Caving at Raccoon Mountain by Lizzy

Hey Lizzy here!
As my leader and fellow girl scouter have already described, I'm going to be dictating my story about the recent caving trip to Raccoon Mountain. c: It all began by us all getting onto our creeper van ( her name's Wanda - the Wanderer - get it? ) we drove for a short two hours and arrived at the mountain.

 I honestly didn't know what to expect, we were given little to no detail about the actual INSIDE of the cave. We were all super excited, given it was a little weird to be the only girls other than little kids and moms. We held our own though, I swear we got a few weird judgemental looks.... BUT its totally okay, we handled the cave awesome, take that boy scouts :P
 So after we parked and claimed a little space, we sent Britt and Coumbah to go check us in. While we waited we met our guide, his name was Chris (Chief Chris we later called him). We talked for a bit, he got the feel for our group (loud, exciting, but maybe more obnoxious c;). We waited for awhile and then head out to put on our gear. He all had a pair of knee pads and a hard hat helmet with head lights c: Let me tell you, you needed them. Throughout the entire trip I probably bumped my head against the rock 20 times.

When we got into the cave it was beautiful. I had never seen anything like it, there were stalagmites and stalactites all over, it was gorgeous. The trek lasted about 4 hours and during the time he had to crawl, slide, climb and contort ourselves. It was exhilarating and i felt pretty skinny that I could fit, so there's a plus c;
Anyway, it was incredibly fun and i wished i could've done it all night!

Coumbah and I had also made it our personal goal to get as muddy as possible, we were competing for muddiest against two twins who had previously come before. I think we came pretty close, from head to toe, I kid you not all you could see other than mud was our eyes and hair.

Clean up was ... difficult. I took especially long because I was one of the muddiest. Finally after spending an incredibly long time washing mud from every nook and cranny that my clothes didn't cover we went to go to sleep. As part of the excursion, we had decided to sleep in the cave. We all scouted out our spots to sleep and laid out sleeping gear out and called it a night.

In the morning, I was the first to wake up and my face was flawless. Chris told us before that the mud in the cave was the kind they used for spas and stuff... well it worked. It worked amazing. Because not only was I looking hot spankin awesome I was feeling great too. Totally energized, despite spending only about 5 hours sleeping, I felt like I could run 5 miles. After everyone had arisen, we all went to there breakfast, said our goodbyes and left; all with promises to come back next year. :)


Lizzy

Where I slept c:

Im the REALLY muddy asian in the middle!! Told you we got muddy.

My shoes got REALLY muddy

Caving at Raccoon Mountain by Susan

One of the benefits of having an older Girl Scout troop is you can let them make arrangements for things without double checking their plans, so I didn’t even look at what we were in for at Raccoon Mountain after Coumbah booked the event. And I’m not sure I would have really comprehended it if I had tried to look it up!
Getting outfitted in the knee pads and helmets with lights was kind of amusing outside of the cave,
but once inside, I realized how incredibly vital these tools are. As in, I can’t tell you how many times
I banged my head trying to stand up. The entry to the cave wasn’t so bad; we carried in our sleeping
bags and gear into a lighted channel of the cave and found relatively dry places for them. Then our
guide indicated a dark, low hole and told us to start crawling – crawling! – 25 feet into it, and then we
would stop and talk. This is when I realized I wouldn’t make it through the cave without knee pads.
There was barely room to crawl in this channel, and when we emerged and I banged my head for the
first time on the 5 foot ceiling (I’m 5’4”), I thought, “That wasn’t so bad!” – but little did I know. Because from that point forward we were in such narrow channels that the each person had to tell the next person the exact right place to put her hands and feet so she wouldn’t fall down a big chasm or slip into oblivion somewhere. Shortly, we were walking sideways on a ledge more narrow than my feet, using our hands for balance on the 75 degree wall opposite so we wouldn’t slip into the 30 foot drop between our hands and feet! Each challenge was met with a next challenge for FOUR HOURS – there were points (many) in which we were wriggling on our stomachs like loggerhead sea turtles through very narrow, long channels, sliding down muddy rocks, climbing up muddy, narrow rocks that required knotted, muddy ropes to scale, and walking through underground creeks full of cold water. Despite my best efforts, I was covered with mud, and some of my girls finished the job on themselves by coating their faces and hair in it. There were points in which two channels could be taken, one just barely enough to wiggle through, the other just enough to crawl through. The girls always took the tight one; I opted for the spacious side. Many times I had to just stop and BREATHE to get the courage to go through the next challenge. Did I mention it was DARK? I mean, we were in a cave! So the experience was even more scary. My main focus throughout the entire thing, I am sad to admit, was personal survival. I did NOT want to slip and hurt myself and have to be dragged out of the cave – how could they do that anyway? This was underlined for me as I was climbing a 12 foot muddy rock with shallow indentations only big enough for my toes when my own daughter went sliding back down the rock beside me, screaming, and I couldn’t even reach out to grab her. It would have taken me down, too. Pitiful, pitiful. At the end of this four hours, it was midnight, and we were left in the lighted channel to sleep in the cave. The girls didn’t want the light out; they wanted to see the cave around them. There was no nice little place to sleep; it was every woman for herself, find a relatively dry rock without too many angles and bumps, and put the sleeping bag down. Poor Donna had a dripper on her head all night, and I woke soaking wet in my sleeping bag – some pop-up stream appeared in the middle of the night and went right under my bag! The girls were so delighted with this trip they voted they wanted to come back every year. Any adult
volunteers?

Mrs. Susan, the most amazing leader ever!!

All the girls

Mrs. Donna best assistant leader ever

Caving at Raccoon Mountain by Emma

Hey Guys,

It's Emma!

As you know our troop has recently gone caving up in Tennessee at Raccoon Mountain.  We had an amazing adventure crawling, sliding and climbing through the cave.  At many parts of our adventure we were faced with extremely frightening challenges.  We also got very muddy.  Another thing is that the cave was beautiful and astounding.  We were all amazed in the different "rooms" during the tour. At one point our guide, Chief Chris, dove head first into a small hole in the cave.  It was like Alice in Wonderland through the rabbit hole he went.  It was so much fun, even though at some points it was really cramped.  If you ever want an amazing caving experience, go to Raccoon Mountain!

Emma left, Selina right

Beautiful

All the girls!