upper ape cave

date hiked: june 27, 2006
distance (planned): 2.7 miles
distance (actual): 3.1 miles
highest evelation: 2400 feet
elevation gain: 400 feet
time: 3.5 hours

oh my gosh…remember i (annie) told you that kelli was trying to kill me? yeah well…true. just because she has a halo….

ape caves. what do you say? i (annie) realized i’d never been in a cave before, except while scuba diving. it is really dark in there. really dark. really, really dark. good thing we rented that lantern. oh…and for the record (and a particular co-worker will use this opportunity to say, “i told you so.”) a 3 inch mini-maglite does not work in a cave.

ape cave is actually a lava tube. geologically speaking, it is all quite fascinating. hiking it is another story…not so fascinating. did we tell you it is dark? and there are almost 30 piles of previously caved in boulder piles to climb over…IN THE DARK! yes, we are perseverating.

funny thing about us chicks…we don’t like to have to turn around. so when we are on our stomachs, crawling through a tube, with sometimes an inch to spare…we never stop to think, “maybe we went the wrong way?” interestingly, unlike previous explorations into the unknown, this time we had tyler (annie’s son) along. we decided the picture explains it all.

he’s quite the comedian. anyway…after he insisted he’d require therapy for the rest of his life if we continued, we turned around. lo and behold, we found another path. after that, we finished the hike. by the end, we were soaking wet and cold (the cave is a constant 42F degrees). the return hike is above ground through an ancient eruption area/lava flow (from mt. st. helens). we changed into dry clothes and went to eat at red robin’s. here’s a pic of mt. st. helen’s from the return trail. we should also mention that a few days later, tyler conveniently ’stubbed’ his toe so he didn’t have to go with us again. jeesh…he’ll probably need therapy after all.

This entry was posted on July 3, 2006 at 3:52 pm and is filed under hikes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.