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Crawling a Cave

By Don Kopp

Hair thin gypsum strings, a rare formation, wave slightly in a gentle breeze deep within Jewel Cave.

My friend Ken Gartzke and I were on our way to do some exploring inside one of the earth’s greatest caves — Jewel Cave. With more than 160 miles of mapped cave it ranks as the second longest in the world, and it is thought that less than 3 percent has been discovered.

It was a great day to go caving; on the ground it was windy and cold, about 15 degrees. But most caves in the Black hills remain a constant 51 degrees year-round, and the humid air feels warm — unless, of course, you sit around for very long.

Gartzke and I were experienced cavers; not only did we explore wild caves in the Black Hills, we also mapped them, thousands of feet of uncharted passageways and chimneys of various lengths and dimensions. During the early to mid 1970s, Gartzke and I explored Wind Cave. At that time the known cave contained about 50 miles of multi-dimensional passageways, chimneys and vertical descents. Wind Cave is not necessarily a pretty cave with a lot of beautiful formations like Jewel.

Rangers lead regular tours through Jewel Cave, where the temperature remains a constant 49 degrees.

Today Wind Cave is recognized as the fifth-longest cave in the world, with more than 130 miles of known passageways. It is also known as the densest (most passage volume per cubic mile) cave system in the world. I describe crawling around in Wind Cave as being inside a huge sponge made of limestone, definitely not a place where you want to get lost.

Jewel and Wind are barometric caves, meaning they exhale air when the outside air pressure decreases and they inhale when the outside air pressure increases. Total cave volume is estimated by measuring the amount of air the cave exhales when the outside air pressure drops, and inhales when the outside air pressure rises. Thus, 97 percent of all the air moving out of, or into the cave represents areas yet to be explored, since we know how much air volume is contained in the mapped cave area.

Gartzke and I would be exploring with world-renowned cave explorers Herb and Jan Conn. We had been working with”Herby,” as Jan always called him, for several months in Jewel Cave, but were especially excited to be accompanying them on a crawl into Metrecal Cavern, named by Herb because of the four long arduous hours of crawling just to get into Metrecal, a huge beautiful cavern decorated with aragonite crystal. Beyond Metrecal were miles of unexplored cave.

Before starting out for Metrecal, one must first be able to successfully wiggle through test blocks outside the cave. This is to make sure a caver isn’t too big to make the four-hour belly crawl through the infamous”Miseries,” 500 yards of squirming and squeezing through a tiny passageway with an average ceiling height of only 9 inches.

Herb and Jan Conn spent decades exploring Jewel Cave and eventually wrote a book about their discoveries.

The trip from the cave entrance (known as the target room) to where the Miseries starts takes about an hour of scrambling up and over huge masses of breakdown which, over the centuries, came from large portions of the cave ceiling and walls that have collapsed onto the cave floor. Most of this breakdown occurred when water was still actively coursing through the cave passageways. Some of these piles are so large that climbing gear is needed to either climb over or rappel down.

As we climbed up and over, or around and under the never-ending piles of breakdown, we passed through rooms with names like the Delicate Arch Room, and the Humdinger, finally ending up at the Whistle Stop. Because of the huge amounts of air moving into, or out of the cave, places like the Humdinger would make an eerie humming sound, while the Whistle Stop, a small hole coming into the main passageway, would occasionally produce a low sounding whistle. Winds blowing through the Whistle Stop have measured as high as 35 mph.

The easy part of the trip was now over. There would be no more walking or crawling on our knees. We had arrived at the entrance to the Miseries. For the next four hours we crawled on our bellies with the ceiling scraping our backs.

Herb finally announced,”Around this corner and we are out of the Miseries.” With anticipation I wiggled around the corner only to find the tiny crawlway getting smaller and tighter. It dropped down at a steep angle with a very tight turn at the bottom. In order to negotiate the turn, one had to lie on as much of his side as he could so he could make the bend. This was no easy task since the ceiling was just barely high enough to accommodate part of your shoulder. Gartzke was a little bigger than me and I had to push him, while Herby pulled him from the other side until he popped through.

Rescue packs are left at the entrance to Metrecal Cavern in the event of a deep underground emergency.

After taking about 10 minutes to wiggle through, sweat pouring down my dirty face, I said to Herb,”I thought we were out of the Miseries.” He smiled and replied,”Yup, we are now in the Mini-Miseries and that place you just wiggled through is called the Calorie Counter.” It was aptly named since the ceiling height at the counter has been measured at 7 1/2 inches.

We finally emerged from the Mini-Miseries into Metrecal cavern. Metrecal, as I remember, is an average size room about 300 feet from end to end and filled with amazing decorations, some of which are found in no other cave in the world. Some of the more exciting sights in Metrecal are spectacular displays of gypsum and needle crystals. Beards of angel hair drape the walls and ceiling, gently flowing with the air coursing through the room. In a nearby passageway called Wildflower Walk, gypsum flowers grow so profusely from the floor that one has to step carefully to keep from crushing them. Sadly enough, only a handful of cavers a year experience Metrecal because of the difficulty getting there and then, of course, there is only one way to go back.

Dan Austin wriggles through the Funny Little Hole en route to Metrecal Cavern.

Jewel Cave is filled with wondrous decorations, from gypsum beards to bottlebrushes, rare hydromagnesite balloons and huge onyx flukes. And someone who is musically inclined, as Jan Conn is, could actually play a tune on the many flow stone riblets coming off the ceiling and walls. Stalactites, stalagmites, helictites, dogtooth spar and copious amounts of popcorn crystal adorn the walls, ceiling and floor of Jewel. There are ponds of water so crystal clear and still that you will walk right into them if you aren’t paying attention. One room known as King Kong’s Cage is more than 120 feet high, while Shady Acres covers an area of several acres in size. And as Jan said,”It’s always shady there.”

Jewel Cave, besides having regular tours, also offers an”off the path spelunkers tour” for the adventuresome. There is also a candlelight tour that starts from the original cave opening and follows along the first explored portions of the cave. Only physically fit and highly experienced cavers are allowed, for obvious reasons, to venture into the beautiful, surreal world of Metrecal Cavern.

I never returned to Metrecal. My climbing experiences inside Black Hills caves led me to rock climbing in the sunshine. However, my first and only journey into Metrecal is a trip I will forever cherish in my caving memories.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Explorers of an Unseen World

By Paul Higbee

Editor’s Note: Jan & Herb Conn were inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2011. Herb died Feb. 1, 2012 at age 91. They were featured in this story, revised from the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Jan & Herb Conn discovered miles of passageways and chambers in Jewel Cave. This Jewel Cave National Monument photo shows them near Treasure Aisle in 1961.

Over 60 years after Jan and Herb Conn found the Black Hills on a cross-country rock climbing trip, they still lived here deep in the forest. The rustic cabin they built sits west of Custer State Park, and from their property you can gaze at the granite Needles’ formations, including spectacular Cathedral Spires.

They filled many days with long hikes to Black Hills landmarks they named. They were detached from the wide world in some ways, but are certainly not naÔve about it, and they didn’t come to South Dakota to hide from the world. They’ll live in Black Hills history forever as the spelunkers who proved Jewel Cave to be among the world’s largest. Both are published writers. Herb used to dangle from the Rushmore heads each fall, doing annual maintenance on the four faces. Jan’s musical play, Run to Catch a Pine Cone, has been performed throughout the country. Fellow climber and cave explorer Dwight Deal, in the foreword to a book the Conns authored about Jewel Cave, called them simply, “two of the most remarkable human beings I have ever met.”

Herb grew up in New York state and Jan in the Washington, D.C., area. Not long after they fell in love with one another, they fell in love also with rock climbing, which they learned on the Potomac River cliffs. “When you’re learning to climb, it’s handy to have a river below you,” noted Jan.

Herb Conn dangled from the faces on Mount Rushmore each fall to do maintenance work. (U.S. Dept. of Interior photo)

They married in 1944 and Herb made good money as a civilian electrician for the Navy during World War II. The young couple tucked most of those dollars away for post-war, transcontinental rock climbing treks. Careers, they decided, would be sacrificed for outdoor adventuring; they’d seek out seasonal odd jobs to pay their bills. A seemingly innate belief that they could do most anything served them well. For example, Jan once answered a help-wanted ad for an experienced Venetian blind assembler. She got the job and then got busy at home disassembling and re-assembling a set of blinds. When she reported to work the next day she was, indeed, experienced.

They took seasonal tourism jobs from New England ski resorts to an Arizona dude ranch, “until we got tired of smiling at people,” Jan recalled. Returning east from California in 1947, driving a panel truck the Conns describe as “the world’s first RV,” they decided to check into climbing challenges at Devil’s Tower. Much impressed by Devil’s Tower and the rest of the Black Hills, they nonetheless were unprepared for their first glimpse of the Needles. “If you’re a rock climber, you won’t find anyplace better,” said Jan. In 1949 they bought 20 acres adjacent to the Needles. A couple years after that they’d built a rustic shelter on the place.

Rock climbers in the 1950s were far less common than today. If you’ve got vacation photos from that era showing people scaling the Needles, it’s a good bet the subjects are Jan and Herb. They never guessed, up there in the wind, where their next adventure would lead them.

By 1959 Jan and Herb had been scaling rocky heights for 17 years, and were supporting their climbing addiction by creating customized leather and wood products. That year they broke routine and went spelunking with friend Dwight Deal at nearby Jewel Cave. For the next 22 years they explored Jewel almost weekly.

Jan & Herb during their spelunking days.

Spelunking, they found, put to use some of their well-developed climbing techniques, required tremendous stamina, and took a toll on knees and elbows. Compact and strong, both Conns could wriggle through spaces sometimes only eight inches wide for long distances. They came to live for the magic words, “It goes!” meaning they’d found a passage extending deep into the black unknown.

Jewel Cave, it turned out, goes farther than anyone dreamed 40 years ago. Today it ranks as the world’s third longest cavern system, with known passages extending 110 miles. Located west of Custer, Jewel was designated a national monument by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. In 1959 it was still considered a small cave, measured by yards, not miles.

‘There was talk then that it wasn’t up to national monument standards,” said Jan. “I think maybe the Park Service was happy to have us explore, so they would know what they were getting rid of.”

The Park Service granted the Conns a special use permit, meaning Jan and Herb Conn could volunteer all the time they wanted exploring, as long as they also mapped their routes. Then the Park Service sat back in awe as the duo, accompanied by Deal and a series of other capable partners, filed reports describing a dizzyingly complex network of passageways, lofts, and chambers.

Jan and Herb named their finds: Mighty Tight Street, Long Winded Passage, Carnegie Hall, Torture Chamber, Hell’s Half Acre, The Other Half Acre, Black and Blue Grottoes, to name a few. Santa Claus Chimney they discovered one Christmas Eve. Benny’s Vault echoed like a sound effect they remembered from Jack Benny’s radio show. Within a couple years they’d found big, scenic chambers perfect for public tours; problem was, it took seasoned spelunkers a good ten hours to reach those chambers from the cave’s entrance. The Conns helped the Park Service calculate where to drill a vertical shaft, from the surface to the scenic chambers 190 feet below, so visitors could eventually descend by elevator in about 30 seconds (prior to the elevator the Park Service offered tours in the natural entrance vicinity, still the area for candlelight tours today.)

As early visitors stepped off the elevator, Jan and Herb were exploring remote sections of the cave to the southeast, through tight passages called Calorie Counter, Miseries and, tighter yet, Mini Miseries. In the era when Apollo astronauts stepped on the moon, the Conns also left footprints where no one had walked before. On December 4, 1973, they recorded the cave’s 50th mile — a mark deemed unthinkable a few years earlier.

“You don’t do it for the mileage,” said Jan. “And yet the mileage gets in your blood.” That’s especially true as a cave climbs onto the list of the world’s longest.

The Conns fell in love with each other and then with rock climbing. Photo by Paul Higbee.

Now, almost two decades after the Conns turned the exploration over to others, the mileage continues to mount. There’s long been speculation that Jewel and Wind caves might be one and the same, but Jan and Herb couldn’t imagine spelunkers proving it so. Eight hours of rugged going from the elevator will take you two miles toward Wind Cave; that’s as far as Jewel’s been explored that direction. From that point, the nearest Wind Cave could be is about 20 miles (those 110 known miles don’t run anywhere near 20 miles in any one direction; they twist and double back to form a baffling maze).

Today visitors can take guided tours in the elevator vicinity, where there are electric lights and smooth walkways, or they can take the more rugged candlelight excursions. And for those small enough and physically fit enough, there are spelunking tours that let you feel like Jan and Herb for a few hours. Combined, these tours take visitors to only a tiny portion of this mostly wild cave.

Yet another way to experience Jewel Cave is by reading the Conns’ book, The Jewel Cave Adventure ñ Fifty Miles Of Discovery Under South Dakota, published in 1977 by the National Speleological Society. Filled with the excitement of discovery and lots of humor, the book even features a recipe for spelunkers’ bread, and cave songs Jan composed.

Once committed to a wayfaring lifestyle, the Conns seldom traveled in the years before Herb’s death in 2002. Jan and Herb said they’d cling to most any excuse to stay home, like deciding canned goods might freeze in their absence.

“Anyway,” said one visitor, “out here you’re living a life people dream of.”

“If they really dreamed it,” said Jan, “they’d be living it.”