Do you know the name of that cave of that I spoke of in my post, where kids have drown? In I might have misremembered it as Spencer's cave.
It was in 1976-1978 time frame when those kids I spoke of died.
The cave may have been Salamander. Usually it’s a very non-challenging “beginner’s” cave. However, the entrance has a low ceiling and a stream that runs out of it. If there is a heavy rain and it floods, the stream will rise and block the entrance, although the main part of the cave will still be above the water. I vaguely recall the incident you’re talking about, which happened about one or two years before we started caving. The kids went into the cave, the stream flooded, and then they panicked and drowned trying to get out. People still talked about it when we were caving.
While we were at IU, we went to Eller’s Cave two or three times. Among other things, Eller’s featured a “straddle passage;” a narrow stream cut, where you could straddle the cut to get back to the Gypsum Room. There was a waterfall and a bunch of pink and rose colored gypsum crystals on the wall and ceiling. But doing the straddle it was about 25 feet up and 50 feet down. About a week before one of our visits, somebody slipped in the straddle passage and broke their back falling to the stream level below. They dynamited the entrance about a month later.
My friends marveled at how I could quickly wiggle through the tightest passages without any fear or hesitation. Part of it was I took up a lot less space back then. The other part is that when I was a kid, I used to crawl through the storm drains in the neighborhood. It was great when we were playing army or capture the flag. Caves didn’t bother me at all. LOL.