Camp's Gulf Cave

This cave is now part of a new addition to a state park. Lucky us. The photos on this page misrepresent Camps Gulf Cave. The cave is mostly huge piles of breakdown in gigantic rooms. One room is over 3 acres in volume and another is even larger. But the rooms are piled very high with colossal stacks of breakdown. It is very difficult to get around in this cave and navigation is also a problem. There are many very steep climbs and descents. There are actually not very many formations in comparison to the huge overall size of the cave.

Note: If you got here via Todd Raterman's Outdoors-411 site, then I welcome you to this website. Please click on the tiny link below to get full frames and indexes. Mr. Raterman has a profound and unbased dislike for me and my grotto, The Upper Cumberland Grotto and as such he combed through this rather large site looking for something "bad" he could use as an example of how horrible we are. Petty behavior from an obviously petty person. For the record--the formations being touched on this page are dry, heavily stained and polished, and in many cases obviously broken from hundreds of years of human touching and vandalism, including from native Americans. There are also trails through the formation areas pictured. This cave has been well known for a very long time and like all well known caves it suffers from heavy vandalism near the entrance. All of the formations in question are very near the entrance to the cave and have suffered from many years of abuse. I am sorry to ruin Mr. Raterman's hateful accusations of me and my caving associates, but it seems that his accusations are without basis. We did nothing wrong in this cave and this website features much useful information regarding cave conservation, cave flora and fauna, cave gating, and general cave ecology. I hope you enjoy your visit. Please click the tiny link below to get full frames and indexes.

The rather impressive main entrance into Camps Gulf Cave.

Breaktime atop the breakdown. That pile of rocks everyone is sitting on is a good example of what you spend your time climbing over in this cave.

That's me standing in the entrance room in Camps Gulf.

A really cool formation in the third room. That little silver spot in the top right of the photo is a helmet light that provides a sense of scale.

An interesting multi-colored flow.

A very impressive flowstone in the third room of Camps Gulf.

Greg King pointing out some interesting helectites. These are in the borehole passage. It requires a long, hard journey to get here.

Some formations in the borehole passage with the group in the distance.

Greg King in the entrance room of Camps Gulf Cave.

This is the breakdown climb up into the register room. It is real steep and a long way up. Notice Greg way up in the distance. The climb remains vertical with the wall against your back for about 30 feet or more, then you have to climb exposed with no wall to your back for about 20 feet more.

This is my stepfather Noble Stern in a side passage near the front of the cave.

Crawling amongst some formations in a side passage. Gray bats hibernate in this area in winter.

Go to Camp's Gulf Cave Photo Page Two.

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