By Tyler Jett
Times Free Press
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — From the Fantastic Pit entrance, at the mouth of Ellison’s Cave on Pigeon Mountain, the voice on the other line stayed calm.
Six hundred feet below, Troy Fuqua said, a man had fallen. He was injured. He needed help. “We can’t reach him,” Fuqua told a Walker County dispatcher Sunday evening.
Fuqua, of Madison, Ala., and another man tried to lead six experienced cavers through Ellison’s. The group came from Pennsylvania, and some of them had explored the cave before. They split into two teams. Four of them would enter near the Fantastic Pit, rappel down the 586-foot drop, travel to the other side of the cave and climb the 440-foot Incredible Pit.
Full story: Rescued: 600 feet below ground, critically injured Dwight Kempf waited for salvation