Escape from the Lava Tube

I stare at the sheer eight-foot high block of lava rock before me, not understanding. There is a group of six college-aged guys and girls standing in front of us. Most are gathered around the base of the rock wall. One of the guys clambers over the lava wall and through a hole that leads to the dusky sky beyond. Outside. My heart soars at the sight of it. Until now, I hadn’t realized how much I have missed daylight – any light, really. Now the light of day teases me, just beyond my reach.

“Is this our exit?” I ask my husband Pat, in disbelief. I know I’ll never be able to scale that wall.

“It can’t be,” he assures me.

We watch as the young man who first escaped through the cave opening, squats down and reaches for the hand of one of the seemingly weightless girls and hoists her up over the wall and through the opening.

Are you kidding me?

Pat asks the group if this is the only exit. The answer alarms both of us.

—  —  —

About two hours earlier…

I am in Seattle for a conference and Pat has joined me to take advantage of the free hotel stay. The conference ended yesterday but we have tacked on a few days to our stay (at our expense) as a mini vacation. This is my second trip to Seattle and while I love the city – and its fascinating underground city — on this trip, I want to do something out of the ordinary.

I think of myself as an adventurer, a risk-taker. I’m delusional, of course. In reality, I’m nothing but a wannabe. I like to hang out with adventurers and risk-takers. Hoping some of their bravery will rub off on me, I suppose.

I have had some thrilling, out-of-the-ordinary experiences in my life so far: rappelling off a 120-foot mountain (taller than it sounds), white water rafting on West Virginia’s New River (whose river bed is actually older than Egypt’s Nile River), riding atop a mule down the Grand Canyon, a hot air balloon ride over the Senora Desert. But every time, about an hour before each of these planned adventures was scheduled to begin, I was ready to forfeit my deposit money and call the whole thing off. A cloud of dread would descend upon me, suffocating me. Somehow, though, at the last minute, I’ve always been able to get myself into a zone where I can turn off my emotions, follow my adventuring companion, and get the job done.

Pat has been with me on a few of these exciting ventures, but he would never have thought to undertake any of them on his own if I had not cajoled, begged, and shamed him into joining me. In our relationship, I have always assumed the role of thrill seeker. I can’t afford to be the follower, the hanger-on, or we would probably never do anything exciting.

I’m embarrassed to say that the little interest Pat shows in some of my adventure ideas has actually worked to strengthen my inner scaredy cat. If he doesn’t want to do something and I am having second thoughts myself, I can “begrudgingly” back out, and blame him for being too boring. And I retain the title of Most Adventurous in the family.

It will take us three hours to drive from Seattle to Mount Saint Helen National Monument and then another fifteen minutes to reach our destination: Ape Cave. You would not believe the amount of convincing it took to get Pat to one, rent a car, and two, drive for three hours not really knowing much about this cave, but I did it! Success!

Ape Cave is located about halfway between Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. The cave, also called a lava tube, was discovered in 1951, and was formed from lava runoff from Mount Saint Helen eruptions.

We apparently started off on our road trip later than we had hoped. Either that or we spent too much time at the Mount Saint Helen Museum looking at incredible photographs from past eruptions. Probably both, because it’s close to 4:00 pm when we finally arrive at Ape Cave.

There’s a cute little cabin-like structure near the entrance to the cave. It’s actually a little shop where cave explorers can rent lanterns, flashlights, and hard hats with lights mounted on them. A man working at the shop informs us that his shop closes at 6:00 pm, so anything we rent has to be returned by then. He also tells us that, depending on whether we’re exploring the upper cave or the lower cave, it could take us close to three hours to traverse. Great. Now we’re pressed for time.

We rent one lantern. (This trip was about fifteen years ago. I read just yesterday that three sources of light are recommended for cave exploration.) I know that caves maintain a temperature of about forty-degrees year-round so at least I thought to bring both a pullover sweatshirt and jacket. We take a pass on the helmets with flashlights, because, at our core, we are cheap. Besides, we won’t need those and a lantern. Silly us.

Pat and I don’t ask the man any questions about the upper cave and how it compares to the lower cave. We’re too rushed trying to get into any cave after being told the shop closes in two hours.

We enter the lava tube. What the hell? It’s pitch black in here! I mean, pitch black. You see, lava rocks are black. Well, duh, right? I just wasn’t imagining this amount of blackness. After we enter through the giant hole and walk past the extent that the sunshine spreads through the opening, we are alone. In the dark. Except for our little lantern which lights our way no further than two feet, we cannot see a thing. We hear voices ahead of us but see no one else’s lights. In blind and silent agreement, we follow the voices.

We have no idea where we are going. There is no path. We just trust that the disembodied voices we are following know where they are going.

The hiking becomes more difficult. We now have to scramble between and over large blocks of igneous rock, piled atop the cave floor. (I learned later that these are rocks that have actually fallen from the ceiling of the cave. Good thing we nixed those stupid hard hats, right?)

Igneous boulders have jagged edges and my hands and fingers are screaming in pain as I try to climb over them. The rocks aren’t just sharp, they’re freezing too. Ouch, ouch and double ouch. I think they sold gloves at that stupid shop too, didn’t they?

We no longer hear voices, but we keep climbing and walking in what we think is the same direction and what we hope is toward an exit.

“What is that?” I exclaim as the lantern light shines on something that is foreign to the terrain. Pat follows my pointing arm with the lantern. There, lying on the ground surrounded by three massive black boulders, are human feces.

“Oh, my God!” I yell. “We could have stepped in that! People are actually shitting in here?!” This is revolting. Beyond gross. We are disgusted by the pile of poop right here, and now terrified about additional piles of poop we might encounter before we reach the exit. If we find the exit out of this hell hole. That’s right. The introduction of a pile of crap has turned our exciting adventure into a house of horrors.

Now we have to be extra cautious about where we place both our feet and hands. People could be shitting on top of these lava rocks too, you know. Even if I had gloves on my hands, I still wouldn’t want to accidently grab a fistful of poop. Shoot! There may be spelunkers shitting in this lava tube right this second! It’s pitch black, after all. Nothing denotes privacy more than total darkness.

We have to get out of here.

We continue onward, complaining about the lawlessness of Ape Cave. Groaning about what we saw. And I’m wondering what I will do if we get stuck down here and I have to go to the bathroom. I need to stop thinking it. The more I think about it, the more I’ll have to go myself. And knowing my bladder, there’s already a good chance I’m going to have to go before I see the inside of a restroom.

We start hearing voices. We walk faster until we see some lights.

—   —   —

Pat asks the group if this is the only exit.

“Yes,” one of the guys answers as he cups his hands for another girl to use as a foothold so he can boost her to the outstretched hand of his buddy who is already outside the cave.

The wall (which I later learned is called a lava fall), is eight feet high and only has one foothold. This is our exit. I don’t remember reading anything about this. Of course, we didn’t read anything about the Ape Cave because we had been in such a hurry.

Pat and I are both around six-feet tall but there is no way that either of us stand a chance of climbing over this thing without some major assistance.

“Do you guys think you can help us out too?” I ask. We know we have to escape the confines of this blasted cave by either getting over this lava wall or turning around and retracing our journey back to the entrance. And there’s no way in hell I’m doing that. First and foremost, we have no idea how we got here, how would we find our way back? Number two, I’m freezing. Number three, I’m going to have to pee soon. Number four, (note that I didn’t call this number two), there’s a chance – and knowing my luck, a very good chance – that I would end up stepping in that pile of poop if we went back. Number five, our kerosene lantern would likely run out of juice while we were still in the cave. And number six, we would definitely miss our deadline in returning the lantern before that stupid shop closes. You’re probably wondering why I’m so preoccupied with something as inconsequential as returning a lantern when the real concern is having to spend the night in this freezing hell-hole if these guys won’t help us out. It’s because I like to follow the rules.

“Oh, sure,” is young Indiana Jones’ exquisite reply.

—   —   —

As it turned out, the shop was closed by the time we hiked back – over grass this time – to return our lantern. We left it in front of the shop’s door hoping they would know it was ours and not charge our credit card for an unreturned lantern. Pat and I wondered if anyone would have ever tried to find us if we had never returned from the cave. We can’t remember if they even recorded our names. Or if the shop was privately-owned and not a government facility. People might be dead in the cave and no one knows it. We’re actually pretty lucky that the scariest thing we encountered was a pile of shit.

I learned just yesterday, that we had taken the upper cave, the more rigorous of the two. As I was researching the Ape Cave online, I also learned that there is now a ladder exit out of the upper cave, but I don’t know if it’s new or if, had we traveled further that day, we would have come across this preferred escape route.

There are two theories about how Ape Cave got its name. One theory (and my preferred one) is that the lava tube was called Ape Cave because the area surrounding Mount Saint Helen is notorious for the many Big Foot and Sasquatch sightings reported there. The other theory is that a troop of Boy Scouts exploring the caves in the early 1950s, named the caves after their sponsor, the Saint Helen’s Apes, a group of foresters. Back in the 50s, foresters and loggers were referred to as Brush Apes.

The Ape Cave is 2.47 miles long and is the third longest lava tube in the continental U.S., preceded by the Deadhorse Cave (2.74 miles, Washington) and the Gypsum Cave (2.68 miles, Idaho). None of these compare to Hawaii’s Kazumura Cave, which has been surveyed at 40.7 miles long and 3,614 feet deep, making it the longest and deepest lava tube in the world. As you can imagine, the state of Hawaii has hundreds of lava tubes. More adventures await!