the main Spring Valley Cave that the article references as being previously owned and equipped to give tours. Bob took us off the steel gantry-ways and into some side passageways and chambers that were rarely trafficked.
It was the second cave, Temple of Doom, that was the more, ah, interesting experience. It has only recently been discovered and wasn't fully mapped yet. We popped open a man-hole cover in the middle of a corn field and dropped down a ~50 foot steel ladder. From there the cave descended in a spiral, with the passageway barely able to fit a human. Bob, typically the most composed human I knew, occasionally burst into fits of expletives, followed by silence. "Uhhh... Bob, everything OK?". Descending a 20-30 degree downward slope with inches to spare on every side, occasionally getting stuck, and with no way to turn-around was hair-raising.
After some undetermined period of time we finally got to the bottom of the spiral. At this point, Bob announced we could either brace ourselves between two sheer, very wet, rock faces and climb up ~100 feet without ropes, or go back the way we came. So... up the rock faces we went. Fortunately nobody slipped.
I can still viscerally feel the elation of emerging into bright afternoon sun of the corn field, grateful and relieved to be uninjured.
This was one of the several intense and bonding experiences Andrew and I had together, and perhaps contributed to why we kept working together despite some early startup failures.
As for Bob, he kept on spending time with Ackerman, until one day he was buried alive by a cave entrance collapse. Ackerman dug him out with a backhoe, but he was a little more wary of caving after.
I'll _never_ understand how "And then we had to take off all our gear and scoot forward by pushing with our bare toes for 30 minutes to reach the next cave" is perfectly normal for some people...
And the guy swims through an underwater cave and gets stuck for a moment.
just a silly animated scene.
...but in that moment I went from relaxed to heart in my throat.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-...
I remember wondering why I was having to put such a huge amount of conscious effort into the process of turning around to head back to the cave entrance. Feeling stuck, clamped between huge slabs of rock is just not that fun to me. And while someone is saying "you can do it, you got this," describing to you how your limbs are arranged, so that you can even figure out how to move at all...
I had traveled there at age 18 with a few other teenagers. This factor also kind of blows my mind. Another one of the complicating issues was that we were going at the pace of the most experienced among us, who was very much a risk taker. Phew, major respect to spelunkers but I think I got off to the worst start possible, at the worst place possible for a guy like me. Every time I would hear about a tragedy in that cave it made me regret even the idea of cave exploring.
And then we lived through a dozen or so Bay Area earthquakes, including '89. I was able to get a ballpark estimate of the speed of the waves by counting the seconds it took them to move through the grasslands on the Bay side of NASA Ames (I was jogging, ground fell away from my feet). Measured the distance, and the result (I forget now), was within 20%.
Gotta different perspective now about how stable rocks are.
The article captures well the cold war between Ackerman and the Minnesota DNR; I was warned not to mention John's name when helping survey part of the DNR's Mystery Cave, and the article says John still hasn't managed to get access to the cave's unsurveyed areas, 13 years later.
Then again, when the DNR blocks you from a cave's public entrance and you respond by hiring a well-borer to drill a private entrance across the road... well, it's not the most friendly of relationships. Photos of that whole process at http://www.cavepreserve.com/goliath.html. If I recall correctly, John took a some pleasure from the fact that the DNR can't access the full extent of Goliath's Cave under their property without first trespassing into passages that he owns. And indeed, the property line is prominently marked on the map linked from that page!
jeffrharrison@gmail.com
There is also obviously a big emphasis in caving communities on safety, such as wearing protective gear and bringing twice as much light/water as you think you'll need. Many areas I've been caving (in Virginia/West Virginia) also have amateur cave rescue volunteers if something does go bad (although they should absolutely be a last resort).
The aboriginal sites being exploited in coal mining comes to mind.
> The Wells Gray Park Cave discovery of 2018 was of a karst cave in Wells Gray Provincial Park, in the Cariboo Mountains in British Columbia, Canada. The cave has informally been named Sarlacc's Pit pending an official name.
> The cave may have been snow-covered year-round until the 20th century.
Spent my middle and high school years living there. Can confirm with the exception of the Minnesota Valley Natural Wildlife refuge. It was in my backyard and the saving grace of the otherwise bleak suburbs.
On a different note, growing up there you’d hear every year or so of someone who died in the St. Paul caves due to trapped gases (maybe co2 or methane? ). Are gases a similar concern in the driftless caves?
Generally speaking, you don't worry about breathing in caves: if you can get there unaided, then so can ambient air. The risks are mainly when you're traversing a completely flooded portion of the cave (a "sump"), since you can't be certain that the dry passages on the other side have any exposure to the outside atmosphere.
Edit: You do have to be wary of rain and flash flooding in the Driftless Area. It's not fun to see little twigs and leaves plastered to the ceiling in, for example, Goliath's Cave, since it means that the entire system can flood under the wrong circumstances. Caves are great fun, but they don't mess around. I'd encourage anyone interested in caving to reach out to their local clubs; we're friendly! For folks in the US, the National Speleological Society maintains a list of "grottos" at https://caves.org/committee/i-o/grottos/new_grotto_page-v2.s....
The entrance to where the parties were being held has been sealed, but there are other various entrances near the river. Every few years some kids get stuck, and the city tries to restrict entrance. Caves are just too interesting.
As a result, Ackerman may not have enough money to corner the market!
Mines on the otherhand... mines are where you get fucked.
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