Transcript
Jewel Cave Exploration
Video ID: 4593
Event: Jewel Cave Exploration

Caver One

There’s a lot of crawling here. There’s lots of manganese. That’s what we’re covered in. The cave, even though its 49 degrees, can be really hot and tiring. And so, before you go out to the outer reaches of the cave, you just need to come here and see what it’s all about. Caving in the Black Hills is a lot different than other places even here in the U.S.

We were surveying out in the eastern parts of the cave, further east than anyone’s been before. In my lifetime we won’t find the end of this cave. And it feels pretty neat to be out there on the very edge of this big cave.

We use alcohol stoves which don’t put off any harmful fumes into the cave and we also do bring all of our waste back out of the cave with us, so we don’t leave any human waste or any garbage whatsoever out there in the cave.

Caver Two

You get to see places where nobody’s ever been before. And when you get there and you realize that, it’s basically like Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon, except it’s in your backyard.

Caver Three

The first, on the way into the cave, took us an hour and 40 minutes to get through The Miseries. And, that first part of the cave is mainly crawling, the first part is hands and knees crawling, then later on there’s about a thousand feet of belly crawling.

Well, camp is on a rock that slopes about ten degrees and it’s quite bumpy. But, we leave sleeping bags out there and stoves so we don’t have to haul them back and forth and impact the cave and ourselves.

Todd Seuss, Superintendent, Jewel Cave National Monument

Uh, this cave is phenomenal. It’s continuing on. We don’t know where the end is. It’s great to be here managing this kind of resource. It’s very important to get underground, to do the exploration.

It’s not for the light-hearted. There’s a lot o crawls, there’s a lot o tight spaces where you scratch your back, you scratch your shins, ya, ya bump your, your elbows.

Visitors can come see this resource, they can walk through this resource and, and, they can experience not exactly how the explorers experience this cave, this amazing resource, but they can get a feel fer the size and the, the magic of Jewel Cave and then just drive down the road 45 minutes and go into Wind Cave and once again explore that cave and get another great experience with some of the world class caves that we have right here in the Black Hills. It’s incredible.

(Visual: cavers gearing up, cavers entering the cave, cavers in the cave, visitors on cave tour, calcite crystals, dogtooth spar, bat carcass, gypsum flower, cave camp).
(Audio: background chatter among cavers…).


Bonnie Armstrong, Interpretive Ranger (with three visitors)

Well, these are the jewels that Jewel Cave is known for, and named for, but they’re not really jewels like diamonds and emeralds are, because this is the mineral calcite, and calcite is actually a very soft mineral that doesn’t hold up well to…

What we’re looking at here is called dogtooth spar, and the reason that it’s called dogtooth spar is if you look close…

I always kind of tend to think of this cave as being kind of black and white…

(Visuals of cave formations, voices heard in background)

END