This last trip we visited the Mount Saint Helens Volcanic Monument. Our primary hike was to the Ape Caves, a 1900-year old lava tube system. Wikipedia describes the discover and naming of the caves as this: "A logger named Lawrence Johnson discovered Ape Cave in 1947 when his truck fell into a sinkhole and in there he came upon the entrance to the cave. A Boy Scout troop under the leadership of Harry Reese performed the first exploration in 1950; they named the cave for their sponsor, the St. Helens Apes: a group of local Scouts, sometimes called Brush Apes." We didn't bother to try and take a picture of in the caves ourselves - not one of us had a flash assisted camera. I found an image of the interior of the caves on Flickr, this photo was taken by Marianne Batchelder & Josh Grice, to give one a sense of the inside.
We hiked the more challenging upper cave. It was really rough going, with lots of boulders to scramble over while holding a flashlight. Fortunately we picked up some "Tactical Lights" ear mounted LEDs from Harbor Frieght to assist our caving.
It was a great trek and totally beat up our feet. We nixed the idea of going on the the Johnson Ridge Observatory, and instead head southeast to Carson Hot Springs. The time to the hot springs was less than to travel to the observatory. On the there we stopped at a lookout and captured some photos.
There distant in the background is the Volcano. In person it seems like such a mammoth presence in the distance. It was really amazing sight. It was a wonderful day out!
Oh hey! What fun reading about your trek through the lava tube caves!
ReplyDeleteI'm so excited you and Andy do a monthly explore. This one reminded me of all the caving I did with my family when I was a kid. We used to go to Lava Tube Caves near Tulelake and read about the Modock Indian Wars that happened there a long time ago where the Modocks used the caves as their protection.