Ennis Cave Trip - 2025
Introduction
Join me on a scorching summer morning as we drove into Saint James, Arkansas to explore Ennis Cave.
With the humitdy and heat aboveground, the cool 60 degree cave offered relief and adventure.
This guide covers what we saw, the gear we used, and local insider tips for your own Ennis Cave trip.
Background: My Outdoors Journey in Arkansas
Moving down to Arkansas was one of the best opportunities for personal growth I have experienced. I would 100% reccomend others to make a big move in their life to have a better chance to explore the country, and themselves. When I moved down to Arkansas, I got into mountain biking pretty heavily, as the internet told me that Bentonville, Arkansas was the mountain bike capital of the world. I did have a blast mountain biking in the state here, and signing up for some difficult mountain bike races, like the Ouachita Challenge, lead me to getting into Gravel Biking. Originally, this was just for training for mountain biking, but lately, I've been gravel biking more than mountain biking. Through Gravel Biking I met one of my friends, Bobby Finster, and his events and routes got me further into gravel biking. Concurrently, my wife and I started climbing indoors at Vertical Horizons Climbing Gym in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Once my wife had to choose a clinical location for the last 2 years of her medical education, we decided to move to Searcy, Arkansas. This provided us the opportunity to be near a lot of the gravel cycling in the Batesville, Arkansas area of the state, which are the "foothills" of the Ozarks. It also put us near some stellar rock climbing outdoors at Jamestown Crag, near Batesville, Arkansas. We started climbing outdoors around the beginning of the summer of 2024, and through that, we met Aaron Christopher, one of the Nomads, who owns Jamestown Crag. He was, and currently works at Poke Bayou Outfitters, an excellent outdoor outfitter in Batesville, Arkansas owned by Tyler Griffin and his wife. Aaron told us that during the summer, they tend to go undergound, and go caving. Logically, this made a lot of sense, as Arkansas summers are hot, humid, and buggy. Where caves, are not. Since then, we've became close friends with Aaron, and have had Aaron guide us through multiple caves in the area. First, he brought us through Blowing Cave, in Cushman, Arkansas. Most recently, while our friend Levi was visiting us in Arkansas, we went through Ennis Cave, in Saint James, Arkansas.
Ennis Cave: Trip Overview
It was a gorgeous Arkansas summer morning, driving through gravel roads, past mountain hills, and finally into Saint James, Arkansas. We met Aaron, and the other cavers in Saint James, and then proceeded to the property that Ennis Cave is on. We were greeted by a wooden sign, engraved with "Welcome to Ennis". We then briefly saw the current caretaker of Ennis Cave, Tim McClain. He was by far the buffest old man I've ever seen, and I hope I'm half as active as he his by the time I'm old. He takes care of the Ennis Cave property, and continues to escavate further into the cave to potentially uncover new sections of cave.
Driving through the Ennis Cave property, we saw the caretakers home, a complaint's department (outhouse), and multiple structures around for camping cavers. Once we parked, we geared up to go caving. I don't have a lot of caving gear yet, and this was a horizontal cave, so there wasn't much to speak of to bring. Listed below though, is what I did bring.
- Petzl Boreo Climbing Helmet
- I love this helmet for both climbing and caving, I will need to upgrade or replace it in the future though.
- Fenix HM65R Headlamp
- A great headlamp with 2 light sources. I was told that I was blinding folks though, so maybe use at a dimmer light setting in the future.
- Itasca Tall Neoprene Rubber Boots
- 60$ Wellies from Tractor Supply. They did a really good job. Were a pain to get off once they were full of water.
- GoPro Hero13 Black
- Battery lasted the entire trip, although I did sparingly use it for cool stuff once the battery was getting low, and didn't use it at all on the way out. Maybe in the future I'll bring multiple batteries.
After gearing up we climbed down a few stone stairs, more of Tim's handiwork, into the entrance area of the cave.
The entrance of Ennis Cave used to be a sinkhole, but that became troublesome, and dangerous to cavers. According to the Ennis Cave website;
Between May 1997 and May 1998, the bottom of the cave entrance was enlarged to walking height and on the 12th Annual Memorial Day Weekend, a team of 20 cavers dropped the original 30 foot culvert pipe to the bottom of the cave entrance and a new 15 foot culvert pipe was added to the top. Diggers spider gate was transferred to the top of the new pipe. Then using drills and steel braces, the team drilled into the cave walls around the pipe and made a network of steel re-inforcement. Then approximately 3.5 cubic yards of concrete was pumped into the platform built around the pipe encasing the steel. The entrance was now finally complete. The new 45 foot culvert pipe allowed safe entrance into the cave including walking room starting at the end of the pipe.
After climbing down the 45 foot culvert, we were finally in Ennis Cave. We proceeded from the entrance, to an "Attic" space in Ennis Cave, labeled "B-Dry Room. To get up into the B-Dry Room, we had to climb a "sketchy" ladder. The first of four "sketchy" ladders we'd climb throughout the day. Definitely not "OSHA Certified". Once in the attic room, we were greeted by 5 gallon pails of diesel, kerosense, and massive Calcite formations.
From there we got to see a pretty sweet Geode.
I can't make much more sense of the maps on the Ennis Cave Website, to piece together exactly where we went throughout the cave, but if you're in Arkansas, Ennis Cave is 100% worth the stop, and if you need a caving guide, or a climbing guide, I could 100% reccomend Aaron Christopher as your guy and guide. He's the best!
Photo Dump
