Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: In today's episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're
Speaker 2: returning once more to the subterranean world. This is, of
Speaker 2: course a recurring theme on our show. We often venture
Speaker 2: into topics concerning the deep ocean. We often venture into
Speaker 2: topics concerning the world beneath the surface, and that's where
Speaker 2: we're going here once more.
Speaker 3: The theme is we like to hide from sunlight.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's you know, it factors into the movies
Speaker 2: that we watched for Weird House Cinema, that there's so
Speaker 2: much amazing science, from the geological to the biological, and
Speaker 2: so yeah, we're always going to keep coming back to
Speaker 2: the underground. In particular, for this episode, we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about car caverns in Arizona. We'll be talking
Speaker 2: about this particular cave and what makes it special, but
Speaker 2: we'll also be covering some related content that extends well
Speaker 2: beyond this particular cave system and even beyond our planet perhaps.
Speaker 2: So yeah, if you're outside of Arizona or you've never
Speaker 2: been to Cartooner Caverns does not matter. These topics are
Speaker 2: going to be to a certain extent universal.
Speaker 3: So we're talking about this cave system because you just
Speaker 3: recently visited there. I think not for the first time,
Speaker 3: right right.
Speaker 2: I had to look up my old ticket stubs. But
Speaker 2: I first visited Cartoner Caverns some I think fourteen years ago,
Speaker 2: and last month finally revisited it with my family, so
Speaker 2: like our kiddo had never been and I really wanted
Speaker 2: them to see it. Cartoner Caverns is an Arizona State Park,
Speaker 2: So if you find yourself in Tucson or near Tucson,
Speaker 2: or if you're up for a two plus hour drive
Speaker 2: from Phoenix, you two can visit this amazing place. I'll
Speaker 2: just warn you up on to get your tickets for
Speaker 2: the cave tours ahead of time, because this is one
Speaker 2: of those things that definitely fills up and you cannot
Speaker 2: necessarily depend on getting day off tickets when you show up.
Speaker 2: They also have some hiking trails. There's cabin camping RV
Speaker 2: slots available, so you know you can make it. You
Speaker 2: can plan your entire trip around visiting Cartoner Caverns, or
Speaker 2: you can create it as a nice little add onto
Speaker 2: whatever you happen to be doing in the Tucson area.
Speaker 2: And there's plenty of stuff to do down there. So
Speaker 2: Cartoner Caverns. And to be clear, Joe, you have not
Speaker 2: been to Cartoner Caverns.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think I have ever set foot in
Speaker 3: Arizona unless I'm forgetting a layover or something.
Speaker 2: Now you've been you've been in some caves before.
Speaker 3: Though, right, Oh, yeah, yeah, I've been in I've been
Speaker 3: in plenty of caves. East Tennessee has a lot of
Speaker 3: great caves you can visit that are open to the public.
Speaker 3: I've toured some amazing caves in Slovenia. They've got some
Speaker 3: good Karst regions there with beautiful large caves. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I have been under the earth. But oh oh wait,
Speaker 3: I Oregon Caves National Monument in southwestern Oregon. That's a
Speaker 3: good one too.
Speaker 2: Awesome, awesome, yeah. So yeah, there's so many different amazing
Speaker 2: caves around the world, different show caves. And then I
Speaker 2: imagine a lot of you have experienced with sort of
Speaker 2: you know, backwoodsy caves like I remember one of these
Speaker 2: from when I was in junior I or high school,
Speaker 2: Like somebody had some land it had some sort of
Speaker 2: a cave on it, and went with some friends and
Speaker 2: we checked it out. So these are always amazing environments.
Speaker 2: So Cartoner Caverns is a special place for a number
Speaker 2: of reasons. I mean, obviously I have a personal attachment
Speaker 2: to it since I visited it, but also a considerable
Speaker 2: amount of effort was made to balance cave conservation with tourism.
Speaker 2: Here for a cave that had seemingly not been discovered
Speaker 2: by humans until the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: Okay, so like no evidence of earlier habitation.
Speaker 2: Or right right, As far as we know, zero humans
Speaker 2: had ever ventured into this system across thousands and thousands
Speaker 2: of years. So, as we've discussed here on the program before,
Speaker 2: caves have of course always fascinated humans. Our earliest ancestors
Speaker 2: found such places in the Earth, and they recognized the
Speaker 2: various beneficial and novel features of these environments. Caves could
Speaker 2: serve as a place of refuge. Sometimes resources could be
Speaker 2: found in these caves, and they also called out to
Speaker 2: us in spiritual, creative, and artistic ways. Various caves speak
Speaker 2: to this, of course, containing and preserving ancient human remains
Speaker 2: and ancient human works of art, and of course caves
Speaker 2: call to various other life forms as well, and their
Speaker 2: interest in these caves can also transform them. We've talked
Speaker 2: about examples of that as well. But as we all know,
Speaker 2: human interest can be especially destructive prehistoric caved or of
Speaker 2: course of immense cultural and historic value to us. But
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, it is graffiti. It
Speaker 2: is very ancient graffiti, and humans have sadly never really
Speaker 2: stopped scrawling and painting on the walls of caves, well
Speaker 2: past the point where it becomes culturally insightful, at least
Speaker 2: for contemporary humans. I guess you could make an argument
Speaker 2: that something that somebody scrawled on a cave in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty see, would be of interest to someone looking back
Speaker 2: on it from three thousand and eighty se But yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it's hard to make a case for that.
Speaker 3: Now give it a few hundred years, it becomes interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we're humans. We want to leave our mark,
Speaker 2: and we have kept making those marks, even as we've
Speaker 2: continually woken up on the whole to the idea that
Speaker 2: maybe these places are better off if we can leave
Speaker 2: less of our footprint there, you know, if there's less
Speaker 2: of that signature human touch.
Speaker 3: Well, certainly the organisms within them are better off if
Speaker 3: if we can interfere less, yeah right right.
Speaker 2: But but then also just as we'll get into like
Speaker 2: the delicate uh and in many cases living in its
Speaker 2: own way, not biological life, but but but mineral life
Speaker 2: of these caves, the different cave formations that are continuing
Speaker 2: to grow and change over time. Like this is all
Speaker 2: a system without humans interfering in it. And even if
Speaker 2: if we go there, and even if there are no
Speaker 2: well you know, biological organisms to disturb, you know, we
Speaker 2: could potentially greatly unbalance what's going on there geologically. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So more on that in a bit. You know, we
Speaker 2: we can mess up these places in any number of ways.
Speaker 2: You know, we bring our refuse into these places. We
Speaker 2: also in many cases, this is a case for so
Speaker 2: many different things. But even when we like an environment,
Speaker 2: we've had destructive things that we've done to them. We've said, well,
Speaker 2: this is great, we love this place. Let's take all
Speaker 2: this back with us. And so we've done that with caves'
Speaker 2: we've harvested what we want from their depths. Sometimes it
Speaker 2: has more of a you know, utility use, like taking
Speaker 2: away the batguano and using it for fertilizer. But then
Speaker 2: we've also done this with novel rock formations as well.
Speaker 2: I look at these stalactites and stalagmites. Let's break off
Speaker 2: a few of these and bring them back home. We're
Speaker 2: going to do something with them, and of course they
Speaker 2: take a very long time to form. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the interesting thing about that being that we often
Speaker 3: don't understand how important some of the things we take
Speaker 3: away are. So like we're removing a lot of batguano
Speaker 3: that we want to use as you know, fertilizer or
Speaker 3: you know, in whatever industry. It might seem like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, let's just poop, Like how is that useful cave?
Speaker 3: But it forms the nutrient basis of many cave ecosystems.
Speaker 3: They're based on like nitrogen and phosphorus supplied through bat guano.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like they have a back wanto economy, if you will.
Speaker 2: And so it just looks like batpooped to us, but
Speaker 2: it is, Yeah, it is life to the organisms there
Speaker 2: that depend upon it. Yeah. And so we damage into
Speaker 2: rage and to grade these caves in various ways. And
Speaker 2: sometimes the other thing is that to someone who's not
Speaker 2: an expert on these things. You may think about rock
Speaker 2: formations as being oh, it's made of rock, you know
Speaker 2: it's here to stay. These these have been here for
Speaker 2: thousands of years, but in many cases they are quite fragile.
Speaker 2: They can be easily damaged, even when we're not trying
Speaker 2: to actually break something off and bring it with us.
Speaker 2: And then also in opening up a cave, creating what
Speaker 2: is sometimes called a show cave, creating a tourist attraction
Speaker 2: out of the cave, which of course is a benefit
Speaker 2: to so many of us, Like I would not I
Speaker 2: would I certainly wouldn't have wound up in carton or
Speaker 2: caverns had it not been opened up in very significant
Speaker 2: ways for human beings to access it. But if you
Speaker 2: open them up in the wrong ways, you can also
Speaker 2: drastically change an environment. For instance, if it is a
Speaker 2: wet cave a humid cave, you created huge opening there
Speaker 2: and you may lose all that vital humidity.
Speaker 3: Maybe this is a good place to mention an article
Speaker 3: I came across when I was reading about this, an
Speaker 3: article not about carchner caverns, but about a different cave
Speaker 3: system that has been opened up to the public and
Speaker 3: some of the impacts there that people might not even
Speaker 3: think about. So this is from September ninth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: It's a syndicated McClatchy article by Don Sweeney with the
Speaker 3: headline dropped, Cheetoh's bag has world changing impact on Carlsbad Caverns.
Speaker 3: Rangers say, So, that's a funny statement, but the rangers
Speaker 3: are making the case that it's literally true. So in
Speaker 3: a news release from September sixth of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: rangers from Carlsbad Caverns announced that a visitor to the
Speaker 3: cave had left behind a piece of litter. It was
Speaker 3: a Cheeto's bag. This was at a sight within the
Speaker 3: cave called the Big Room. And this might not The
Speaker 3: whole point of this was it might not seem like
Speaker 3: a big deal to the person who leaves it. It's
Speaker 3: just one piece of trash, but the rangers emphasized that
Speaker 3: this has dire implications for the ecosystem of the cave.
Speaker 3: Here I'm going to quote from the article, and this
Speaker 3: includes some secondary quotes from the rangers release.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: Softened by the humidity of the cave, the corn based
Speaker 3: snacks formed the perfect environment for fungi and microbial life
Speaker 3: rangers said, cave crickets, mites, spiders, and flies soon organized
Speaker 3: into a temporary food web, dispersing the nutrients to the
Speaker 3: surrounding cave and formations. Rangers said molds spread higher up
Speaker 3: nearby surfaces, fruit die and stink. And then it says
Speaker 3: the rangers had to go through this cleaning process to
Speaker 3: not just pick up the litter, but there's actually sort
Speaker 3: of a decontamination you have to do to remove foreign
Speaker 3: molds from the area. And it says, quote, at the
Speaker 3: scale of a human perspective, a spilled snack bag may
Speaker 3: seem trivial, but to the life of the cave, it
Speaker 3: can be world changing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's that's a great example. And it and
Speaker 2: the thing is it doesn't even have to be a
Speaker 2: Cheetos bag, because you can be in a cave like this,
Speaker 2: and what do you want to do when you see
Speaker 2: that rock? There is a part of you that you
Speaker 2: may know not to scrawl on it, but you at
Speaker 2: least want to touch it, right, And even that most
Speaker 2: of these caves where they're really taking taking conservation seriously,
Speaker 2: like that has to be cleaned after you've you've touched it,
Speaker 2: because otherwise it develops into this kind of like gross
Speaker 2: black spot because you have you have disrupted it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so I know this is something that I
Speaker 3: think you're going to get more into this as you
Speaker 3: go on. But but the cave cave conservationists and people
Speaker 3: have to consider a kind of balancing process because if
Speaker 3: you're going to allow people into a cave, there is
Speaker 3: no way to do it without having any impact. You
Speaker 3: can try to minimize the impact, but there is going
Speaker 3: to be an impact no matter what if people are
Speaker 3: going in and out. So it's a question of just
Speaker 3: balancing competing interests. Like you know, on one hand, you
Speaker 3: want to protect the cave as much as possible, but
Speaker 3: you might also have educational desires or you know, stuff
Speaker 3: about raising funds to help study and preserve the cave
Speaker 3: in other ways. And so yeah, there's like a competing
Speaker 3: mix of considerations there that I guess are always difficult
Speaker 3: for people who work in this area.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: again at Carchner caverns is such an interesting subject to
Speaker 2: look at because you see the balancing of all of
Speaker 2: these influences. But yeah, so opening up a cave can
Speaker 2: be detrimental to the delicate ecosystem there, because again, think
Speaker 2: of all the things we bring in in addition to
Speaker 2: bags of Cheetos, things like light, heat, noise, potentially drastic
Speaker 2: changes in humidity, drainage disruptions, physical damage to the caves,
Speaker 2: lin flakes of human skin. These are big ones that
Speaker 2: we'll come back to because we've talked about this before
Speaker 2: on the show. But we modern humans walk around kind
Speaker 2: of like wafting our own little at times invisible clouds
Speaker 2: of skin flakes and lint, and when we venture into
Speaker 2: a cave, we bring that cloud with us and guess
Speaker 2: what we leave that stuff behind. So you could say, well,
Speaker 2: to a large extent, well, the answer seems simple, right,
Speaker 2: let's just not go into these places. Let's just seal
Speaker 2: it off. And sometimes that is what happens, to varying
Speaker 2: degrees for different reasons. Some cave systems are either wholly
Speaker 2: or partially closed off at least to the public for
Speaker 2: a variety of concerns, and these include hazardous aspects of
Speaker 2: the cave itself, fragile ecosystems, and delicate human artifacts as well.
Speaker 2: But it just isn't always feasible, right because for starters, again,
Speaker 2: humans desire these caves. We want to study them, we
Speaker 2: want to just look at them. Some of us want
Speaker 2: the adventure and even the thrill of accessing them. We
Speaker 2: want these things, and being stubborn humans were not going
Speaker 2: to be denied them. And instead of trying to prevent
Speaker 2: human access from happening, sometimes the path to preservation and
Speaker 2: protection is finding a way to balance it all with
Speaker 2: human interest and actually using that human interest in the
Speaker 2: cave's favor. And again, I think Cartooner Caverns is an
Speaker 2: interesting case study of how all these things come together.
Speaker 2: All Right, I'm going to get into a little bit
Speaker 2: about the history of Cartoner Caverns here, and this is
Speaker 2: going to be a mix of things. Some of it
Speaker 2: is information that I learned in the guided Cartner Caverns
Speaker 2: tours also in their museum. They also depended on this
Speaker 2: excellent book, Carterner Caverns, How Two Cavers Discovered and Saved
Speaker 2: one of the Wonders of the natural World, by Neil Miller.
Speaker 2: This is it right here for you folks with visuals.
Speaker 2: This was published by the University of Arizona Press in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight. It's it's a great book. Perhaps
Speaker 2: the definitive book on the history of this cave. There's
Speaker 2: also an older concise history on the website for Cartoner Caverns,
Speaker 2: and this was by written by one Charles R. Etherly.
Speaker 2: That one's also pretty good and goes through some of
Speaker 2: the broad strokes of the various challenges and the process
Speaker 2: that had the various processes that had to be gone
Speaker 2: through in order to reach the point where this cave
Speaker 2: was open to the public.
Speaker 3: I was reading that one and it was funny because
Speaker 3: it's by Etherly, but also talks about Ely and the
Speaker 3: third person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and he's he's suicided in this book as well. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, so let's let's get down to brass tacks here.
Speaker 2: Where are we in the world? Well, okay, the action
Speaker 2: here takes us to the Limestone Hills at the eastern
Speaker 2: base of the Whetstone Mountains and what is now Arizona.
Speaker 2: This is area. This area here is a semi desert
Speaker 2: grassland kind of in a to understand in a transitional
Speaker 2: zone between between the Chihuahuan Desert, which extends west and
Speaker 2: south and the Sonoran Desert, which dips more or less
Speaker 2: straight down and kind of goes to either side of
Speaker 2: the Gulf of California. This particular area has a long
Speaker 2: history of human occupation, going back at least ten thousand years,
Speaker 2: and you'll find examples of this ancient habitation in the area. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, if you do some of the trails in
Speaker 2: Cartner Kavern State Park, you'll find these bedrock mortars, and
Speaker 2: you know, they're pointed out by the signage, and these
Speaker 2: ancient places where ancient peoples made these little indentions in
Speaker 2: the rock and use them to grind down, you know,
Speaker 2: grains and whatnot. And those, you know, I found those
Speaker 2: to be particularly almost kind of like holy places to
Speaker 2: you know, to kneel beside and feel the smoothness of
Speaker 2: the rock and sort of you know, get the sense
Speaker 2: of that human history there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the interesting thing again is that despite the fact
Speaker 2: that humans have been in this area for a very
Speaker 2: long time, there's no indication that humans here ever discovered
Speaker 2: the large cave system beneath the hills. It's not impossible
Speaker 2: that they did, but there's apparently no evidence of it,
Speaker 2: and certainly no evidence of any form of continuous access. Okay,
Speaker 2: And we can compare this situation to say, the nearby
Speaker 2: colossal cave, which was used by different indigenous peoples as
Speaker 2: early as nine hundred CE. Again, people, ancient peoples like
Speaker 2: modern people's, were just enamored by these places. Now, I
Speaker 2: mentioned the hiking trails already at Kartchner Caverns, and these
Speaker 2: are quite nice. You know, you're going to go on
Speaker 2: a nice nature walk looping around the area where the
Speaker 2: cave is found. And in fact, you can literally go
Speaker 2: around the cave, because this isn't something that exists, say,
Speaker 2: beneath the welcome center at Kirchner Caverns. It is instead
Speaker 2: inside the hills behind the welcome center. So it's an
Speaker 2: interesting experience to walk a round these hills that's kind
Speaker 2: of stand like secret cathedrals, and we know what's inside
Speaker 2: of them. That ancient people's walking in these same hills,
Speaker 2: perhaps with differing flora, would have would not have known.
Speaker 2: You know, only the bats knew of it, and they
Speaker 2: kept this secret to themselves for perhaps something like forty
Speaker 2: thousand years or even longer. Wow, bats notoriously tight lift. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So fast forward to the mid nineteen sixties and seventies.
Speaker 2: I've heard this described as a golden age of Arizona
Speaker 2: Cave explorations. So you had eager spilunkers venturing out into
Speaker 2: the vast Arizona wilderness in search of new cave systems.
Speaker 2: There just was apparently a whole lot that had not
Speaker 2: been discovered yet, and so the dream was alive for
Speaker 2: particularly young daring cavers to go out and find something
Speaker 2: that it had just never been seen before.
Speaker 3: So I said this to you in a text message
Speaker 3: after you sent me a picture from the book you've
Speaker 3: been reading, which I'm sure we'll get to this particular
Speaker 3: choke point in a minute in the cave. But I
Speaker 3: feel exploratory impulses. I have those, you know, when there's
Speaker 3: like a tall thing, I want to climb up on
Speaker 3: top of it. And all that one I cannot at
Speaker 3: all identify with is the desire to squeeze through narrow
Speaker 3: openings or like crawl into tight places. Man, that is
Speaker 3: like a in fact, I almost listeners I want to
Speaker 3: hear from you, like crawling into unexplored caves, crawling into
Speaker 3: tight spaces and little narrow openings. Do you feel that impulse?
Speaker 3: What does that feel like? I would like to hear
Speaker 3: that describe, because that is a type of exploration curiosity
Speaker 3: that is more alien to me than all the others.
Speaker 2: Now, some of you might be thinking about McDonald's playland
Speaker 2: structures at this point, and like little tubes you might
Speaker 2: crawl through and think I can handle that, that's no
Speaker 2: big deal. But what these cavers are doing is an
Speaker 2: entirely different scenario. Like, I think the general caver logic
Speaker 2: is that if you can fit your head through it
Speaker 2: and then one shoulder, then you can pull the rest
Speaker 2: of yourself through it. And and so like one of
Speaker 2: the like the training scenarios that one of our our
Speaker 2: signature cavers here would do is we take a wire
Speaker 2: coat hanger at home, expand it, and then practice crawling
Speaker 2: through that that coat hanger. Like, that's the sort of
Speaker 2: space that you're training for, and it's not going to
Speaker 2: be smooth plastic, it's going to be rock. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 2: not for me, not for you. But there you know,
Speaker 2: there are adventurous souls out there who are like, yeah,
Speaker 2: let me get in there, let me see what's on
Speaker 2: the other side of that. Yikes. So this is the
Speaker 2: this is the caving world that our signature cavers are
Speaker 2: a part of. These are two young daring cavers that
Speaker 2: were members of a Tucson Caving Club, and they were
Speaker 2: interested in exploring the Wetstones. This is Randy Tufts and Tenan.
Speaker 2: As Miller explains in the book, this was an area
Speaker 2: long considered harsh and uninviting except empty except for deer
Speaker 2: and havelina. Most of its history in recent centuries was
Speaker 2: associated with conflict between the Apaches and the US military
Speaker 2: or outlaw violence, and the lands had also seen little
Speaker 2: in the way of mining, and so there were fewer
Speaker 2: access roads. It just wasn't an area that most people
Speaker 2: were particularly interested in. But for Tuffts and Teenan, they
Speaker 2: knew that the Whetstones had everything required for substantial caves
Speaker 2: to exist. There was limestone, there were natural faults, and
Speaker 2: there was water. So starting here with Randy Tuffs in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven, he'd gone cave hunting with a couple
Speaker 2: of relatives and they discovered a sinkhole in this area
Speaker 2: and they descended down into it, and then they quickly realized, well,
Speaker 2: they were far from the only people to have accessed
Speaker 2: this particular little cave because there were the human signs,
Speaker 2: there was graffiti, there was litter, and it wasn't ancient
Speaker 2: cave paintings. It was like somebody had spray painted a
Speaker 2: skull and crossbones or something. There were beer bottles, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. I don't know why people I've seen
Speaker 2: beer bottles and caves like this before, Like, what is
Speaker 2: it about a cave that someone's like, oh, man, I
Speaker 2: got to get in there and drink a beer.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Or maybe it's the drinking of the
Speaker 3: beer that makes them want to go in the cave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like I got to drink this beer, but
Speaker 2: I got to be somewhere over God can't seen. Let's
Speaker 2: get underground. I don't know. I don't know. But at anyway,
Speaker 2: that's the kind of stuff they found and is really
Speaker 2: to be expected of a cave that's just kind of
Speaker 2: been accessed by locals and whatnot. When they were down there,
Speaker 2: they made note of a crack in a wall of rubble,
Speaker 2: but they didn't explore it and they didn't think too
Speaker 2: much about it. But then fast forward to nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: Tuffs discovered what seemed like another possible opening to a
Speaker 2: cave system nearby and set out to explore it with
Speaker 2: fellow cave or dary Tinan. But when they checked it out,
Speaker 2: it didn't lead anywhere. It was a dead end, so
Speaker 2: they were disappointed, but he remembered the sinkhole from years prior,
Speaker 2: and not wanting to return home without getting underground a
Speaker 2: little bit, Tufts took Tinan back to its graffiti chamber
Speaker 2: and they were looking around. But something was different this time.
Speaker 2: They felt an airflow coming through that crack that they
Speaker 2: noted before, that he'd noticed on a previous adventure there,
Speaker 2: And so they worked their way through that crack, and
Speaker 2: then five feet down they found another pair of rooms
Speaker 2: and these had not been visibly reached by humans before,
Speaker 2: so they were, you know, somewhat excited by this. And again,
Speaker 2: already we're dealing with very tight, tight spots. Miller points
Speaker 2: out that Tufts had been, you know, he'd been practicing
Speaker 2: the whole coat hanger thing for a while to be
Speaker 2: ready for this. And Tufts was a little guy, so
Speaker 2: he didn't have much trouble with squeezing thus far in
Speaker 2: this cave system. But Tinan was a bit taller, I think,
Speaker 2: a little bit a little bit thicker, so he had
Speaker 2: to struggle a bit more, had to like, you know,
Speaker 2: exhale completely in order to do some of these squeezes,
Speaker 2: but they were making do. They continued on from here,
Speaker 2: crawling through and what is supposedly an excruciating twenty foot
Speaker 2: slender tunnel, till they came to what they would call
Speaker 2: the blowhole, a great fruit sized hole that clearly led
Speaker 2: to some greater area and allowed airflow. So that's key,
Speaker 2: Like there's air flowing in and out, there's air transference,
Speaker 2: and this is a telltale sign that you know there's
Speaker 2: a larger system in play.
Speaker 3: Here, so they know they're not heading toward a dead end.
Speaker 3: They can see there's something that opens up on the
Speaker 3: other end at least, but to get there, they've got
Speaker 3: to get through this tiny aperture.
Speaker 2: Right because of course, and just want to go ahead
Speaker 2: and mention this now in case we don't mention it again.
Speaker 2: But anybody interested in caving out there, make sure you're
Speaker 2: following all of the safety requirements to do so, the
Speaker 2: you've had the training and so forth, because there are
Speaker 2: so many ways this can go wrong. There's so many
Speaker 2: ways this has gone wrong, and they include things like
Speaker 2: becoming stuck or either in a really tight tunnel or
Speaker 2: finding yourself stuck in a dead end and being unable
Speaker 2: to backtrack for a variety of reasons. So, yeah, these
Speaker 2: these can be very dangerous environments. You absolutely need to
Speaker 2: know what you're doing and follow the necessary safety precautions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you're not sure whether you know what
Speaker 3: you're doing or not, you don't exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: This is not a place for guesswork. So yeah, they'd
Speaker 2: reached the blowhole, grapefruit sized hole, and they were like,
Speaker 2: we got to get through there, but neither of them
Speaker 2: could fit. So they took turns, chiseling at it for
Speaker 2: like hours, you know, just over and over again, taking turns,
Speaker 2: until they had expanded it enough for tufts to narrowly
Speaker 2: squeeze through. He was able to get his head through,
Speaker 2: get his shoulder through, work on the rest, and now
Speaker 2: at this point they can continue you chiseling on it,
Speaker 2: but from both sides, and so after a long time
Speaker 2: they're able to get tenin to squeeze through as well.
Speaker 2: So now they've both done it. They've both crossed through
Speaker 2: into the next area. And at this point they're actually
Speaker 2: getting into areas where they can sort of stand up.
Speaker 2: It's still cramped, but it's opening up. It's very promising.
Speaker 2: They press on a bit further and they realize what
Speaker 2: they found a wet, humid, living cave system featuring multiple
Speaker 2: large rooms, extensive tunnels, and a vast array of breath
Speaker 2: taking cave formations, and all of it seemingly discovered only
Speaker 2: by bats. Like there's plenty of guano around, So bats
Speaker 2: were accessing this space. Bats were living here, but it
Speaker 2: seemed that humans had never been here before. This was
Speaker 2: the dream.
Speaker 3: Wait do you know the answer? Were the bats coming
Speaker 3: in and out the same way that tufts and tinin
Speaker 3: had been through the tin through the blowhole or was
Speaker 3: there another access point?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was the access point for the bats. Wow.
Speaker 3: So we're going to talk about later. But you would
Speaker 3: have thousands of bats there roosting seasonally and they're all
Speaker 3: coming in and out through this tiny hole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Okay. Now, one of the things about a
Speaker 2: cave system like this, especially a living cave system, is
Speaker 2: that different different apertures may open up at different points
Speaker 2: over the course of you know, vast stretches of time. Okay,
Speaker 2: all right, when we say that this cave was it
Speaker 2: was humid and warm, what do we mean, Well, it
Speaker 2: was November on the outside on the surface, but down
Speaker 2: here in the cave sixty eight degrees fahrenheit, but felt
Speaker 2: a lot warmer due to high humidity. Miller wrote, quote,
Speaker 2: the damp air smelled like the basement of a house
Speaker 2: that had been shut up since the beginning of time.
Speaker 3: I think I've read that the humidity inside Kartchner is
Speaker 3: roughly ninety nine percent. Yeah, so it's like very humid.
Speaker 3: And I've also described people going in in like, you know,
Speaker 3: sweats because I don't know, you might you might assume
Speaker 3: that a cave is going to be cold, but like
Speaker 3: nearly fainting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like it's one of the they stress when
Speaker 2: you go in because you know, they have been able
Speaker 2: to preserve that humidity and that that that that environment.
Speaker 2: But you're you know, it's like a winter day. Then
Speaker 2: you're you're arriving. You know, it's winter in the in Arizona,
Speaker 2: so you can be a bit bit cold. And they're saying, look,
Speaker 2: you need to leave some of those things in the locker.
Speaker 2: You're not going to need them in the cave. And
Speaker 2: they want to limit the amount of extra as we'll
Speaker 2: get into. You know, it's like all of our garments
Speaker 2: are lynch shedding garments, and so they're like, please don't
Speaker 2: bring a whole bunch of layers that you're going to
Speaker 2: potentially strip off in the cave or have dangling off
Speaker 2: of your body and touching things so forth. So yeah,
Speaker 2: so they they'd found it. This was the dream, and
Speaker 2: they were tempted to keep going. But these were a
Speaker 2: pair of cavers who you know, prided themselves on safety,
Speaker 2: and they had already violated a key caving safety rule
Speaker 2: by not having a third person on the team. And
Speaker 2: also no one else in the world knew they were here.
Speaker 3: This is hitting so many like horror removing that up
Speaker 3: points alid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, So the much sided rule of
Speaker 2: three in caving is always cave in groups of at
Speaker 2: least three people. Always tell three people where you're going
Speaker 2: and when you'll be out of the cave. Always have
Speaker 2: three light sources, and use three points of contact on climbs.
Speaker 2: So just hearing me say those things that does not
Speaker 2: count as a prerequisite for you to now go and cave.
Speaker 2: There are other things you need to do. But just
Speaker 2: to give you an idea of the sort of safety
Speaker 2: precautions that that experienced cavers are utilizing. Yeah, so Tustan
Speaker 2: Tin and they were like we got to get out
Speaker 2: of here. This is already you know this, you know,
Speaker 2: for a number of reasons. We got to we gotta leave.
Speaker 2: So they get out, they climb back out into the
Speaker 2: chilly November environment, they head home, but they definitely come back.
Speaker 2: And so the story from here on out, highlighted in
Speaker 2: that Ely article and discussed at length in the Miller book,
Speaker 2: is one of the struggles to preserve the cave. But
Speaker 2: here here are a couple of underlying facts to the discovery
Speaker 2: thus far that are important. So, first of all, Tufsenteenen
Speaker 2: had no official permission to explore this newly found cave
Speaker 2: on what they presume to be state lands.
Speaker 3: What they presume to be So it's going to turn
Speaker 3: out that this is privately owned.
Speaker 2: Right right, Okay, Yeah, And that of course greatly complicates
Speaker 2: things because they're going to reach the point where they're like,
Speaker 2: this is a great place. The best way to preserve
Speaker 2: it is to turn it over to the state. But
Speaker 2: which is you know, I think is not to imply
Speaker 2: that it's a simple process, even if that's all that
Speaker 2: has to happen. But when that land is owned privately,
Speaker 2: that opens up the possibility for any number of things.
Speaker 2: These people find out that they have a valuable cave
Speaker 2: system on their property, well maybe they want to sell
Speaker 2: it to the highest bidder. Maybe they don't want anybody
Speaker 2: to have access to it. You know, there's so many
Speaker 2: different ways that could go. So that's one thing. And
Speaker 2: then they also had no way of protecting their discovery
Speaker 2: at this point, no matter who ends up owning the property, like,
Speaker 2: they just have to depend on pure secrecy and stealth.
Speaker 2: And so they tried very hard to keep secrecy in
Speaker 2: place over the next four and ultimately fourteen years, refer
Speaker 2: using a lot of code names and you know, making
Speaker 2: sure that anybody that was in on the secret was
Speaker 2: brought in, you know, just to the degree that was needed.
Speaker 2: And they ended up calling this cave system at the
Speaker 2: time Xanadu. In reference to the Coleridge poem Kubla Khan
Speaker 2: from seventeen ninety seven.
Speaker 3: There was some context in which we just talked about Collarridge.
Speaker 2: What was it, probably the rhyme of the ancient marine earn.
Speaker 2: Did that come up recently? Oh?
Speaker 3: No, I remember what it was A I think like
Speaker 3: Collridge's grand nephew wrote one of the accounts of Francis
Speaker 3: Xavier's Life with the Miracle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right. But I think everyone's heard
Speaker 2: at least part of Kubla Khan and remembers this part
Speaker 2: in Xanadu. Did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree
Speaker 2: where Alph the Sacred Room ran through caverns measureless to
Speaker 2: man down to a sunless sea. Not that there's a
Speaker 2: sunless sea at cartoon or caverns, but it does kind
Speaker 2: of get this idea of like treasures beneath the.
Speaker 3: Earth, Yeah, a vast hidden wonders.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So again they had to tell some people
Speaker 2: they had to bring a trusted few into the Xanadu fold,
Speaker 2: so over the many weeks ahead they would sometimes sometimes
Speaker 2: they would continue to venture out just the two of them.
Speaker 2: Other times they'd bring people they trusted in, and Miller
Speaker 2: includes some details about this, like they would leave Tucson
Speaker 2: in the morning, they'd drive out the Xanadu in a
Speaker 2: jeep tenan reading a detective novel on the steering wheel
Speaker 2: while he drove, and tough taking a nap. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was acceptable in the seventies. They didn't have podcasts yet
Speaker 2: they bring in limited gear, just enough food to sustain
Speaker 2: themselves on what was ultimately like a short jaunt in
Speaker 2: the cave and then back out driving back to Tucson.
Speaker 2: One of the things that they mentioned that Miller mentions
Speaker 2: of the book, you know, through these interviews with folks involved,
Speaker 2: is that cavers, in general, they don't want to You
Speaker 2: don't want to bring in a lot of food because
Speaker 2: anything you bring in you got to bring out. If
Speaker 2: you go to the bathroom in the cave, you got
Speaker 2: to do something about that as well. And in general,
Speaker 2: like if you're squeezing through all these little spots, you
Speaker 2: don't really want a full belly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or I'd imagine to be having to haul a
Speaker 3: bunch of cargo with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So like they're bringing stuff like maybe a
Speaker 2: can of sardines, or they made some sort of pudding
Speaker 2: out of sweet and condensed milk that was apparently a favorite.
Speaker 2: That kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Xana Do slop Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: They had a name for it, like it was like
Speaker 2: goop or something. So Miller notes that as caves go,
Speaker 2: Xana Do was over all a relatively safe cave to explore,
Speaker 2: so there were no deep pits to fall into. It
Speaker 2: was only seventy five feet below the natural entrance, and
Speaker 2: harnessing and ascending equipment was not required to get in
Speaker 2: and out. But at the same time, the initial crawlways
Speaker 2: were extremely challenging, so experienced cavers like these guys could
Speaker 2: handle it. But it was enough to have protected the
Speaker 2: cave from human and most animal access for millennia. You know,
Speaker 2: like the bats were getting in here, there's some other organisms,
Speaker 2: but like it's not like there are skunks crawling in
Speaker 2: here and so forth. Like one of the really interesting
Speaker 2: things that I discovered on the tour was that, yeah,
Speaker 2: we have these bats coming in seasonally to roost, and
Speaker 2: sometimes what happens abat dies, right, Yeah, a bat dye
Speaker 2: any kind of like small mammal dies in other environments,
Speaker 2: there's a there's a whole system that decomposes that organism
Speaker 2: and consumes it. But like they pointed out one bat,
Speaker 2: it's like, yep, this one's left over from the last
Speaker 2: root and it's just there. And then there's actually a
Speaker 2: stalagmite in Cartoner caverns where it's hard to see now,
Speaker 2: but there's a bat in it where and it was
Speaker 2: there when these guys discovered it, and It's a little
Speaker 2: harder to see now because again it's a looting cave.
Speaker 2: Water continues to drip, the rock continues to build up,
Speaker 2: but it's just it's this. The dead body of the
Speaker 2: bat is entombed there. That's amazing. Yeah. So yeah, there
Speaker 2: are other cave systems where bats roost, and there are
Speaker 2: various organisms that you may have seen in nature documentaries
Speaker 2: where the skunks will come in or some other organisms
Speaker 2: from the outside will come in to take advantage of
Speaker 2: meals to be had there, at least in a seasonal fashion.
Speaker 2: But that is not the case with this cave.
Speaker 3: I was looking at one study of the bat populations
Speaker 3: in the cave. We'll come back and talk about this
Speaker 3: in part two of the series, but about a predator
Speaker 3: that was setting up at the entrance to the cave
Speaker 3: and was picking off bats there as they came and went.
Speaker 3: But I guess no, I didn't read about any large
Speaker 3: scavenger is going in.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting that they did mention. I don't know if
Speaker 2: this was the predator in question, but they mentioned that
Speaker 2: there was a rattlesnake halfway down the sinkhole. That was
Speaker 2: just like they didn't I don't think they did anything
Speaker 2: to try and get rid of the rattlesnake. Maybe they
Speaker 2: liked that it was there. It was kind of built
Speaker 2: in security system, but like the first person down would
Speaker 2: kind of like wake up the rattlesnake, and then the
Speaker 2: second person down had to contend with the fact that
Speaker 2: there was now an awakened rattlesnake there. Oh boy, but
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone ever was bitten by it.
Speaker 3: No, it was not a rattlesnake. In the study I
Speaker 3: was reading, this was one published in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 3: and the authors talk about a case where a ringtail
Speaker 3: took up residents I guess near the entrance and exit
Speaker 3: that the bats were using, and was picking off bats
Speaker 3: as they went by.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so relatively safe cave to explore. But even
Speaker 2: then you had experienced cavers like tufts and teen and
Speaker 2: getting into a few scary moments in close calls. So
Speaker 2: things still got tight. Things got muddy again. This is
Speaker 2: a wet cave. Miller mentions one example where one of
Speaker 2: them is hanging down in this muddy area to check
Speaker 2: things out, and then they just can't climb back up
Speaker 2: the rope because there's just too much mud. It's too slick,
Speaker 2: and they just kind of have to spend an extended
Speaker 2: amount of time trying new things, and eventually a big
Speaker 2: part of what helps them is the mud on their
Speaker 2: gloves and on the rope dries out enough to where
Speaker 2: they have a little more purchase to get back up.
Speaker 3: Wow, speaking of the mud, So you've been there and
Speaker 3: probably seen this in person. I saw this on a
Speaker 3: video walk through that the Parks had posted, or actually
Speaker 3: I don't remember if it was the Parks or somebody else.
Speaker 3: So somebody posted online a video walk through, and one
Speaker 3: of the things that was pointed out in it was
Speaker 3: in one of the larger rooms of the cave, there's
Speaker 3: kind of a big mud floor and there's like a
Speaker 3: trail leading through it, and the tour guide points out
Speaker 3: that that was the original trail that the first explorers
Speaker 3: were using to go in and out, and so you
Speaker 3: can just still see this sort of line cut through
Speaker 3: the mud, like they were trying to use the same
Speaker 3: the same path each time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, Again, this was like this was the perfect
Speaker 2: era for cavers to have discovered cardon caverns, because they
Speaker 2: were thinking about these things already. They were like, let's
Speaker 2: impact this as little as possible. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Fortunately now that if you go in, you don't have
Speaker 3: to walk in the mud. They've got like a you know,
Speaker 3: an established walkway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, to a certain extent, the cave
Speaker 2: was hard to access and hard to discover. Nobody had
Speaker 2: seen it before. But still they're heading out there regularly.
Speaker 2: The cave's not too far from the interstate. There are
Speaker 2: plenty of other Eager cavers out there in the world,
Speaker 2: experienced or otherwise, so it's possible that they might be seen.
Speaker 2: It might they might be followed, Locals might wonder what
Speaker 2: they're up to, like, so they had to be careful.
Speaker 2: Like some of the locals thought they were working on
Speaker 2: I think some irrigation ditches or something, and they did
Speaker 2: not correct them. Eventually, they would use blindfolds, contracts, and
Speaker 2: other means to keep people they were on it in
Speaker 2: the dark. They'd physically cover up the blowhole and position
Speaker 2: rocks in such a way as to clue them in
Speaker 2: if investigation by unknown parties had occurred, and they ultimately
Speaker 2: were able to keep it secret like this for again
Speaker 2: fourteen years. So I'm not going to go through all
Speaker 2: the fascinating nuts and bolts of the story here, especially
Speaker 2: as it gets into Arizona state politics and the like.
Speaker 2: But here's some broad strokes and the rest of the story.
Speaker 2: So they'd achieved every caver's dream. An undiscovered cave never
Speaker 2: suffered historic vandalism like Onyx Cave in Arizona. It was
Speaker 2: also a living cave, a wet cave, unlike the dry
Speaker 2: colossal cave, and it gave everyone the possibility to really
Speaker 2: try and do right by this cave, to protect it
Speaker 2: from the get go and look after it with a
Speaker 2: contemporary understanding of things. But how do you go about that?
Speaker 2: How do you protect such a natural treasure? Well, tuffsent teenen.
Speaker 2: They've laid out four possible ways to go about it.
Speaker 2: One was gating, another was ceiling, another was the establishment
Speaker 2: of a research center, and then the fourth was commercialization.
Speaker 2: So gating, they argued, this would just draw more attention
Speaker 2: to the cave.
Speaker 3: Wait, sorry, what does what does gating mean? In this context?
Speaker 2: This would be putting up a gate and saying, like,
Speaker 2: you know, you're not allowed in here unless you've been
Speaker 2: given permission. And this is like one one approach to take.
Speaker 2: But the thing about a gate is you can force
Speaker 2: it open and cavers could be notoriously fanatical about accessing
Speaker 2: places like this, like don't apparently just it's hard to
Speaker 2: tell a caver that they can't access a cave. They're
Speaker 2: they're they're not necessarily going to take that at face
Speaker 2: value and then sealing it, like going the extra step
Speaker 2: of like making it, you know, putting some sort of
Speaker 2: like say, concrete sarcophagus over the entrance. This would they say,
Speaker 2: create a false sense of security, because it it might
Speaker 2: you know, it might protect the cave from access by humans,
Speaker 2: but it wouldn't. And then there is the head a thing, Well,
Speaker 2: what do you do about the bats? Right? The bats
Speaker 2: still need to get in. Without even getting into that,
Speaker 2: you still have the dangers of drilling, prospecting, and mining
Speaker 2: that are still going to be in play. And also
Speaker 2: you're locking the cave away from educational, scientific, and esthetic appreciation. Again,
Speaker 2: you know, we can, we can, you know, can we
Speaker 2: can talk about conserving the caves out there, but you know,
Speaker 2: we still we want to access them, and there are
Speaker 2: some good reasons for humans to be able to access
Speaker 2: them if it can be done in an equitable fashion.
Speaker 2: And they as far as the idea of turning it
Speaker 2: into a research center. They said that, Okay, this is
Speaker 2: a great cave. It's an amazing cave, but it's probably
Speaker 2: not biologically diverse or large enough to host a research center.
Speaker 2: And the thing about research research projects is that they
Speaker 2: end eventually, so you're not necessarily dealing with truly long
Speaker 2: term protection for the site. And so that brings us
Speaker 2: back to commercialization. And this ends up being the best
Speaker 2: option and the one they end up pitching because again
Speaker 2: they have to pitch this to somebody because it's not
Speaker 2: on state land. They find out after they've i think
Speaker 2: reached out to some state parks people. No, this land
Speaker 2: is owned by the Carchner family. And they had to
Speaker 2: then go make the case to the cartooners and try
Speaker 2: to bring them on, giving them a crash course in
Speaker 2: caves and you know, preparing them, you know for what
Speaker 2: all of this means, telling them what they had, and
Speaker 2: then in trying to instill in them the need to
Speaker 2: protect it and telling them how they might achieve that.
Speaker 2: And so again, there's so many ways this could have
Speaker 2: gone wrong if the cartooners had been different people. But
Speaker 2: they're great examples or not maybe not great. There are
Speaker 2: there are telling examples from previous decades of caves that
Speaker 2: have been opened up turned into show caves in more
Speaker 2: disastrous ways, caves that have been opened up with more
Speaker 2: of an engineer's mindset, like how do we physically do it,
Speaker 2: how do we get people down there? What sort of
Speaker 2: elevators do we install? Or a pure showman's enthusiasm, like
Speaker 2: how do we turn this into pure entertainment for the people. Anyway,
Speaker 2: they luck out because the cartooner has proved to be
Speaker 2: sensible and straightforward about all of this. James Krchner, the
Speaker 2: patriarch of the family, had a background in education, which
Speaker 2: was obviously helpful and so toughsent teen and made this
Speaker 2: proposition to them. They gave them these four options. They
Speaker 2: end up landing on the turning it into more of
Speaker 2: a commercial venture, with the idea that, yeah, if you
Speaker 2: open it up like this, research can still happen, people
Speaker 2: can come and appreciate it. But it also is I
Speaker 2: guess you could say paying for itself if it is
Speaker 2: positioned just ride.
Speaker 3: Okay, So it's a case where you are making a
Speaker 3: partial sacrifice of the cave's integrity for basic human purposes
Speaker 3: like research and education, but also to raise funds that
Speaker 3: can help protect the cave in larger ways.
Speaker 2: Right, and again, I think this is one of the
Speaker 2: things that makes the story so so fascinating. And also
Speaker 2: you know the added point too that if it ends
Speaker 2: up being run by the state, then there are other
Speaker 2: dynamics in place there. But among the various requirements that
Speaker 2: they end up striking in this this deal between the
Speaker 2: two parties. First of all, tufsent teen and needed to
Speaker 2: remain a part of the process to ensure that no
Speaker 2: short curt cuts end up being made later on as
Speaker 2: this is you know, process as it transitions from a
Speaker 2: private to a state matter. And then James Karchner, for
Speaker 2: his part, one of the things that he insisted on
Speaker 2: is like, well, I want to see it. Take me
Speaker 2: down there. Let me see this thing. He was seventy
Speaker 2: eight years old, and he crawled through the hole. He
Speaker 2: crawled through the hole. There's a picture in the book,
Speaker 2: in Miller's book of him crawling through the blowhole. So
Speaker 2: this this old guy was, Yeah, this was a tough,
Speaker 2: old old geezer. He crawled through. Got to see it
Speaker 2: with his own eyes. Wow. So there's a fair amount
Speaker 2: of drama that follows from that point with everything that
Speaker 2: can earning everything from changes in the Arizona Arizona political
Speaker 2: climate to construction challenges because you know, part of opening
Speaker 2: it up is people can't come through the blow like
Speaker 2: that's not how you access it today. You've got to
Speaker 2: create some significant mind tunnels so that people can stroll
Speaker 2: in and reach it. So they had to do all
Speaker 2: that their engineering challenges there and also trying to build
Speaker 2: that in a way that wasn't like too destructive for
Speaker 2: the surrounding area, that sort of thing, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to use explosives as little as possible, those sorts of concerns.
Speaker 2: There was even an attempt by rival cavers at one
Speaker 2: point to tunnel into Xanad through what they thought was
Speaker 2: another collapsed entrance, and so some of the Xanad crew
Speaker 2: had to like infiltrate and sabotage that effort. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: all sorts of cave druma. So ultimately, over the course
Speaker 2: of this fourteen year period like that, the project faces
Speaker 2: unforeseen challenges in research, planning, construction, legislative threats, mining concerns,
Speaker 2: and legal issues. But then the cave officially opens to
Speaker 2: the public in nineteen ninety nine. The area that is
Speaker 2: now called the rotunda in the Throne Room, and then
Speaker 2: the Big Room opened in two thousand and three, So
Speaker 2: we'll come back to this. But the rotunda in the
Speaker 2: Throne Room or the this is where I visited on
Speaker 2: my initial tour, and then the Big room. This is
Speaker 2: where the bats go. This is where where previous I
Speaker 2: most recently visited.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, now, Rob, you can probably speak to this
Speaker 3: better than I could just from what I was seeing online.
Speaker 3: But my understanding is this tunneled and the new entrance
Speaker 3: they had to make to the cave, the tunneled entrance,
Speaker 3: They've gone to pretty great lengths to make that sort
Speaker 3: of an air lock like there are there's kind of
Speaker 3: a decontamination or airlock procedure you have to go through
Speaker 3: that's going to try to preserve the cave and preserve
Speaker 3: the cave as much as possible, limit incoming contamination and
Speaker 3: limit uh, the the loss of moisture and internal atmosphere
Speaker 3: to the outside.
Speaker 2: Is that right? That's right? Yeah, there's it feels very
Speaker 2: sci fi when you when you venture into a cartoon
Speaker 2: of caverns. There's you know, I kind of felt like
Speaker 2: it was in total recall, like going through some sort
Speaker 2: of some sort of Martian tunnels deep under the Martian
Speaker 2: surface two weeks. Yeah, because yeah, so even before you
Speaker 2: get in there, you're like your boots are disinfected if
Speaker 2: you've been in any caves and recent memory, basically, so
Speaker 2: you don't potentially spread white nose syndrome to the bats. There.
Speaker 2: You you enter through a series of sealed steel doors
Speaker 2: essentially air locks and long tunnels. And then and then
Speaker 2: after this there's this, there's a misting corridor. And this
Speaker 2: is what it sounds like. You're essentially like hose down.
Speaker 2: I mean, not to the point where you're dripping, but
Speaker 2: there's like a mist It's kind of like being in
Speaker 2: the vegetable section of a grocery store. And this serves
Speaker 2: a number of purposes. So first of all, it helps
Speaker 2: account for the moisture lost when humans venture in and
Speaker 2: then back out again.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, that's interesting, Like we would absorb a moisture
Speaker 3: and thus remove it, so like we're sort of a
Speaker 3: walking sack of damprid or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, even if you're not dropping Cheeto's bags, just
Speaker 2: by venturing in and then back out, you're changing things
Speaker 2: a little potentially, especially when you're dealing with a lot
Speaker 2: of humans, and the numbers are carefully limited here, but
Speaker 2: still so that's one part of it. But then also
Speaker 2: this helps deal with the lent again, all those skin cells,
Speaker 2: all those little pieces, those little clothing fibers that we're
Speaker 2: constantly shedding. The idea here is like you kind of
Speaker 2: wet all that down, make it heavier, and then as
Speaker 2: that stuff leaves our bodies during the tour, it's not
Speaker 2: floating off and then sticking to the surfaces of the cave.
Speaker 2: It's following more or less straight down onto the concrete
Speaker 2: a pathway that you're walking on, and you are on
Speaker 2: a concrete pathway the entire time, and their guard rails
Speaker 2: and so forth. So ideally you never touch anything except
Speaker 2: for the handrails. You don't ever walk on anything except
Speaker 2: for this concrete surface. And they're able to clean all
Speaker 2: of that down without having to clean the actual cave surfaces.
Speaker 2: And if you do come into contact with any of
Speaker 2: these other cave surfaces, well then they have to do
Speaker 2: spot cleans, Okay, but uh yeah, again, just it's it's
Speaker 2: just it's a very it's an amazing experience just to
Speaker 2: venture into it before you even get to see any
Speaker 2: of these amazing cave formations. One other thing I want
Speaker 2: to mention is that when you're going through the caves,
Speaker 2: the lights only come on when they're humans around, So
Speaker 2: they're like, so they're not lights on down there all
Speaker 2: the time. It's only when humans are down there, and
Speaker 2: as they move through the cave, which is ide because
Speaker 2: this is a dark environment. Yeah. And then as far
Speaker 2: as the bats go again, the big room, which is
Speaker 2: like a five acre chamber, a half mile of walkways.
Speaker 2: This is the area where the bats are seasonally. And
Speaker 2: when the bats are here, the lights are not here,
Speaker 2: people are not here. It's just left to darkness and bats.
Speaker 2: And then once the bats have left, then they clean
Speaker 2: everything up, then they turn the light. They put the
Speaker 2: lights back in so the lights can come on and
Speaker 2: then the tours can resume.
Speaker 3: Okay, so there's only touring in this part of the
Speaker 3: cave when it's not bat season, correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, Rob, we got several more things we were
Speaker 3: planning on talking about today, including the cave formations, the spielio,
Speaker 3: theimmes and bat populations in the cave, like a bit
Speaker 3: more biological detail there, but we are sort of already
Speaker 3: at time limit for today. So maybe we'll have to
Speaker 3: save those for part two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we'll come back in the next episode. We
Speaker 2: have a lot more to discuss concerning cave formations, the
Speaker 2: bats that seasonally roost here, a lot more interesting stuff
Speaker 2: to get into.
Speaker 3: Maybe is there going to be a connection to exo
Speaker 3: planetary science.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, as we'll get into one of our two
Speaker 2: signature cavers here actually has some experience with the charting
Speaker 2: of other worlds.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, join us again next time.
Speaker 2: All right. In the meantime, we're going to go ahead
Speaker 2: and remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, and we've been around
Speaker 2: for years at this point. If you're just discovering us
Speaker 2: through Netflix, where we currently have a video version of
Speaker 2: the podcast, well there's a whole lot more wherever you
Speaker 2: get your audio podcasts. Just look up Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind. We do core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: On Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and then
Speaker 2: on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 2: talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. And yes, again,
Speaker 2: sometimes those movies take place in caves.
Speaker 3: Sure, dude, I was just trying to think. Was our
Speaker 3: most recent big cave movie drawn a blank?
Speaker 2: Oh? Pretty recently, right right after I returned from my
Speaker 2: trip to Arizona, we'd watched one that had a cave
Speaker 2: in it or had a mine in it, The boog
Speaker 2: and the Boogains.
Speaker 3: Oh, the Buggins.
Speaker 2: Oh the Buggins.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, not really a cave, it's a mine. But yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, a human made cave.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But we've talked about films that we were filmed
Speaker 2: in Arizona caves like Gargoyles for example.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I forget off hand, just off the top of
Speaker 2: my head, which cave they filmed in. It was not Carton, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I shudder to think not. I have not looked into
Speaker 3: what conservation steps were taken in the making of those movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, huge, thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
Speaker 3: JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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