Kathy is a member of the Central Arizona Grotto (CAG), a club for cavers, and wrote this report for a CAG trip. Should reports like this be included in the hiking club article for the PEAC Newsletter? Please let Kathy (sharpk) know.
Thinking that Kevin Ryan and Bob Zimering were driving up the night before the trip to camp, I invited myself to drive with them. I packed all my camping stuff, only to discover that we were camping in the living room of Kevin's and Bob's friends, and dinner was ready when we arrived. There's nothing like roughing it!
In the morning we met up with Todd, Steph, and Brad at a trailhead and started a caravan to the cave. I think only Kevin and Bob had already been to this cave. The caravan didn't last too long, though. Recent rains had raised the water level in the creeks we had to cross, so we all ended up piling into the back of Todd and Steph's 4WD pickup. Otherwise we would have had quite a hike ahead of us.
Bob had warned that this cave was warm, and gets warmer as it gets deeper, for some unknown reason. He was right. After awhile I found it refreshing to lay in the mud to cool off. Actually, it was nice to lay down. Bob, Kevin, and I must not have slept too well, because we were all quite lethargic. Kevin, who has usually bounced off the walls all day on previous trips I'd seen him on, was collapsing on the ground whenever he found a flat spot. Quite odd.
Our first real excursion was down a steep crack that stayed steep and narrow for most of the distance I covered. Bob was waiting for us at the top because he thought he'd done the route before and it was a dead end. I waited for a bit with Bob, and then curiosity got the better of me. The people in the front of the group said the tunnel kept going and going, but we turned around since Bob wasn't with us. Climbing back up through the steep, narrow parts turned out to be quite difficult for me, and I was drenched with sweat by the time I got out of the tunnel.
My pack seemed very difficult to deal with, too. Eventually I discovered I was carrying three liters of water. I only meant to bring two. I finally ended up just keeping one liter in my pack and left two in conspicuous places to retrieve later. That made things much easier for me.
We lounged around a bit and then decided to go visit the lake, whose name I've forgotten. The trip to the lake turned out to be much shorter than we were expecting. The water was perfectly clear and a beautiful blue green color. Bob said it had a calcite scum on it the last time he had seen it, but there was no scum this day. It certainly was a small lake, though. I guess cave "lakes" are similar to some Arizona "rivers."
Todd was the most energetic person in our group and had gone off exploring most of the times the rest of us were lounging. He found a big room that Bob had never seen before, although Bob had walked right by it on past trips.
For me, the highlight of our trip was the little loop that Bob took us on from the room Todd found. The loop took us through a tiny wonderland of small, beautiful formations, the stuff that will always keep me coming back for more.
Thanks for a great trip!