Mammoth Cave Field Trip

In the spring of 1997 a group of NIU hydrogeology students took a field trip to Mammoth Cave National Park. This trip featured a special daylong tour of the park and surrounding area, with a special cave tour in the evening. Both tours were conducted by the staff hydrogeologist at Mammoth Cave, Joe Meimmen.

The surface tour began with a trip out to a lookout point above the sinkhole plain which is located just outside of the park.

This is a large area that is littered with countless sinkholes, many water filled, and unfortunately many are garbage filled as well.

The sinkhole plain is also home to a number of disappearing streams. The one shown in this picture is called Little Disappearing Stream and the drain shown had formed only weeks earlier after a large flood.

We also looked at the outflow parts of the system, such as this spring.

The cave portion of the tour was unlike any of the regular tours offered at Mammoth Cave. One of the highlights of the tour was going off the regular path for a look at a vertical shaft.

Though Mammoth Cave is not known for its formations, we did see an abundance of gypsum flowers ...

... and of course after going down into the cave we had to come back up, which meant lots and lots of stairs.