Guy James, Tennessee, Part One

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Guy-James, March, 2008, Part One

The large crayfish slowly approached, walking backwards towards me as I hung motionless in the clear cold water. "Lobster," I thought and turned to flash my light at Mike who had ventured on ahead. He came back and we watched as the behemoth turned to face the double lights, which must have looked like the glare of an angry sun god to this mindless crustacean. Being the king of his domain, he didn't threaten or even look threatened, but simply sat and stared into the glare of our lights, boring us into retreat.

We were cave diving a new-to-us part of the now-near-famous Guy-James system outside of Murfreesboro, TN. Mike had suggested we skip out of work for a late morning dive - we could get back to work by 1pm and just call it a longish lunch hour. And that's just what we did!

A small group of us had been laying line in Guy-James for several years and more recently had found a new continuing passage that had more than doubled, nearly tripled, the length of the system. This was no simple system, but appears to be the longest natural fully submerged cave system in the state.

For our dive, Mike suggested we enter the second entrance, not the spring where the water runs to the east branch of the Stone's River, but the karst window over a half-mile from the spring. It's a slippery slope where water has eroded a path of wet rock stair-steps, sometimes loose and crumbly, sometimes a giant step down or up. We rigged a thick rope, donned our doubles, and backed down the slope. The eroded cut was narrow so the only way to fall was down, which worked to my advantage. I fell sideways when one foot sank deep in mud, but the soft leaf and mud side of the crevice held me upright!

At the edge of the water, Mike inflated his BC, leaned back on the rope, and stepped into the water letting the rope slide from his hands. A backward baby-stride entry! I followed his lead and soon joined him floating in the narrow small pool. We donned mask and fins, tied off a reel, and Mike led us straight down (the only direction possible). An older line was already in place and tied off to a water logged tree at the bottom at 30 feet deep. The older line also ran downstream and upstream, so Mike tied off and we proceeded to follow the old line (placed by Marbry and Jason earlier in the year - so "old" is not so old actually, but that's the nature of cave diving in Tennessee).

We ducked under the overhang and followed the line into the open passage. The passage was littered with breakdown rocks, large fragments jutting out dramatically, and rolling mounds of pebbly sand. The solution tunnel widened and in places our 10-W HID's found no purchase to reflect back at us, but just beamed off into the void. As we swam along the bottom changed to erosion patterns of dimples, pock-marks, knobs, and little stands of pencil-thin limestone capped by flat razor-thin tops. Pull and Glide at your own risk! I thought of chest of drysuit, or a dropped-down knee, catching on one of these and tearing, and then inhaled to rise a tad higher, but a foot higher and just ahead a fracture slab of limestone poked out of the dark requiring an exhale a side-fin, and smooth glide under.

This is a very nice part of the system. The flattened, but pock-marked floor is covered in a fine brown slit, a very thin layer that wisps up with the slightest movement of water. The system is recharged regularly, with every rain, and is not diveable for weeks after. The high flow moves dunes of sand and clay about, cleans off the side-walls and ceiling, and leaves a super-fine thin layer of silt along the bedding plane.

As we follow the line the depths undulate from 40 feet to 20 feet, and in places the line passes under fractures hanging at odd angles, while other times the ceiling is far above out of sight. The visibility is excellent for Tennessee caves, all of 30 maybe even 40 feet! I feel like we're in a Florida cave, but still I hug the bottom to keep the line in sight, and am extra careful not to stir up too much silt. And as I'm humming along scanning the now-wide passage, an albino crayfish, the size of a small shrimp, drops from the ceiling right in front of me! I stop for a chat, but it has no time for me, and zooms off backward, zig-zagging along the bottom, raising a little silt trail as it goes. Soon, another one, or the same one (?) zig-zags across my path, and then another, and another and I wonder if there's been a recent hatching nearby.

Then suddenly the line T's off and we have an option! Marbry didn't say anthing about a T…. Mike asks which way to go? And I shrug my indifference, but also guide my light along the main line. It's our first time in this part of Guy-James and it seems natural to follow the "main line," which means the continuous line, rather than the one tied to it. All our lines are basic cave line usually knotted every ten feet; no gold line here, no line tenders, no park rangers, no parking places, no picnic tables, no stop signs. Cave diving here is a long slug of hiking, trips to the county seat for names on deeds, afternoon or evening handshakes with land owners, and quiet, respectful visits to the unsullied country-side (watching where you step, and sometimes herding the cows away).