After months of planning, and despite last minute drama, I managed to break away for a week and enjoy Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons for a week with some college friends. It would doubly nice as it turned out to be far cheaper than I had planned on. Go case of ramen and tent camping!
The temperatures were just right, and I think we managed to get in just before the big summer rush. Nevertheless, there were a number of people there.
I think we managed to see almost every animal the park hosts, from midnight wolves crossing the road, to elk, deer, moose, bison, and black and grizzly bears. I managed to get a few photos of critters, but I think this one is my favorite:
It’s good to be back home, but I wouldn’t mind just going back to Wyoming for a few more weeks!
You can find more pictures, both from my camera and my friend’s cameras (as they upload them), here.
So, I’ve been busy, and meaning to update, but I just haven’t had the time. As such, I thought it was high time to post a wrap up of randomness from the last, oh… month or so. So, prepare yourself for a Mel-like post of epic proportions.
Near the end of April, the UTA (Utah Transit Authority) opened their new light rail system called the Front Runner, a nod towards the fact that it runs parallel to the Wasatch Front, and, I’m guessing, also prompted by the ‘Rail Runner’ down in NM that opened more than a year in advance. I had been watching test trains run up and down the rails on the side of the interstate during my commutes, and my interest was growing about the whole thing. I discovered that they were having ‘free’ rides on the train for the first week of service, so I decided about the day before it opened that I wanted in on that. I really like trains, you see. Amanda and I trudged down to the local station. The line was out to the parking lot, and it took us about an hour or so to make it to the platform, and finally on the train. It was standing room only, but the ride to Salt Lake was fairly short. We took a free bus from the main station in Salt Lake down to the outdoor mall thingy nearby. Amanda, who was totally nonplussed about waiting that long in line for a train, and who had been making fun of Utahan’s comments while in line, was amazed by the bus. Apparently, she was not used to public transit buses with seat cushions and no trash/graffiti. We had some food, watched a movie, and arrived back at the train station around 11pm. This time around, the train was nearly empty and we managed a seat upstairs. Amanda proceeded to leave the first bit of trash on the train, which was the ad section from the paper she was reading, and I surfed the net on my phone via the free wifi service on board the train. All in all, it is a nice service. I plan to ride my bicycle over to the station and ride it into work off and on.
Almost a month ago, I went with a group of local V-Strom riders out on the Pony Express route. Yes, that Pony Express. There is a leg from the middle of Utah over to Nevada that is still dirt road. Still utterly desolate. It was really amazing to ride 145 miles of dirt in the West Utah Desert and know that it had not been altered much since the days of the actual Pony Express. I’ll have a more in-depth write up of this once I get the pictures off the camera. It was a great day, with about 8 of us out there, flying down dirt roads at 60 MPH on the motorcycles. It really helped me get used to dirt and get over any remaining dirt road fears I had had on the bike. My tip of the day: air down to about 20PSI front and back. It makes dirt roads feel like highways.
Weekend before last was the Northwest Caving Association’s 2008 regional. It was held in central Idaho, near American Falls, out on the Great Rift in the middle of the Wapi lava flow. I debated going for about a week or two. I was going to take the motorcycle, but then I wasn’t going to go, but then I was, and ultimately, I took the pickup. The drive up there was great. I had never been in that part of the country before and I rather enjoyed the scenery. I arrived early Saturday morning, just in time to learn I had missed the trip signups for most of the actual caving for the day. But, there was a couple headed down the lava flow a ways to hike to some ‘kipuka’ areas. This means an island of the original land that the lava did not flow over. I was game, and soon, I was in the back of a Toyota heading down dirt roads. We met up with a woman with a dog and an older guy with two dogs, and headed off. I found the lava flow to be ‘soft’, as it seemed more weathered, and much more lichen growing on it than I was used to from NM. I still have scars on my boots from hiking the Valley of Fires lava near Carizozo, NM. The other folks commented on how rough the lava here was, and I just smirked thinking of my old stomping grounds in NM. We hiked about 4 miles total, and explored a couple of holes and two kipukas. Nothing major was found, but it was interesting.
Back at camp, I had dinner with the group, and enjoyed talking to the cavers for a while after. I knew no one here, except sort of from a grotto meeting or two down in Utah. But, I could still pick out the same sort of folks I knew from back home. It is kind of funny, the different personalities that crop up in the same sort of event, ya know? I ended up going to bed around 9, as I was dead tired, and slept like a rock for the night in my new tent that Amanda bought me for my birthday. Around 9ish, I lurched out of the tent and over to the signup sheets for Sunday. On the way, a guy I had met the night before who was kind of from my new grotto in Utah stopped me. He said, ‘Me and this guy, Brian, are going into Creons after dinner. You want to come?’ I thought for a moment. ‘Sure, why not?’ Heck, I knew nothing of this cave, but I figured I would find out over the course of the day. I managed to get in on a trip into Crystal Ice Cave, which was just a stone’s throw from the camping area. I was the random guy in a group of 6 guys from Seattle. These guys reminded me a lot of the old, original NMT caving club, so I had no trouble blending in, as it were. They made sure I had rope experience, and we headed to the hole.
Crystal Ice Cave, like a lot of the caves in this area, is located right on the Great Rift, which is a crack in the earth that runs almost north-south for many miles. From this crack, from time to time, lava bubbles out in flows, or spits out in cinder cones. This happens about every 2000 years. The last time it happened was about 2000 years ago, so it is apparently due up. When the lava retreats back into the earth, it leaves behind this large crack, and it is in this crack where the caves in this region are. Crystal Ice Cave is within a sizeable lava vent, and gets its name from the fact that it contains ice year round. Back in the 70′s or so, someone actually blasted a tunnel down into the cave, installed windows to trap the cold air, and offered commercial tours of the cave. This was shut down in the early 90′s, as (I assume) interest waned and the ice was starting to melt due to all the warm air the new new tunnel generated. It was sealed off and left. Since then, the ice has come back. The upshot is that this is a thru trip, meaning that you go in one entrance, through the cave, and leave via a different entrance. In the case of this cave, both of those entrances are vertical, and require a rope and gear.
The entrance we went into was about a 140 foot repel. Two experienced Seattle guys went in, and then they sent their pack of 3 newbies in. The first guy twisted his knee trying to get on rope, and ended up not going into the cave at all. The second guy went in fine, but the third guy manged to get the trail of his cow’s tail stuck into his repel device with the rope, and was hung up about 10 foot or so off the floor. It took over an hour to get him off the rope and down. I went down next. At the bottom, I was surprised as the rope took a turn into what looked like a snow slide. My options were to get off rope and slide down it, or just stay on rope to the bottom. I elected to stay on rope, as the problem with the snow slide was that if you didn’t get stopped halfway down, you’d end up up to your knees at least in wet slush. We walked out of the snow and into a large breakdown cavern. It was just above freezing in the cave, and for about the first time, I had a chance to really see beams of light played out around the cave. We ended up on top of a pile of breakdown, facing a vertical wall of ice and snow and rock with a rope dangling from it. One by one, we clipped in and ascended the rope to the top, to a long tunnel which had a floor of solid ice, several feet thick. We had to wait in the middle for another group coming from the other direction to pass us. This group included a kid who was probably no more than 12, who had been practicing for this particular trip for over a year. He was doing great.
Once we were re-assembled on top of the wall in the new tunnel, we started down it. The first room we dubbed the ‘margarita’ room, as the floor was about an inch deep of wet slush on top of the ice, and it really looked like sludging through a huge margarita. The next room’s ice was mostly dry, just wet enough for my boots to suck up some of the moisture, and freeze to the ice if I stood still. Here the Seattle guys took lots of photos, which they say they will email me eventually. This tunnel continued for a good ways, with ice-waterfalls and ice-stalagmites and other speleothems. It terminated for us at a large wall of stalagmites (stalagmites might reach the ceiling, stalactites hang tight from the ceiling…). Jutting out most unusually from the West wall was a wooden structure housing a window, with a pair of 110V outlets corroding down the front of it. The trip leader climbed the ice carefully, and opened the window, and then crawled through. Each of us followed in turn, into the dynamited tunnel used in the commercial cave. This tunnel was obviously a lot of work at one time, as it had stone walls, and a few other windows that looked out into the tunnel from behind the blockage. We found the large steel plate that seals off the old tunnel, and turned around and went back to the little grotto that had a rope dangling from above. I was the second one up this 60 foot climb, which came out into a little depression in the lava flow through a narrow opening that was blocked to keep rocks out with what, at one time, anyway, was a sign that read, ‘CAUTION: DUCK CROSSING’.
That evening, as dinner wound down, Jessie and I put our gear together and went to round up the other guy. Turns out he didn’t want to go. However, we picked up two more guys, and set off for a 3/4 mile hike through the dusk to the cave. This cave was rather… interesting. We found the hole, rigged up our gear, and I was chosen to go in first. Strangely enough, I’ve been doing this long enough that apparently, I had the most experience, so… in I go. The cave is a hole in the bottom of a small depression. I crawl in, and monkey walk along a short ledge where the rope is tethered to the wall with two pieces of webbing, gingerly reach out and pull the rope up to me, and get my repel device locked on. Then, I turned, and eased off the ledge and onto the rope. Below me, the walls waffle from side to side and I cannot see the bottom, but judging by the weight of the rope, there is a long ways to go. The walls are about 2.5-5 foot apart and about 25-50 foot wide. I start down. I go, and go… and go… and go… and pass a snow packed ledge. I start over it, and decide that I should stop here and wait for the others. I get off rope and holler up, ‘OFF ROPE’ and wait. A while later, Matt comes down and tells me they never heard me, they just waited until the rope was slack and went. Jessie follows. I then head over the ledge on the rope again and down to the very bottom. It had to have been 250 foot. At the bottom, it was still narrow, and there was just barely enough room for the 3 of us. Here, the floor was choked off with ice and there was not much to look at. So, there I am, at the bottom of a 250 foot deep pit, in the middle of Idaho, at 11pm at night, on my birthday. It was a good day. We ascended the rope up and headed out of the cave into the night, and hiked back the long way. I ended up just driving home from there instead of camping another night.
So, it is good to be back into caving. There is another regional of the Rocky Mountain section happening in Wyoming over the 4th, that I am planning to go to. Jessie also claims he will drop me a line and we’ll go caving locally this summer, so, we’ll see.
This last weekend, I went down to Cedar City to the Western V-Strom Gathering. About 50-60 folks on Suzuki V-Strom bikes showed up. I probably put on about 800 miles this last week, and managed a high of 53 miles to the gallon on the way back. I’ll have a few photos of this sometime soon. Bryce Canyon national park was pretty neat, and Cedar Breaks and that whole area was an awesome area to ride in. I rode down by myself, but came back with a couple of guys from the Salt Lake area. We seem to have quite the active group of riders up here, we’ve been riding at least once a month for the last while.
Anyway, that’s my updates. I hope you enjoyed.