Exploring Worley’s Cave

This past weekend, I had a chance to go caving with my son and his Scout Troop at Worely’s Cave in East Tennessee. Though it is on private land and a little hard to find, Worely’s Cave (also known as Morrill Cave) is considered to be one the best spelunking spots east of the Mississippi. The cave has 4,000+ feet of caverns and tunnels, and we spent 5 ½ hours exploring them on Saturday. The terrain inside varied quite a bit, so we were crawling in the mud through tight tunnels one minute and climbing rock faces the next. I am not a huge fan of the really tight crawl (roll, slither, etc.) sections, but they were always followed by beautiful cavernous rooms with stalactites, stalagmites, columns, drapes, and other amazing rock formations. There is also an active underground creek that flows through the caverns adding to the natural beauty.

Knowing that we would be in the water (cold water at that) for sections, I opted not to take my phone in the cave. I thought that the GoPro would be a better choice for pictures since it is waterproof and can handle the abuse of banging against the rock during the crawls and climbs. Unfortunately, it is not a great camera in low light conditions, and the only light available was from our headlamps. I had to aim my headlamp at the subject and hold the camera low to get a shot, but the long exposures in the dark left me with really blurry photos. Oh well… the goal was to capture memories of a really fun day, so I don't mind the fact that the photos are technically less than perfect. Besides, I sort of like the motion blur effect in a few of them, especially the one of my son at the bottom of this post.