This summer, on the Fourth of July weekend I went spelunking. That’s cave exploring for the uninitiated. This was no ordinary cave we decided to tackle. My brother and his friend came up from Texas to Idaho so they could join in the adventure. Six more of my closest friends also came along and I want to give them due credit in this blog. Their names are Joseph, David and some other guys I can’t recall. We spent weeks preparing for this expedition. By “weeks” I mean we thought about how cool this was going to be for weeks, and then we bought some food the morning of the expedition.
Actually, we did have to secure a permit, gather rappelling gear and pack critical supplies like toilet paper. The plan was to drive to the trailhead just inside the Wyoming border, hike to the cave entrance, enter the cave, work our way to a distant exit some 5-7 hours later, hike down the mountain and drive home. There are five technical rappels within the cave – two of them next to thundering waterfalls and one 70 foot rappel down pure ice into a black maw. There are very tight passageways to negotiate. Passageways with nicknames like Birth canal, Chimney and Cork-screw. There were bone-numbing frigid waters to ford and rock crevasses to navigate with one’s feet wedged on two-inch ledges on either side of the crevasse while straddling forty foot drops. So, five minutes into the drive to the cave we got scared and decided to go to the mall instead. We did some shopping and got pedicures. It was a lovely day and we really bonded.
No, no, we are rugged men and nothing could deter us from our mission. The hike up the mountain took longer than expected due to significant amounts of snow still lingering in the alpine valley at the base of the Tetons. The final quarter mile to the entrance of the cave is a forty-five degree incline, and was completely covered in packed snow. One slip would have meant certain death, or at least wet Levis as we sped down the hill to the valley below… with trees at the base that looked pretty solid.
No, no, we are rugged men and nothing could deter us from our mission. The hike up the mountain took longer than expected due to significant amounts of snow still lingering in the alpine valley at the base of the Tetons. The final quarter mile to the entrance of the cave is a forty-five degree incline, and was completely covered in packed snow. One slip would have meant certain death, or at least wet Levis as we sped down the hill to the valley below… with trees at the base that looked pretty solid.
The caving system that lay before us contains a labyrinth of passageways, and it was only in recent history that a route was found that led from our entrance to our intended exit further down the mountain. Only two of us on this expedition had been in the cave on a previous occasion… a year earlier. There is nothing like the memories of two men trying to recreate every right or left turn in dim light for miles in an underground maze from the year before. And because we would not be exiting where we entered, we rigged our ropes to pull with us after each rappel. That meant that after the first rappel down a 70 foot ice overhang into a black maw, there was no going back; now way to go back. This plan had success written all over it! What could possibly go wrong?
Well, obviously I lived… I am writing this blog. However, I am still in the cave and bats carry my blog entries to the outside world.
Our five to seven hour journey inside the cave ended up taking about eleven hours due to some wrong turns. My right big toe still lacks some feeling as a result of frostbite – we spent a lot of time with our feet in near freezing water. And for some reason my running shoes did not adequately protect my feet. I may sue! When one pays $40.00 for a pair of running shoes at the mall, one expects the shoes to feel comfortable while running and adequately insulate the feet from cold when breaking through ice and fording thigh-deep streams for hours in the recesses of the earth. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?!?!?
Aside from the frostbite, getting lost several times and breaking a rib and my sacrum (a triangular bone at the base of the spine), it went quite well. There’s nothing like breaking two bones at separate times in one day! Ever better, is having to breathe, squeeze through tight passages, climb rocks and use one’s body for hours in said condition. But hey, it was worth it. I’m a guy, and in order to justify the pain of the day, subsequent medical bills, and the pain that would follow for weeks, I would need to tell everyone how cool the adventure was. And lest you think that I am just a klutz, or got hurt because I am older; one of the oldest on the trip… O.K. the oldest on the trip, a full 11.11% of the nine people in our group broke one or more bones that day. So get off my back! No really, get off my back. It is still mending.
As for the broken sacrum, I am a part-time EMT and I have NEVER seen contusions (bruising) like I saw on my back side in the days that followed my mishap. It looked as though a black man donated his backside for a transplant on my pasty-white body. Much internal bleeding. And the worse part was not being able to show anyone, at least without being arrested for indecent exposure. A cool injury with no one to show. That’s like having kidney stones!
As for the broken sacrum, I am a part-time EMT and I have NEVER seen contusions (bruising) like I saw on my back side in the days that followed my mishap. It looked as though a black man donated his backside for a transplant on my pasty-white body. Much internal bleeding. And the worse part was not being able to show anyone, at least without being arrested for indecent exposure. A cool injury with no one to show. That’s like having kidney stones!
As a side note here, those who have broken a rib can testify that sleeping for the first two weeks must be done sitting up. It is too painful to lie horizontally, in any position, on a ribcage with a snapped rib. However, a broken sacrum prevents one from sitting in any position. In such a case as this, sleeping must be done standing up, which only works until you actually fall asleep. At which point you fall and break something. Really, the best thing to do if you break both a rib and a sacrum on the same day is to be shot! Put out of your considerable misery! Just like a horse with a broken leg is put down.
I’m forty-eight years old. I know, I know, that is still really young. And for those who know me well, they wouldn’t think I was a day over sixty-two. I am still young enough for many a death-defying adventure. However, next Fourth of July, my brother will be flying up and we will do some awesome knitting while watching a romantic comedy. We will knit doilies and then we will go get pedicures at the mall. By then, maybe there will be some more feeling in my right big toe and it won’t look so purple.
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