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| Caving | 1.00 Miles |
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| | Caving | 1.00 Miles | 4 Hrs 30 Mns | | 0.22 mph |
| | 5 LBS Pack | | |
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| partners | | We had a special invite to go caving this weekend (the day after the Superstitions Ridgeline hike). We had gone on commercial tours of caves in the area as well as a cenote in Mexico but this was our first "real" caving trip.
The Cave of the Bells in the Santa Ritas. We took Gardener Canyon road for a bit - it's been graded. But eventually, we ended up parking our Outback along the side of the road and piling into Gary's vehicle. We probably would have bottomed out reaching the trailhead.
We had a variety of items that we took on our trip - a lot less than I am used to carrying. The most important were the helmets and headlamps. We all carried three sources of light and spare batteries. We each also had one liter of water, lunch, and a pee bottle.
The entrance to the cave was just a short walk from the TH. We had to scramble down to the gate. The gate is locked, but Gary had gotten a permit and a key from the forest service. Most of the journey, Gary gave us excellent information on caving, formations, and navigation. It was nice to have such an informative person to take us under his wing.
We encountered many different obstacles. We had a section of nice smooth rock to slide on our bellies. We had some that had cave formations that bit into our knees. We squeezed through many tunnels and cracks. Some of which you also have the squeeze and climb at the same time. It was great!
After lunch we had the option to work our way back to the top or keep going. We decided to keep going! We were loving it.
Then we hit one section which I think was the hardest part of the journey. So, hard I never once thought of taking a picture because I was spending all my time either trying to get through it or recovering. Gary prefaced it by telling Joel that we were to encounter a formation called something like a castration formation. I now refer to it as the castration wall, in which I nearly didn't make it up and over into the next room. I managed to chimney my way over to the wall, but I didn't have the strength or the proper foothold to pull myself up and over the castration wall into the next room. At one point, I remembered telling Gary not to pull my right arm else I might lose a boob! I'm a breast cancer survivor and I had reconstruction in which they stretched out my pectoral muscle away from the chest wall over several weeks and then inserted a silicone implant. My plastic surgeon had warned me that someone had blew out that muscle doing pushups and so I've been favoring it the last couple of years. No more favoring it! I did manage to finally get myself over that wall - where else was I supposed to go?
After that event, I sat and waited for the others to get over the wall. Then Gary told us we had to go through a crack in the wall! Um OK! We climbed up the outside of the crack and then inserted ourselves into a narrow passage way in which was only as wide as my hips - but not the wide width. After that we had to quickly turn into another passage and then immediately go up in kind of a twist to get up and over this one chuck of rock and then down into an area that opened up. I fell a couple of times but only a few inches and I got back up and tried again.
After that section, everything seemed a bit easier mentally. However, I was starting to feel muscle fatigue. A few spots that should have been relatively easy was hard for me. But I managed!
Overall, caving is a huge challenge. More so that many of the hikes I've done. You learn to focus and concentrate only on the task at hand. Even after looking at all my bruises, I'm ready for my next adventure! |
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