Notice!

October 30, 2007: I just found out that this entrance and surrounding property (private property), is now off limits to the general public. It has been "posted." Only certain qualified people, at the owner's discretion, will be allowed in. This may change.

Location: Withdrawn.

This is one of the openings down in the "Great Rock Sink", also known as Crystal Cave. There is a map of "Crystal Cave" on the internet somewhere, that was made in 1954. I have a copy of it on my computer. I can't remember where on the internet it came from, and I couldn't find it again, yet.

I don't know how the name Crystal Cave came about, but it might have been named that because of icicles inside.

The opening shown above is at the northwest (approx) end of the sink. This place is another way to get into the Sloans Valley Cave system. I haven't been far in this way, but according to the map of SVC system, this connects. It is one of many entrances.

Here is another picture of the same place, the northwest end of the big sink. That time, it was flooded because Lake Cumberland was higher. Before the lake was lowered for repair of the dam, the depth changed somewhat now and then, and that caused the water level in the cave system to change. Sometimes it would be up a little, and some tunnel floors would be flooded.

This is a view from inside the northwest opening.

My caving partner at the time (1996) and I went down from the northwest opening and not far along, found a side opening on the right. It led to this big room. My caving partner David is standing a little left of center in this photo.

This is part of a formation I found on the ceiling in that room. There are some long rows of this.

This is a sizeable room back from the southeast opening. It would be under the old road. The opening can be seen a little above center; just a light patch. This room slopes down to a pool, that went wall to wall at the time.

This is the pool of water down there. Didn't get a good exposure. The pool is probably all gone now, with the lake down.

Below is a composit picture showing part of this pool, and the end of another tunnel that opens into this room. If you go in the northwest entrance and loop back around to the left, you can come through this tunnel to this pool room. That's how we got around the pool.

This one shows the southeast opening, and a big gap with a little formation hanging up there.

This is some of the ice we found in the cave, not far from the northwest entrance. We went in that way a couple of times and turned left and went back toward the southern end of the sink. We found numerous icicles and some columns. This was the best.

We didn't go far into the cave from this sink. We went in the northwest opening and followed the main tunnel down somewhat, past that big room on the right, to where the tunnel leveled off and got smaller. We followed it back a ways, but didn't go far. I made several pictures, but nothing very good. We intended to go back and explore further, but never did.

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