I can barely remember visiting Ruby Falls as a child, and after being asked by a visitor if a trip down the cave was worth their while, I was a little ashamed to admit that, despite a lifetime in Chattanooga, I could provide no honest advice. So I signed up for the lantern tour, a more intimate version of the typical tour that begins an hour after the official 8 p.m. closing time.
I’m now proud to say I can confidently recommend at least this particular experience at Ruby Falls, the nation’s tallest and deepest underground waterfall open to to public, located more than 1,000 feet below the surface of Lookout Mountain.
Without the artificial lighting that normally illuminates the cave’s unique formations along the less than half-mile route to the falls, the lantern tour feels a bit closer to the experience Leo Lambert must have had when exploring the cave for the first time, before it became the well-known tourist attraction visited by thousands each year. Though, I was grateful for the spacious corridor now carved through the cave, which allowed our group to reach the falls in 45 minutes, rather than the seven hours or so it took Lambert crawling through a tiny crevice in the rock.
There were about a dozen of us on the tour, and pairs shared a single lantern. Similar to flashlights that you slide open, the light that emanated from their midsection provided a soft illumination rather than a directed stream of light. Our guide, Sunny, had a real lantern, and the one child in our group was provided with a hard hat with a headlamp, which she was allowed to keep. I was a bit surprised there weren’t more kids on the tour, but the tour’s 9 p.m. start time was probably at least part of the reason for that, as it takes about an hour and a half to get to the falls and back, including plenty of time for photos and general ogling. Still, her look of awe and wonder – the kind only children really have – when seeing the falls for the first time was contagious.
To see the towering waterfall lit by a single lantern – which our guide hoisted all 145 feet up to the top by pulley – was a sight to behold. You also get to see the colorful light show seen by visitors on the usual tour and, truth be told, I probably would have been a little disappointed if we didn’t. Slowly changing color from blue to purple to pink, the lights illuminate the full length of the falls, the pool below and the surrounding rock with such a mesmerizing glow, you can’t help but stare for a minute before even thinking about taking out your phone for pictures. Along our route to and from the falls, our guide stopped at various points to share stories about the cave and its unique formations, only one of which you’re permitted to touch, and it’s evident in its smoothness that most of the visitors in the cave’s more than 80 years as a tourist attraction have done so. Sunny advised us not to lick it. She also told us not to drink the falls’ water, as it contains a large amount of magnesium – a natural laxative. Toward the end of the tour, we were told to switch off our lanterns and experience total darkness, which was eerie but very cool.