But if you've been to Carlsbad Caverns, Mammoth is a bit of a letdown, not being 'decorated' like Carlsbad is, with stalactites and stalagmites.
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| George heads down into it. |
We enjoyed a short hike down from the cave entrance to the Green River.
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| Big hollow tree |
The caves are the result of surface water leaching down through and dissolving limestone, exiting into the Green River below the ridges.
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| Waterfall at the entrance, still slowly dissolving limestone. |
We listened to one of the guides describing how a group of cave researchers discovered a link between the Mammoth Cave system, and the adjoining Flint Ridge Cave system, in 1972. One member of that team was an MIT graduate student, Gary Ellers, who we met as Harry's neighbor in Atlanta in 1973, where we was doing post-doctoral work at Georgia Tech. He had described to us working their way through dark corridors almost filled with water, to find the link between the cave systems. Fun!
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