...you are in the Swiss Cheese room...
"...the Swiss Cheese Room... in the cave is nothing more than the beginning of the Bedquilt Route, and that passes through dolomitic limestones; because of the action of water, dolomites in caves dissolve to become full of lots of little holes, like a sponge or swiss cheese." — Mel Park
Bev Schwartz writes: "Y2 is a survey point. When a survey is done, a letter is chosen to denote the survey. Then at each point along the survey route, a number is incremented to identify the point. Thus, Y2 is the 2nd point on the Y survey in Bedquilt cave."
So is there an actual rock marked "Y2?" Yes, there is. She continues: "There's a dot (the point itself) with a Y2 next to it. It is marked with a carbide lamp which leaves a sooty deposit. The Y2 survey point is a good one because it is on a rock in the middle of the room, making it easy for the compass person to take the measurement. The person on compass often has to put his/her body in wild contortions to measure from some survey points because there just isn't a convenient place to put the point. Throughout the Flint/Mammoth system, you will see these sooty survey points."
The connection between 'Adventure' and
The real 'Colossal Cave'
The "Colossal Cave" mentioned by the game Adventure is a reference to an actual cave within the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky. However, the game is not actually based on that cave, but is instead a remarkably faithful
| Note: Although, as evidenced by the "Spelunker Today" magazines in the game, the word "spelunker" was once commonly used to denote cave explorers, it has fallen out of favor. The preferred term is now "caver," and that is the word used here. |
A connecting passage from Bedquilt Cave to Colossal Cave was discovered in 1896. Both Bedquilt and Colossal Caves also have passages connecting to Mammoth Cave.
The game is filled with caver jargon and references to actual cave features, as Graham Nelson explains in his article The Craft of Adventure:
"Like the real cave, the simulation was a map on about four levels of depth, rich in geology. A good example is the orange column which descends to the Orange River Rock room (where the bird lives): and the real column is indeed orange (of travertine, a beautiful mineral found in wet limestone).
"The game's language is loaded with references to caving, to 'domes' and 'crawls.' A 'slab room,' for instance, is a very old cave whose roof has begun to break away into sharp flakes which litter the floor in a crazy heap."
According to caver Mel Park:
"In our small circle, Willie Crowther is a famous, as was his wife then, cave explorer of the 60's and 70's when Colossal, Bedquilt, Salts, Crystal and the other caves under Flint Ridge, Kentucky were mapped together to become the longest cave in the world.
"In 1972 the Flint Ridge caves were joined to Mammoth Cave, over on the next ridge, in a series of difficult trips in low, half-water- filled passages
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Willie Crowther's wife Pat was a key member of the small party of cavers that found the historic
connection between the Mammoth and Flint Ridge caves.
It had long been speculated that the cave systems were connected, but nobody had yet found the crucial connecting passage, a very narrow tunnel that was later given the nickname "the tight squeeze." Pat, being the thinnest member of the party, went through first. "Oh! It's very tight," she called, then saw the passage opening up into a much larger space. She happily added, "...but we have cave!" This passageway may be commemorated in the Colossal Cave adventure as the narrow passage named "Tight Spot" that leads to the Plover Room. The game requires you to drop all carried objects (even the lamp!) before it will allow you through. |
"The total known length of the Mammoth Cave System exceeds 350 miles and exploration is still going on."
Will Crowther's wife Patricia was a key member of the team that found this historic connection. A well-written and very engaging book that describes the cave explorations up to and during this period is "The Longest Cave," by Roger Brucker and Richard Watson. The book has numerous references to both Will and Patricia Crowther, as well as a fascinating history of caving in the Flint Ridge region.
Mel Park continues by saying:
"Bedquilt was Willie's favorite part of the cave system. I still have a copy of his map of it. Computer types who grew up exploring ADVENTURE don't realize how accurately the game represents passages in Bedquilt Cave.
"Yes, there is a Hall of the Mountain King and a Two-Pit Room. The entrance is indeed a strong steel grate at the bottom of a twenty-foot depression.
Mel describes how caver Bev Schwartz got her start:
"On a survey trip to Bedquilt, a member of my party mentioned she would one day like to go on a trip to Colossal Cave, where she understood the game ADVENTURE was set.
"No, I said, the game is based on Bedquilt Cave and we are going there now. Excitement!
"Throughout the cave, she kept up a constant narrative, based on her encyclopedic knowledge of the game. In the Complex Room (renamed Swiss Cheese Room in Advent) she scrambled off in a direction I had never been.
"'I just had to see Witt's End,' she said upon returning. "It was exactly as I expected."
"When we finished with our work, I let her lead out, which she did flawlessly, again because she had memorized every move in the game. Believe me, the cave is a real maze, and this was an impressive accomplishment for a first-time visitor.
"...I felt that her knowledge of the cave was so good that in February, I had her be a guide for two survey parties that had work to do in upper and lower Bedquilt, respectively.
"Rather odd directions: 'Bev, you've got to get the lower Bedquilt party to J-73. That's the Complex Junction, you know, just after the Dusty Room, as your are entering the Bedquilt Route, before the Two Pit Room. You know that north from there is the climb down to get water for the plant. That's really the KA chimney to the E-survey, which is where they are going.'"