A group from Queensbury went to explore the Clarksville Cave on Sunday afternoon, but on the way out, one of them got stuck in a hole.

“He went in a relatively peculiar way, kind of like on his belly, and slid in. We couldn’t take a chance on pulling him out the same way,” said Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple.

Rescue crews were trying to pull the 20-year-old Queensbury man forward and also up.

“He was starting to get very upset and nervous and starting to panic a little bit, so you had to kind of keep him calm and one of our sergeants, Tressa Young, did an outstanding job keeping him calm and cool,” said the sheriff. “When you’re stuck in a confined space like that — some people, I mean, I wouldn’t like it. Let alone for five hours.”

The man was stuck for about five hours.

“You need to know what you’re doing if you’re going in there. And you need to have the proper gear and you need to be able to expect the unexpected. Sometimes you could slip and fall. You could get trapped. Something could trap you in there,” said Sheriff Apple.

The rescue involved the sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team, Onesquethaw Fire, State Fire, Slingerlands Rescue, and Albany Medical Center doctors.

“At the end of the day, all the training paid off,” said Apple. “Thank the state for some of the grant funds they give us for technical rescue programs because we have some very technical and expensive equipment that allowed us to get him out there safely. He had some minor injuries, some scrapes and things like that. But overall he’s a very lucky individual.”