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EXPLORING
KENTUCKY - February 2003 by Katherine Tandy Brown Spelunk
Away Your Winter Funk
Open year-round except for a few days at Christmas, Carter Caves boasts some 25 caves, 26 miles of hiking trails, a horse and mountain bike trail and a slew of activities to keep everyone from seniors to kids as busy as they want to be Most popular are its various lighted and unlighted tours of Cascade Cave, with its gorgeous 30-foot waterfall; X Cave, so named for the shape of its passages and known for slactites, slagmites, columns and flowstone; Bat Cave; and Saltpetre Cave, which was mined for this gunpowder ingredient during the War of 1812. In winter the latter two caves are closed for hibernation of the rare Indiana Brown bat, millions of which may have been driven from Saltpetre Cave during those mining years into Bat Cave. Numbering about 100,000 20 years ago, the bat population has fallen to about 20,000, and the park is trying to lure them back into Saltpetre, a better habitat for the nocturnal mammals. Two other caves – Laurel and Horn Hollow – are open to the public by permit. “We’re kind of hush about all the other holes in the park,” says park naturalist Coy Ainslie. “Otherwise we’d have to have a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week rescue squad for people who got lost or hurt.” Though evidence strongly indicates that Indians once lived under the park’s Natural Bridge (the only such formation in the state that supports a paved roadway), organized tourist cave exploration began booming in the 1920s. The sole access to X Cave was by a 20-foot ladder. Folks came to then privately-owned Cascade Cave, which the park purchased in 1959, to square dance in its cool front room on hot summer afternoons. These days, naturalist-led crawling tours can squeeze spelunkers (meaning people who like exploring caves) into spaces 10 inches high and barely wide enough to slither through.
Even kids get to learn caving and bat crafts while the older set vies to see who can wriggle through the skinniest space in a “squeeze box” competition. Reenactors in period costumes bring a realistic step back in time to participants in the annual Tracking and Woods Lore weekend in February, which includes a family-style period dinner, and in Pioneer Life Week in late July. In early March, the hills come alive with indoor music (gospel, bluegrass and country) during Mountain Memories Weekend, and culminate come early September with the Fraley Mountain Music Gatherin’, five days of free concerts in an outdoor amphitheater and jam sessions throughout the park. Other annual events include a Wildflower Pilgrimage in April, with a photography workshop, Valentine Dinner Theatre, with a tribute to Red Skelton this year, Halloween Spook-Away Weekend and New Year’s Eve Dance. And just in time to chill from holiday stress, the two-nights-for-the-price-of-one Great Escape Weekend in January, with day hikes, discounted cave tours, music and movies. Varying from day to day and season to season, other park activities range from horseback riding, canoeing and golf on a nine-hole or a miniature course to cave and stream ecology, crafts and a magic show. Add to that shopping for bat souvenirs (including my favorite, a bat hat, more effective, I assume, if you wear it while hanging upside down). “You could spend a week here and do something different every day,” says Ainslie. Next summer, he adds, you’ll be able to take a dip as you watch a “dive-in movie”. An outdoorsman’s paradise, Carter Caves has an 89-site drive-in campground, backwoods primitive camping, a 45-acre trolling-only largemouth bass trophy lake and muskie fishing on Tygart’s Creek just outside the park. Even if you’re not a spelunker or cold weather hiker, during winter’s chill you can pig out at a buffet filled with Kentucky specialties, then hunker down with a steaming cup of cocoa in front of a fire in the cozy lobby of 28-room Caveland Lodge while you watch deer wandering through the snowy woods outside. Or do the same in the comfort of your private living room in one of 10 spacious, two-bedroom, two-bath modern cottages tucked in the trees. During a stay in one of these not-remotely-rustic abodes on a cold night last December, I spent an evening relaxing by the fire then stepped out onto my deck for a late night breath of icy air. No city lights marred the star gazing. The Milky Way arced above me while a bright Orion led the parade of every winter constellation I’d learned in childhood. “There are so many magical experiences here,” says Lisa Davis, park manager. “My goal is to share this magic with everyone. Our lives are so full of stress. It can add peace to people’s lives to be in the tranquility we have here. “Every season brings its own beauty, like in winter, when the snow on the rocks looks like marshmallow crème and icicles hang from the cliffs. In fall you’re surrounded by red and gold leaves, and spring and summer are green with the wonderful smells of flowers.” Sam Plummer, who shares park naturalist
duties with Ainslie, agrees. “People come here not only for the
caves, but for the natural beauty of the park itself. It’s just
a pretty place to be.” Katherine Tandy
Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report. |
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Copyright 1996-2003, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial content
is copyright 2003, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
If
you’re getting tired of those interminable gray winter days, Carter
Caves State Resort Park may be just the right prescription for a day
or weekend that’ll tide you over till the warmth of spring. Located
in the Appalachian foothills 30 miles west of Ashland and six miles
north off 1-64, the 2,000-acre green space lies in Carter County, home
to 200-plus caves, and sidles up to Tygart’s State Forest, a 1,000-acre
green “buffer zone”.
Perhaps
the most unusual of Carter Caves’ annual events is the late-January
Crawlathon, which drew 700 participants and 90 volunteer guides in 2002.
Spelunkers and spelunker wanna-bes spend a weekend attending talks about
caving, learning about rappelling self-rescue techniques and about sketching
and mapping caves, and crawling underground for three days straight.
For those too anxious to wait until Saturday, a two-hour Friday night
“icebreaker” spelunk begins at 11 p.m.