Charles Stephen and Matthew Niemiller visited TLN22, located just north of I40 in Loudon County. The entrance to the cave is located at the bottom of a large, forested sink. The cave begins as a rocky downslope dropping some 15-20ft into a large chamber about 50 ft wide and 100 ft long. The floor of this room is covered with water and thick, muddy sediment, evidence that the reservoir backs up into the cave. In addition, it is apparent that the water sinks immediately instead the entrance where flood debris occurs. Several amphibians were encountered in this chamber, including Two-Lined Salamanders (Eurycea cirrigera), a Cave Salamander (Eurycea lucifuga), a Spring Salamander (Gyrinophilus porphyriticus), Northern Green Frogs (Lithobates clamitans melanota) and a Pickerel Frog (L. palustris). Green Sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus) and a few unidentified minnows (Notropis sp.) were observed in the large pool. Invertebrate life was also abundant and included at least three species of spiders, harvestmen, several species of flies, millipedes, springtails, beetles, and terrestrial isopods. Aquatic snails, stygophilic ispods and amphipods were found underneath rocks in the pool. The large pool can be tranversed to a climbup that leads to another room. Here a large colony of Gray Bats (Myotis grisescens) was encountered. It is also at this point that the dark zone is encountered. Here we found an abundance of Southeastern Cave Pseudoscorpions (Hesperochernes mirabilis), a target species for Charles who is studying this species as part of his dissertation. We decided to discontinue the bioinventory at this point, as not to disturb the bats. We plan on visiting the cave again this autumn or early winter when the bats have left.
In the afternoon, we headed south and met up with Evin Carter, a Ph.D. student at the University of Tennessee, to visit TLN11. A storm was developing as we located the small entrance in a wet-weather streambed and sink. At one point, a strong gust of wind caused a large, dead tree limb to fall, landing no more than 10 yards from where Charles was standing. A large amount of flood debris consisting of leaves, branches and small limbs was found at the entrance and required some digging to get into the cave. We were quickly met by a 10-ft climbdown then another 5-ft climbdown before reaching the bottom of the cave. The cave primarily was a narrow canyon that extended for some 150 ft of 3-5 ft in height; however, a couple of dome rooms were encountered. Too our knowledge, we may have been the first group (outside of lcoals) to visit the cave since the 1970s. However, there was some unusual, presumably Japanese graffiti on the walls of the cave in the lower level. Although cave life was not as abundant as TLN22, several significant finds were made, including cave spiders, springtails, flies, terrestrial isopods, terrestrial snails, a dipluran (Litocampa sp.) and a lone cave beetle (Pseudanophthalmus sp.). Cave Salamanders (E. lucifuga) and Northern Slimy Salamanders (Plethodon glutinosus) were also observed.
