When: May 26, 2013
So, in mid-April 2013, I met a girl. In about 8 days, I'll be marrying that girl and it can't come soon enough. But, every story has a beginning, and ours starts right around this trip.
Beth and I both love the outdoors. We absolutely crave it. And in the first weeks of us getting to know each other, we thought up about a dozen places for us to explore, Ape Caves being the most prominent within that conversation. So one rainy Saturday in May, we headed up into Washington and made our way to Mt. St. Helens National Monument. The cave itself is actually an old lava tube that runs from Mt. St. Helens. Dried up for ages, it winds for miles under the volcano's lava fields. Armed with headlamps and our curiosity, we entered the cave from the main entrance and scrambled through the dark passage for the next few hours.
Next time we go, I would love to visit on a day that wouldn't have as many tourists crawling through it as there were that Saturday. This was no Bone-Norman cave, though it was extremely interesting to perceive and entirely different collection of cave formations, due to the nature of the cooling lava. I'd definitely be interested in seeing what other caves the area has to offer, as this was a perfect launchpad for getting comfortable in an underground environment. And obviously...the date itself could labeled a complete success.
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| Looking up through the 'Skylight' |
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| The many textures of Ape Caves |
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| Beth, passing through one of the few flat portions of the cave |
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