LOCALadk Magazine

Spring 2016 LOCALadk Magazine 9 LOCALadk Top: Caving often requires navigating narrow crevices, some- times the only way through is by crawling on hands and knees. Above left: The unassuming entrance to Kunjamuk Cave Above Right: At times, caving requires some technical rope work. Soon thereafter a tricky fifteen-foot rappel over an uneven cliff is required to access the cave's main room, Eagle Hall. Be- sides being the hub from which numerous exits branch off like spokes on a tire, Eagle Hall is a favorite hibernating den of numerous species of bats during winter months. To prevent waking the bats, the cave is off-limits to visitors from October to April. Additionally caving ethics mandate that cavers wash all clothes and shoes following each cave visit to prevent the spread of the fatal white-nose-syndrome among bat populations. A labyrinth of mazelike corridors, squeezes and tunnels await the serious explorer of Eagle Cave connecting natural- ly-formed rooms of metamorphosed igneous rock. Cave car- tographers have romanticized each room with names like the Bat Room, Flat Rock Room, and naturally the lowest room, the Ice Room, where year-round ice formations are fabled to exist. Cave walls in and around Eagle Hall show impressive brown and white flowstone (calcite deposits) formed by water run- off. Also discernible when illuminated by headlamps are acti- nomycetes: bacteria colonies that glimmer like unmined silver from the ceiling. In comparison, the massive metamorphic rock walls and ceiling of Eagle Cave may appear drab and ordinary; not so. The thick rock walls are among Eagle Cave's highlights. The bedrock forming this cave and others in the southeast Adirondacks are believed by geologists to be a part of the Grenville Orog- eny, dating in age from 1.3 to 1.5 billion years. By definition Grenville means the rock that we scramble over and below is believed to have been a part of the "supercontinent" theory before plates shifted to form the seven continents we know today. It is amazing to fathom that these rocks are believed to have originated as marine limestone in the Atlantic Ocean, and deposited here only after continental shifts. The cave walls are older than even the Adirondack Mountains above. The heat and pressure that formed the Adirondack range a half-billion years later turned the limestone into met- amorphic marble. It is theorized that the passage, crevices, and the nearly 40 small caves that surround Eagle Cave are the result of a geological catastrophe. Eagle Cave is reached after a one-mile hike up Chimney Moun- tain, an impressive, stratified, upthrusted rock bulge whose origin is also geologically speculated. The Chimney stands like a sentinel over the equally as intriguing geological formations beneath the surface. Whether Eagle, Kunjamuk, Natural Stone Bridges and Caves or any of the other countless caves that populate the Park's interior, Adirondack caves are rich with history, challenge, and wonder. For a few hours at a time they can transport us to earlier times. Whether young or old, the rocks of these caves will make any of us feel young – as they should.

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