The Caves Beyond: The Story of Floyd Collins' Crystal Cave Exploration

by Joe Lawrence, Roger W. Brucker

In February, 1954, under the direction of Joe Lawrence, Jr., the National Speleological Society sent the largest, most highly organized, and best-equipped expedition in the history of American cave exploration into Floyd Collins' Crystal Cave, Kentucky. The Caves Beyond is the official account of that expedition and a classic American caving story. There is no other caving book like it. First published in 1955 in an edition of 10,000 copies, the book was out of print soon afterwards. Good copies of the rare first edition are a sought after prize to book collectors. This quality reprint reproduces every word and picture of the original edition. Brucker's new introduction to the long-awaited reprint edition reveals a number of "untold stories" about the expedition, including stories of the politics behind the C-3 expedition and of how the book came to be written in an attic in Brooklyn in two weeks' time. There is also a detailed index, which the first edition lacked.

Genres: Nonfiction

290 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great companion book to The Longest Cave, but will probably only be enjoyed by the true caving die hards or people who are deeply interested in the history and exploration of caves/Mammoth Cave.

It is amazing to me that the entirety of this book is summarized in one short chapter in The Longest Cave. It just goes to show how much there can be in between the lines when history is paraphrased!

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, I think. I enjoyed this book, but it is such a specific genre I'm not certain who outside of cavers I'd recommend it to. It's a straight forward account of a big step in American caving--pushing past the "endurance barrier" and spending an entire week underground, exploring a cave system. It's told from two perspectives--that of the expedition leader, and of one of the regular cave explorers. The section from the explorer especially reads like a good adventure story, with a little bit of mystery thrown in. It also includes after trip reports from the trip doctor, communications leader (they ran 8 miles of telephone wire into the cave, in order to have immediate contact with the explorers underground), geologist, meteorologist, and biologist. It includes a "lessons learned" report, which goes to show how much we take for granted now, but how much they didn't even know they didn't know back then.

I enjoyed it. Definitely anyone interested in the history of American caving should check this one out.

[Chris Kakolewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic book about caving and the excitement of exploration. The accomplishments of this party of individuals for their time period is quite impressive. I've been to most of these areas of the cave so I am probably more emotionally and sentimentally connected to this book than most others that may read it. There are at times some melodramatic rants on the difficulty of getting from one place to another, but you have to keep in mind the era when the exploration took place. I'm sure the the author also wanted the book to be more appealing to the general public. I can't help an overwhelming urge to return to Crystal Cave to continue exploring the leads that have been left virgin. There is no way to truly describe what it feels like to enter into an area of the Earth that has not been touched by man. I highly recommend this book if you've ever been caving or are interested in the secrets of the Earth.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caving was SO my thing growing up! My favorite high school class trip was going down from WI to MO for a week of underground muddy tunnels. I blogged a bit about it over at Samhain yesterday as a lead in to Dust of Dreams release -- since the major setting was a cave.

So I really got into this book. I've never had the adventure of exploring NEW cave, but the NSS put together a MAJOR endeavor in 1954 to explore this natural wonder. The level of support was unprecedented, and they openly discuss both the things they did right as well as the things they did wrong. I appreciated the candor in evaluating the mistakes and laughed at some of the foibles and pranks.

This is both educational and entertaining.