A few weekends back, I took a bunch of the gang from UO to a cave I knew about to check about digging through a cave-in.

Hiccup and I started out the night by picking up David Keetz, then we headed on over to the library to meet Sertile, RaccoonCC, Mjames, and Colt45. Sertile was already there and got in with us, and the other three showed up pretty soon. We had them follow us in their car, and we started making the long drive to the town the cave was in.

When we got there, we parked up the hill from the cave and made the trek down to the entrance. I lit my propane lantern at that point, which I had brought because the cave is so enormous that flashlights don't really do it justice. We headed on down the long entrance tunnel and I started showing them the highlights of the cave.

First, we checked out the enormous chamber you first walk into that had lots of debris from past cave-ins. Then, I led them down another large tunnel to one of the only formations in the cave, which had a large pool of water underneath it. We hung around there for a bit while everyone checked out a smaller side tunnel full of water, but no one felt like getting that wet.

Then, we went to another area of the cave with a bunch of tight squeezes. You could walk the entire way, but the tunnel would veer randomly up and down and around corners out of nowhere. It eventually led to a high room with a bunch of chimney-type formations. We milled around there for a little bit before everyone found a way to walk around to a high ledge that overlooked that area.

From there, we headed back the way we came, which was harder than it looked since the tunnel twisted and turned so much. We went from there to a large pit I knew about inside the cave, about ten feet deep. I'd climbed down in it before and knew it didn't go anywhere, so I didn't volunteer to do the climbing like I usually do. David Keetz went ahead and went down to check it out, though.

When we were done there, I led everyone to the cave-in that we might be attempting to dig through. The cave-in was approximately two stories high and made of super-compressed dirt. I had wanted everyone to see what they were really getting themselves into, because the idea of digging through it sounded a lot easier than the reality. There was a tunnel already dug partway into the cave-in that everyone climbed in to check out.

Surprisingly, everyone was still on board with digging through it, although they agreed that it would be harder than they'd thought. It was nice, because up until that point everyone I'd ever shown the cave-in had promptly changed their minds about digging through it.

We sat around there for probably an hour just talking by the propane lantern. We kept discussing strategies and things and the possibilty of their being buried treasure or mummies or something behind the cave-in. No one really thought there would seirously be anything like that, but I was pretty sure there was at least more tunnel behind the cave-in.

When the lantern finally ran out of propane and died, we decided it was time to call it a night. We loaded up our crap, headed back to the car, and made the long drive back to Springfield.