After years of building anticipation, the cave underneath the school with lurking slugs and beautiful stalagmites, is finally available for students to explore through a club created this school year.

Jill Harding, the head of the science department has passed along the responsibility to two teachers, Cara Willig and Masie Comen.

“She came to both of us this year since we’re both new teachers, young, enthusiastic, not scared of caves, and she was like are y’all interested in doing a cave club and we were like yeah,” Willig said.

The Bowie cave club started with a goal to educate people.

“Our goal for the first year of the cave club is to create a mission statement and idea of what we’re doing,” Willig said. “For education, for preservation, for just educating people that caves are cool and you should go in them and you should be safe when you do.”

In order for a student to go down into the cave it requires certain procedures to be followed.

“You have to submit an application for the club, the application involves us knowing your information and a signature from a teacher ensuring that you won’t go into the cave a destroy it with a baseball bat,” Willig said. “A parent signed form and a training lesson are also required.”

The process of trying to get students into the cave has been very slow.

“The cave was discovered during the construction of the school back in the late 1980’s,” Harding said. “Teachers along with many parents and students began the process of digging the dirt back out of the cave but it eventually came to a halt.”

With the help of the city, volunteers, and different organizations the cave was able to finish what it started allowing students this year access to the cave.

“The City of Austin’s Watershed Protection Division helped us to open up the cave further to use for education,” Harding said. “The city provided us help from professionals to finish digging out the cave and install safety features.”

Safety is an important part of going into the cave.

“Now that the cave is safe staff and faculty are now more comfortable taking down kids,” Comen said.

Student expressed amazement when they entered the cave for the first time.

“I was excited because the whole group was just so pumped to enter the cave,” junior Celeste Alvarado said.

Many of the members found out about the club from friends.

“I found out about the cave from friends that have Ms. Willig,” junior Gabriela Minjares said. “I thought it would be a great opportunity.”

Willig’s students had expressed their enthusiasm of wanting to join the club from the very beginning.

“I wanted to join because ever since I was a little kid I have collected rocks and crystals,” junior Yelenna James said. “I’ve always been interested in the formation of rocks.”

PHOTOS BY ASHLEY RAMIREZ