(written on October 13th from notes taken previously)
When we woke up this morning, we found that the campsite that we had chosen had also been well used by others. Unfortunately, that meant that there was trash absolutely everywhere.
So much, in fact, that I had run over somebody’s plastic toy shovel, amidst the rest of the squalor.
I built a little fire to burn what could be burned, and mom got a trash bag, and we spent a good little while cleaning up the trash that other people had left.
It looks like somebody had left at least one trash bag full of stuff that an animal had gotten into and torn up. That was just one of the sites, and the one closest to us.
Say sites and should probably put it in quotes, as it was just an open area with some old building foundation leftovers, or something like that, where different people had built fire rings.
From there, my mom and I decided to go west. First we stopped off at a little viewing area where we were able to get a decent look at the south side of Mount St Helens from a hill that was across the valley from the cone.
Last year, we weren’t able to get any view of Mount St Helens at all because it was misting and raining with fog and clouds everywhere.
So it was nice to at least see it from the south side, as our plans /desires to see the crater itself from the other side were again thwarted this year, as last year, because of slides that had taken out the road.
Last year I think there were two or three slides that took out the road, and this year not only Was the road still unrepaired from last year, but another landslide had taken out another section of Road on the Eastern side, so we were thwarted there as well.
But we got the South side view, and the landslide happened far enough up the road from ape cave that we were able to go to see ape cave, something that we tried to do last year, but missed out on because we arrived something like 30 minutes too late to make a reservation.
We could have gone in on our own, but they wouldn’t know that we were in there, and that’s probably not a good idea to be in a huge cave without anyone else knowing we are in there, even though the opening is open to the air and public 24/7/365
It was a little bit of an ordeal trying to get permission to go to the cave this time, as well. But gratefully, we were able to eventually, because of our starlink connection, by the reservation we needed And make our way into the cave.
Gratefully, I had also brought two headlamps with us, and both were fully charged, so we got ourselves bundled up, because the cave was something like 42° year round– much colder than any other cave that I had been in. I had thought that caves were generally something like 55 or 56° year-round, but not this one.
Ape cave was absolutely beautiful. I’m grateful for the phone that I have that was able to take pictures in the dark, well… relative dark.
We figured out fairly quickly that the best pictures were taken with my headlamp turned off and my mom’s turned on a lower setting. Then, with my phone camera set to the night mode, it was able to take some good pictures. 🥳
I took many many pictures. I think over 100 in all. 🙃
As I’m sure you are aware, cameras rarely can do justice to the visual experience of being in a place, especially phone cameras, but at least they are good as reminders of what we saw And still give us at least a hint or glimpse of what it was like to be there.
I think we spent something like 3 hours, or so inside the cave, moseying along the lower portion. It’s the shorter section of the cave. From where you enter, you can either go up and back the upper section, which I think was something like 2 and 1/4 mi each way, although I might be wrong on that. Googled that to fact check. 🙃
The lower portion I think was something like a third the length. Not only was it shorter, but it was the simpler portion, with no little mini cliffs to deal with. Neither my back, nor my mom’s age would allow us to do the upper portion of the cave without significant issues and discomfort/pain.
One thing that really surprised me was the sheer size of the lava tube. Ape cave, though it’s called a cave, is just a really really long lava tube from ancient eruptions.
I would have figured that it would be small, maybe a little taller than me, but no: I think there were some places in ape cave that might have been more than 30 ft tall.
Part of the beauty of the cave in the beginning was the glistening water droplets all over the roof of the cave. The glisten of the light off the droplets, in conjunction with the various colors, made it absolutely beautiful.
We took so long because we went so slowly and because I took so many pictures, but we did go all the way to the end of the lower section of the cave.
Once we got back, we ate lunch in the parking lot before heading back up the road.
Because of the road closures, the route that we were taking from there was the same road that we had been on during last year’s trip. We had camped at the lower Falls parking lot on the Lewis River, and that waterfall is an absolutely gorgeous one that I remembered loving last time, so we stopped briefly off at it to enjoy and take pictures again this year.
I think there was less water on it this year, but I’d have to check the photos we took last year to be sure.
From there we drove east, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mount Adams, But it got dark relatively quickly because we had spent so much time in the cave.
I had hopes of finding a camping spot that was going to be like the one we had across from Mount Hood with that absolutely gorgeous view, and we drove around quite a while checking out different options here and different options there, but roads were closed on the little side roads that I was hoping to take, and pretty much everywhere we went was just a no-go.
We probably traveled around for an hour, or so, just trying to find a place, including stopping at one spot that had been recently logged, But was farther away from the river than I was hoping and was in an area that felt too dangerous to start a fire because there was so much wood debris left from having been logged.
Eventually, after failure after failure after failure to find a place that I hoped would even somewhat measure up to that beautiful place on Mount Hood, I gave up and drove back up the road to a little spot where I thought we might at least be able to wake up to the view of Mount Adams.
It was a busy day, though with all of the stuff that we did, it wasn’t really that much. Most of the day was spent in ape cave, which was worth the visit, and then just a couple of brief stops to see St Helens and lower Falls.
We both easily reached our step goals for the day, my mom’s being 6,000 in mine 10,000.
I rarely accomplish the 10,000 step goal.
We finally got dinner, well after dark, But we got our food, and the place that we stopped, though in full view of the road, seemed like it might be decent. We crossed our fingers and hoped that nobody would take issue with us being in that spot.
Because of the caving and everything, I didn’t do any work at all today, but that’s okay.
Love and hugs.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 