Adventures Below the Ground

Well, it is good to see the light of day again. About two weeks ago me, Derek Shiels, and an older guy who funded the expedition exited the highest caves in North America after 17 hours. This is also considered the most dangerous cave in Colorado, and we heard many legends about it. I have writted an article about our time in the cave that I have submitted to Adventure Magazine in hopes of being published. I know it's long, but it will be worth your time.

To the dreamers and planners go the spoils

As I sat in the pitch dark in the bottom of the cave all I could hear was the steady drip of water from the stalactites and the sound of my own breathing. There I was alone in the cold more than three hundred feet into the ground in what experts have called "the most dangerous cave in Colorado." With the trust that my two fellow cavers were safely off rope above me I began to ascend. "Hand over hand", I thought, "keep it slow and steady." The feeling of complete dependence on your ropes, your hardware, and your team members is enslaving at times and freeing at others. I think the freeing part happened on the way down and now it was time for the enslaving part. I started to ascend by edging my body up the walls and over one long crack that I had nearly slid into on the rapel down. While we believed we had reached the end of Spanish Cave we were never confident that we had reached the bottom. "Could there be more pits leading even deeper? Could this cave hold the Spanish treasures that the legends spoke of?" One begins to ask such questions when bidding goodbye to the end of the cave we had dreamed of exploring for over a year. The careful expedition planning was the only reason we we three hundred feet into the ground with more than a death wish. "Off rope!", I yelled as I got to a flatter resting spot. Carrying up the rear of the expedition was tougher than I had imagined. Draping a coil of rope over each shoulder while trying to keep the ropes taught would prove the be a challenge all the way up, but this was not the time to let my burning muscles stop me or complain about the cold ,wet air filling my lungs. The next two hundred vertical feet would prove to be even tougher. The two others had gone first and ascended into a small hole in the roof of the room. The walls of the room split thirty feet between them and the roof stopped abruptply at about seventy feet with a waterfall making its way down from the top. "This is wild!", I thought. "The expedition, the bowels of the cave, and now the thought of returning to life above the ground." As I was waiting for the first two to ascend I began to feel the cold breeze of the cave and the reality that I needed sleep....badly. While most caves are full of dead air Spanish Cave inhales and exhales due to the atmospheric pressure at such high altitudes. Without my watch I would have never known that we had been in the cave for thirteen hours now, despite still being over two hundred vertical feet from the top. So finally I began my hardest ascent, no walls to touch and no one to hold the ropes taught, just myself, the ropes, and my acenders. Finally, I left the Aladdin's Cave of Wonders (minus the piles of treasure) and pulled myself into the small crack in the roof where I would take my next rest. After more than an hour of dozing off and wiggling my toes to keep them warm it was my turn to slide through the corkscrew. It would take a few twists and tight squeezes for about sixty vertical feet, but I knew that one step at a time would get me there. Minutes later I was standing on the ice shelf at the top of the corkscrew breathing hard, and excited to ascend the icy section above. It was there that I began to get ancy for the light at the end of the tunnel. We had been in the cave about sixteen hours now, and my focus shifted from exploration to survival. "One step at a time, steady feet on the ice", I kept telling myself. The ice on the vetical shelf was the hardest ice I have ever felt. My ascenders had become my best friend on the ice, and I had finally gotten into the rhythm of using them. While the other team members had taken a break to catch their breath and sort the rope I was ready to shoot for the top. The ice shelf lent its way to the steep rock face on which we had first rapelled into the black hole where we now stood. I reached the initial ledge and pushed myself out of the pit. Crawling toward the light at the end of the tunnel seemed surreal, not to mention blinding. Exiting the cave was the greatest victory I had felt all day. Seventeen hours inside the bowels of a seam in the side of mountain suddenly makes sunlight the greatest of God's inventions. The joy of knowing we had conquered the cave was made complete as I laid down to rest my exhausted body and dream of the next expedition. For me and my fellow explorers we had dreamed big, planned well, and conquered safely. "Well, that's my lesson", I guess, "to the dreamers and planners go the spoils."