High Adventure Deep, Deep Down

“I wonder what my mom would say if she could see me now,” mused the guy beside me as we braced

ourselves against the cold cave wall, “I don’t often tell my parents what I’m doing.”

“Mine are pretty used to me by now,” I said, ensuring my boots had their firmest possible hold on the muddy wall opposite, “Though I like to keep them posted so they’ll know how to pray.”

A glance at the void where the floor dropped off beside me, sloping down as an angled crevice which ended in darkness some fifteen feet below, suggested I could use those prayers about now. Shoulders pushed against the stone behind me, boots against the wall three feet away, I began easing my way sideways over the void.

How in the world did I end up here, anyway?

Let me tell you the story.

It all started on a snowy logging road.

Actually, it started last September, when I joined the campus caving club. Not until today, however, did I get a chance to go underground, to a series of caves near Gordon River. Getting there made for an adventure in itself, as civilization’s grass-flanked highways gave way to potholed backroads carved alongside suddenly winterized foothills. Every jolt, mud splash and low-hanging tree branch heightened my respect for the sturdy four-by-fours we commanded, but even they couldn’t navigate the fallen tree which eventually barricaded our path. The caves were close enough, however, for us to don helmets, headlamps and coveralls and venture through the slush on foot.

I had assumed the caves would be straightforward to find, but a wrong turn, some backtracking, and a slippery descent into a forest ravine proved me wrong. Yet at the base of that ravine, there it was: a gaping atrium of stone, fringed with erosion-misplaced trees, funneled into the hillside towards a vanishing point where only blackness awaited. 

Seeing the comparatively dwarfish caver ahead slip into the dramatic entryway of this, Wolf Creek Cave, I quickly followed. The sound of water invited me deeper into the cavern where I paused, headlamp beam piercing through the mist to reflect off the ceiling’s moist contours. Behind me a stark porthole of snowy woods floated in the blackness, marking the entrance; beyond, a small waterfall caught someone’s headlamp beam; above, cold water from somewhere dripped down onto my coveralls’ shoulder. Before I could recover from this wonder-striking surrealism, the team convened and started forward into a narrow tunnel where the waterfall led. Up and down we crawled on hands and knees, contorting ourselves through unpredictable tunnels akin to those in an indoor playground—only muddier, with sharper edges and an earthier smell.

“Are you ready for a squeeze?” called the girl leading ahead of me.

Uh oh.

I once liked the idea of squirming through small passageways. But that was before getting stuck in a snow tunnel as a kid—a feeling I’d never quite forgotten. However, I learned that if you want to go onward, you have to play by the cave’s rules: if its ceiling drops, so do you. Then, stomach hugging the wet gravel, you propel yourself forward on your elbows, your field of vision limited to damp rock, your own wet gloves, and the boot soles of the caver ahead.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, though we didn’t squeeze tight enough to potentially become stuck. Still, I resorted to some self-coaching.

“It’s actually quite peaceful here,” I said aloud, half-believing myself.

“We can go back anytime,” I soon heard a voice from beyond the boots ahead say, “it only gets narrower, and then you have to turn around.” So we did.

The next cave, Mudslick, featured a slightly broader tunnel—hands and knees crawling. We reached a flooded area before long—a sump, it’s called—and had to leave to our final cave, Hourglass.

This was the really fun one.

It began with a much smaller entryway than Wolf Creeks’—a mouth so narrow you can only enter one at a time, and that with some squeezing. Beyond this narrow entrance there descended a long, steep passageway, looking for all the world like the esophagus of some stony giant. A climbing rope anchored near the entrance offered a lifeline into this abyss. When my turn arrived, I stood with my back to this lifeline, wrapped it around both wrists on either side, and descended into the giant’s throat.

A couple of vertical drops along this descent, a solid 10 feet each, made me especially grateful to lean on the rope while navigating downwards, feet and back against the esophagus walls. When we’d all arrived at the base we pressed forward in a form of movement I’d never quite experienced before. To see what it involved, first imagine a long, dark corridor the approximate height and width of a coffin. Now, rotate the whole coffin 45 degrees to the left. That’s what the cave was like. In a couple of places, the floor dropped out and sloped down to somewhere we didn’t care to slide—that’s where we had to put our backs and feet against opposite walls and scootch sideways. Eventually, the floor disappeared altogether, making the corridor a huge, sloped slab—like a giant slide with a two-foot-high ceiling. Bracing an arm or leg against this ceiling to control our descent, we thus slid down to the floor, where we followed the slab—water now streaming down it—to a spot where another, more difficult slide began. Because of the water we didn’t go down, and turned to head home.

“How do we get back up this slide?” someone asked.

“On your back. Or side. Or front. With a leg or arm or two against the ceiling. Or the other way around. Whatever gives you friction.”

Back to the cold stone—nope, side; side to the stone works better—I pushed a knee against the ceiling and worked my way up, silently laughing at my own efforts. Somehow, we all managed to reach the top, scuttle back through the slanted coffin corridor, and maneuver  up the esophagus alive and smiling—though as cold, wet and muddy as ever in the snow-turned-rain. We couldn’t turn the trucks around, but had to reverse back up the logging road to a parking area and turn around, bound for clean clothes, warm food and hot showers. These seemed especially welcoming as I finally plodded towards the last bus stop home and noticed the looks I received, a suspicious looking hooded figure dressed in wet clothes and gumboots, carrying a conspicuous plastic bag of wet caving overalls at my back.

I just smiled.

I wonder what my mom would say if she could see me now...