Mt St Helens, Ape Caves 9-4-11

Last Sunday, I got up super early, apologized to Adventure Dog for leaving him behind on this one, and met Mark to head down to Mt St Helens for the day.  It has been incredibly gorgeous warm weather here in the Northwest and it was great to get out and enjoy it! 

So what did we do 1^st?  Clambered down into a hole in the ground where at a chilly 42 degrees we had to wear long sleeves and warm hats with headlamps on them (definitely headlamps, as you don’t want a lantern or flashlight.  You want your hands free for clambering).  It was fantastic!

The Ape Caves are really just a couple sections of lava tubes, where molten rock pushed through the ground, leaving behind big tunnels that made me think of the giant worms in the movie Dune.  Inside the tunnel it was pitch dark, but our lights illuminated a surprising amount of color.  Predominantly, a sheen of mineral and water on the walls and ceiling so sparkly, that it was almost surprising that it didn’t still glow with our lights off.

There were also pinks and oranges down there, in the jumbles of rock that we had to clamber over.  Nearly everything had sharp edges, since there was very little in the way of erosive forces down there. 

The lava had carved out trough kind of formations on the sides.  Sometimes smallish like this, and sometimes they were like sloped shelves over our heads that it seemed we could almost walk on if we could get up on them and they weren’t slippery.

Water dripped continuously from every bit of the ceiling. 

In a few places the ceiling looked like this, with pointy rock that looked like it started to melt and then re-hardened.

In one place there was a hole in the top of the tunnel, where sunlight beamed through and moss and ferns were a startling green after all that darkness. 

In another place there was a small wall about 8 ft tall that we had traverse.  We went through the tunnel the way we did so we could walk back on the surface and also so we would be climbing this wall, not trying to jump down it.  It was a small wall, but a fun challenge for me.  I don't have a photo of me scaling, and that is probably for the best.  : )

It took a long time to traverse the shadowy lava tube world, but I really loved every minute of it and hope to go back.  We finally came to the end and found these stairs leading up to a shockingly hot and sunny world.

After a picnic lunch we did another short hike at Lava Canyon.  The rock formations here, with columnar basalt and the rushing of the Muddy River was lovely.  The only drawback here was on a hot day the river sounded particularly tempting, but it was too dangerous an area to take a dip.

This suspension bridge was interesting.  I’ve been on a few and apparently they each sway a bit differently.  This one was not my favorite, kind of dipping down with each step I took. 

Another fantastic day in the Northwest.  I'll be back, Mt St Helens!