Rappelling a 201’ drop into a Chamber Several Acres in Size (2015)

Thumbnail photo by C Platt, 2015. Video by A. Dubois, 2015. This is a 201 foot rappel into a chamber several acres in size. This room is so big that when you get off rope it is a best practice to leave a flashlight or a candle burning so that when you do return back to climb out, you can actually find the rope again, otherwise it can be quite a struggle to find it in the middle of that huge room. I have only been as far as 1 mile upstream of this chamber, I have been there several times to this unnamed cave in central Tennessee, always in the dry season. Even in the driest of months, the water can be very deep as you hike upstream. It is also possible to hike as many as 8 miles one way upstream. The river passage is very impressive, being as thigh as 120 feet tall and perhaps not quite as wide as that most of the time. This is probably the largest known cave chamber east of the Mississippi River, and was discovered in approximately 1998 by Marion O. Smith. From the entrance of the cave, there is a 70 foot rappel followed by (2) 14-foot climb-ups and then eventually a series of crawls and tight Canyon leads to the top of the 201 foot rappel to the approximately 4-acre room, which leads to the miles of river cave going upstream. The cartographer showed the footprint of a 747 jumbo jet relative to the footprint of the chamber on the cave map. Caving is an incredible activity (!)