Dwight Kempf, 54, had rappelled the 586-foot-deep Fantastic Pit within the Pigeon Mountain Area and fell about 30 feet while walking on a horizontal passageway Sunday afternoon.
Ellisons Cave is in Walker County, about half way between Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tenn., and is the deepest in the East at 1,067 feet. The cave, which includes the Fantastic Pit at 586 feet followed by the Incredible Pit at 440 feet, is 12 miles long and traverses a mountain.
Kempf reportedly fell somewhere between those pits, first falling about 30 feet and landing on rocks and then bouncing and falling another 30-40 feet, according to a rescuer interviewed on ABC News.
When he finally landed, Kempf was about 800 feet below the surface, barely conscious and suffering from significant blood loss, a shattered femur, a skull fracture and possible broken ribs. He remained in a Chattanooga, Tenn., hospital Wednesday in critical but stable condition.
Chattanooga Hamilton County Rescue Service coordinated the rescue, which ended about 1:30 p.m Monday or nearly 24 hours after the fall.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press says that Kempf's wife, Jill Hilson Kempf, described her husband and his fellow cavers as very experienced and well prepared and that his falling was "a fluke."
Kempf's wife expressed her gratitude on the rescue service's Facebook page with the following post:
"Words cannot convey our gratitude!" she wrote. "From the caving companions on his team who were able to swallow their own fear and panic to a.) get safely and quickly out to secure help… (Troy); b.) provide initial first aid to control the bleeding and prevent further injury (Jon and Eddie) to the folks who organized and carried out an incredible feat of rescue in what has to be record time...you are all heroes — and that is not an exaggeration."
On the rescue service's Facebook page, Assistant Chief Buddy Lane said crews from Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee and cavers from Georgia "worked as one big machine to pull off one of the most complex rescues" in recent history.
He compared it to the 1991 Lechuguilla Cave rescue in Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Rescuers and cavers worked together for four days to reach an experienced spelunker whose leg had been crushed by an 80-pound boulder 1,000 feet below the surface. The rescue of Emily Davis Mobley was an historic event retold in national magazines and television shows and captured on video, segments of which still can be seen on YouTube.
The state of Georgia owns Ellisons Cave, but does not interfere with activities there other than require registration because it is within a natural wildlife management area of about 14,000 acres. Despite the minimal oversight and hands-off approach, major rescues have been rare over the last four to five decades. However, one rescuer in an interview with ABC World News said there has been a spike from one to two rescues a year at Ellisons Cave to about six this year.
Source: The Morning Call