It was 1972 I don’t know who organized it or how it got started but a bunch of guys wanted to go caving. I knew the local caves. Those caves were all well-known and well traveled. It wasn’t like going to the moon. There were easy caves and harder caves. I decided we'd go to the toughest ... .. the most dangerous one ... the least travelled....  Saltpeter. It's not a pretty cave. Very few are. It's just tough and raw. There were no trails leading to Saltpeter. You had to know where it was. One end of it was mined for saltpeter during the Civil War but we were coming in a different entrance and headed a different direction into those flood channels. Maybe it was show off on my part wanting to go there, or maybe the desire to show the guys something they would never experience again, but secretly it was an honor. I had taken groups of people on caving trips before to the easier caves, and once to a fairly hard one where the three of us ended up helping two people, a girl and guy, get themselves out. They weren’t in desperate need of rescue, but probably they were and didn’t know it yet. Another time I'd gone caving alone in that same cave and ended up helping a group find their way out. It was a confusing place to go but I learned years before to look back to recognize where I came from. And for crying out loud, the first explorers burned and marked arrows along the route if you knew where to look. Except Saltpeter. There were no arrows or marks on those walls, or if there were, they had long been washed off by floods and the continual dampness. Aside from scaling down between narrow walls, getting lost, running out of light, injury and exhaustion, the real danger in Saltpeter was flooding. Those caves were storm drains that had been carved down into the limestone and it was best to go on a day when it hadn't been raining. I'd gone into some caves after the rain to have a look at the water level, to get a gauge of the danger. You wouldn't do that with Saltpeter. When I was in high school, my friend Steve and I usually went caving in the winter because it was safe, but then you came out wet and nearly froze in your pants getting back to the car. It was Steve who got us into caving. He was two years older. I was 14 and been roaming farm fields, forests, railroad tracks, and crawling around limestone quarries since 7. Maybe earlier. My parents let me do what I wanted. Of course I had to go to school, but my great love was the long walk in the country. That's how I met Steve and his brothers the summer before 9th grade. I ran into their house next to the railroad track on the way to somewhere. I was standing on a railroad trestle and they all came up the berm and we started talking. Steve was different. His parents wouldn't let him leave the yard. Until he met me. His mom would let him take two 15 minutes hikes each day. One in the morning, and one in the afternoon. That permission combined with my natural instinct for rule breaking extended the timetable and was catalyst for change. Of course, his parents told me to go home and not come back more than once. I kept coming back. Steve had lots of ideas that we did together. Built tree houses, wandered cow pastures, climbed fences, explored barns, hunted snakes, made gun powder, shot model rockets, went canoing, exploded small propane tanks, and so on. I saw him fall backwards out of a tree one time, and he opened his arms out and floated from branch to branch, backwards all the way down, landing on the ground unhurt. It was unbelievable, but his younger brother saw it too. Obviously we weren't mall and slot car kids. He started reading about caves, and then went out and bought the gear. He had his driver's license by then. I followed along. The local sporting goods stores sold everything. Steve was a genuine explorer. I was more of a safety and mapping guy, not that he needed either. It was Steve that pushed us into the cracks and passageways and adventures that I would never done on my own. He's the one that found the second entrance to Saltpeter cave after we searched multiple times. It was on the map, so we knew it was somewhere but couldn't find it. We ended up going in the old mining entrance a mile away and finally crawled our way over but ran out of cave. Steve started climbing up between two rock walls of pure white limestone. I went along like usual. Thirty feet up we ran out of cave again. Neither of us wanted go back the way we came. We decided to eat lunch. I always brought 4 bologna sandwiches. He kept saying it had to be right there. I don't know how he knew. Then suddenly he said, I hear a plane. We both looked straight up. I heard it too. The cave sits buried under the hills just west of the Bloomington airport. And sure enough, there was one more crack we hadn't seen, and if that little propeller plane hadn't gone over as we were sitting there eating lunch, we would never have found it. A few tricky footholds later and another twelve feet up and we were out in the sunshine laughing. Amazingly we had walked right by the entrance in every search. It was a split that went straight down between two rocks about a foot and a half wide at the base of a small rock outcropping. It was impossible to see unless you were right on top of it. Saltpeter was our favorite after that, but it was different. It was wetter. Flooding was no joke. There were four or five different streams from all directions, and then they'd disappear into a crack or behind a collapse. It was hard to make sense of it. The first time we got back into the deeper passageways, where the channels start getting big we saw grass and stick debris stuck on the ceiling. There were long stretches that got submerged, and I studied the distances and challenge of getting to a high spot if there was an emergency. No matter it was best to go when it was not going to rain, so that's what we did in 1972. Steve had long since moved on to other things. He finshed school, still needing adventure, and started running an old Ford in daredevil road races with the law. I got reports from his brothers about his feats of survival. They were astounding as usual. I didn't go that direction exactly but he was gifted that way. Anyway, it was spring time and I checked the weather carefully, so Saltpeter would be safe... and that's how the decision was made. The group of guys that day had come down from the northern part of the state. I didn't see a problem or risk among any of them. Part of them seemed to be rallied behind a guy they liked, and he was level headed, so it was going to stay organized. I knew one of the other guys, and he brought a friend. so I wouldn't have to worry about somebody getting off track and doing something careless. I'd seen it before when I had to pull a schoolmate up off a ledge to keep him from falling down a 30 foot hole, and if I'd seen it that day, maybe we would have gone to a different cave. For me caving was always something new. I don't know what the other guys saw. The walls of pure white stone covered with scallops where the water had dripped down over tens of thousands of years, gradually pitting and wearing away the surface were my favorite. Maybe they noticed the long crawlways through water. Or the low wide stretches where you scraped the gravel out of the way to fit through. Did any of them see the different streams coming from all over? Or the indistinct route at times. Did any of them look back so they could get out on they're own? Or did they simply trust me? I don't know, but I tell you that cave is about focus and hard work. I wasn't a tour guide with extra time to point out features that day. I had a destination in mind. At the very far end of that cave is a 60' waterfall. Genuine now. Not a 40' that looks 60'. It falls down into a large round dome that was carved when the water hit an area of softer stone and begin cutting downward through the layers, and there you are, standing at the bottom looking up. It runs year round. I never saw it during a rain. That'd be a fool's trip, but you could imagine that thing would roar off the top and fill the entire dome with spray. It was scary thinking about that place filling with water. There was a high and dry series of rooms and passageways nearby, and that's the only reason I took the risk of Saltpeter. The passages went nowhere, but the group could huddle safe and cold in the dark and at least not drown. On the way back I half miscalculated the carbide lamps. I left my bag at the beginning of cobble crawl. I should've taken it with me but that 800 foot crawlway is so tough that I parked it instead of dragging it along. Our light source came from several carbide lamps. Water drips down into the carbide and creates acetylene that goes through a tip. You burn the acetylene and it creates light. Every couple hours you clean out the lamps, put in fresh carbide and fill it with water and maybe clean the tip, and you're good to go. The extra carbide and water were in my bag. The trip had taken longer than anticipated and the lamps were starting to dim. They needed a fresh reload. I had a few tricks. One lamp at a time we turned it off and cleaned out the carbide, and then salvaged enough unburned pieces to get three lamps going, and then peed in the water container. I had a pretty good understanding of light but my lack of experience showed. I should have assigned each man to carry a small supply of their own, except how you keep it dry through all the water? Waterproof plastic bottles are easy to find today, but back then? I don't know. I put the group in overdrive getting back through cobble crawl. Just as well because we were getting worn down, and that was the toughest spot on the return trip. We made it to the bag got the lamps going, all of them this time and the rest the trip was uneventful. The guys were pretty joyous getting out, made me think that some of them were a bit nervous about it. The true measure of their mood was how boisterous the fellows were when we got back to the apartment, muddily clumping up the stairs with more energy than when we left. Like they conquered Everest. Not quite, but it was fun. I suspect they had an adventure, but still wonder what they saw, and what they thought. Or maybe they went out for a beer and forgot the whole thing next day. Gene Haynes 2019 ____________________________