Urban Jungle

The city scares me. A lot. All the stuff I say about doing things that scare you--it all flies out the window in any place where the avenues start numbering in the hundreds.

The stuff of nightmares.

I find it strangely true that I am more awkward and out of place in an area designed for human use than I am in those that are not, like caves. Somehow, I managed to forget this long enough to agree to a trip to Seattle with my sister.

It began with a disastrous end to a backpack trip. The gorgeous hike had started out looking like this:

The trail remained dry and easy to follow, lazily swinging by roaring waterfalls and through shallow creek beds. Fellow backpacker "Fire Master" Justin and I hiked on into the valley, stopping to nibble on glacier lilies and dreaming of a quiet evening fly fishing on an alpine lake seven miles up.

About a half mile from the lake, the landscape changed dramatically.

In a few switchbacks, we'd gone from a blazing summer day back to winter's chill. The lake, of course, was frozen over.  Our attempts to make the best of it ended in my falling in the lake, getting sopping wet, and subsequently burning holes in all my belongings while trying to dry them out by the fire. To his credit, Justin only laughed at me a little. I shivered my way through a poor night's sleep before calling it quits the next morning--our planned two nights suddenly didn't seem so appetizing.

Tough choice.

Further plans we might have made once we got back down were canceled the moment I turned the ignition key in my vehicle and found it dead. Fantastic--parked at a trailhead into the backcountry with no cell service. This is what you call a trip that was not meant to be.

After getting a jump, I drove home feeling extremely young, foolish, and wet behind the ears (perhaps literally as well as figuratively). This was what I had to show for a whole summer's worth of backcountry hiking?

Pity visit from a butterfly.

And yet, I would have traded for any of the uncomfortable moments of the backpacking trip over my discomfort in Seattle. Sounds, smells, and sights assaulted my senses from the moment I woke. One can't just settle into a rhythm and hike the steep streets, since you have to stop every other block for a red light. One must navigate around construction and crazily slanted streets, cars gridlocked in the intersections, people trying to sell you random things on corners, and everything costing something (parking!). Most of America is used to this, but it's an adjustment for me.

I think of myself as living in the city while I go to college, but I've realized that isn't true. I can walk for five minutes off my campus and be in the woods, alone, whenever I like. There is nowhere in Missoula where I can't see my beloved mountains looming near.

The best of both worlds. . .

Turns out I was wrong about cities in that they do retain pockets of wild here and there (or at least Seattle does.) Nature creeps in overgrown parks and unkempt backyards. Wildlife is actually quite abundant. When I stood on the docks and looked out over the bay, learned to slackline on the beach with a local friend, or biked through parks with my sister around Union Lake, I could see, at moments, falling in love with this place.

But not for me. At least, not now--I can't exclude anything from my future, seems like--but for now, my mind turns toward Alaska, the Arctic circle, the frozen and the remote. I'm glad I stepped into the city for a bit. Different paths in life are not more valuable than one another, they are only a preference. City life is just as much adventure after all. Except instead of avoiding snakes, you're avoiding parking tickets, and staying out of the path of giant buses instead of bears.

Thisss isss a hold-up!

No Fear in Ophir: Caving Round 2

Ever since my previous adventure into caves I found my appetite whetted for the dark, dirty and cold underground that my beautiful Montana has to offer. So for two months now climbing partner Ben and I have been plotting and scheming our next move. It took us that long just to be prepared--this time, we did not intend to rush headlong into the unknown.

"The Unknown"

Also, caves in Montana, as we were about to discover, are one of those closely guarded secrets. Because people have a knack for getting into shit they shouldn't be doing, this is probably a good idea. But it makes trip planning difficult. We analyzed topographic maps for likely cave locations, cross-referenced them with Google Earth images, and matched up features with terse descriptions from an old book called Caves of Montana published in the 1970s. It was very much like following tattered pieces of a treasure map.

Finding the cave was secondary, though, to being prepared to enter it at all. We chose Ophir--what we thought would be a nice practice cave for rappelling and ascending free drops.  Ben and I agonized over every detail of the setup we should use and practiced ascending a tree behind his house to perfect our system. I was very grateful for these hours of practice when it came to the real thing.

Just one of Ophir's towering, milky walls

 After all our preparation we loaded up with two other companions with some climbing experience and adventurous spirit, Dean and Kay. We left Missoula at 1 PM and headed for the forest. We were unsure of our route until we came across "Cave Gulch Road." Gotta be a cave there, right?

 We took comical pictures posing outside the entrance of the cave, while that familiar feeling of apprehension mixed with excitement grew in me. I was half raring to go, and half what the hell are we doing here? Fortunately, I usually ignore that half.

Enter the Double Throat and it shall swallow you whole. . .

I had heard that someone died in the cave in 2009 by falling down a man-made mineshaft in the entrance room. The shaft is completely fenced off now, so it would take some extreme effort to die in it, but some wiseacre decided to make a helpful note.

In case you can't read it, the arrow points down the shaft and helpfully points out "Dead End."

Thanks, dude.

Our real surprise in exploring Ophir was that it was much bigger, and less straightforward, than we imagined. The entrance room was huge, and it branched off into a right and left fork. We ventured down the left side and spent a good hour just exploring the spidery network of passages there.

The going was incredibly slow--we were climbing over giant rock breakdown that was often filmed with a slippery coat of mud. Travel was strange and awkward--we were moving around in a type of maze not designed for humans or our idea of comfort. 

Or our butts.

 

 After satisfying ourselves that none of the other passages continued--at any rate, nowhere we had the least desire to go--we returned to a hole we had found earlier and decided it must be the route. Ben carefully set up the anchor. It was only about ten or fifteen feet of rappelling, but it was sufficient to trap us down in that hole if anything went wrong, because there was no way of climbing out of it.

 Ben the Fearless Leader lowered first down the shaft. If it immediately pinched out he could find out for us and ascend back up fairly quickly. The rest of us waited until he said the magic words "it goes!" before joining him. As second most experienced, I helped Dean and Kay safely set up their own rappel gear to follow. Descending into the bowels of the earth was a bit foreboding, but sitting above listening to dripping water that sounded horribly like footsteps was worse, so I hastily joined them.                                                        

Doesn't even look a little bit like a mouth. Not at all.

If we thought the entrance room had been confusing, this was even more so. There were false leads everywhere, tunnels that led us in circles and seemingly, nowhere to go. After a while, we all gathered to discuss our options in a tiny chamber below the surface. We had nearly decided that this was the wrong shaft after all, and we'd better go back up and look at one of the others.

However, on one of my explorations I had found more passage, but turned back when I got too far away from everyone for comfort. "It seemed to get narrower and might not go anywhere," I admitted. Ben was game to come with me and see it. We slid and slithered through cramped passage, chimneyed down short drops, and came to a halt at a wide spot right before the passage grew very tight. I could tell it kept going but suspected it couldn't go far, as it seemed to be getting narrower all the while.

Though hardly the first explorers of this cave, we went ahead and named some features anyway, and we dubbed this spot Makeout Pinchout because of its intimate quarters. In the spirit of exploration I decided to go until I could go no farther, so I squeezed on through and kept going. After the tightest squeeze yet, which required straddling the rock with one leg and sliding your body after in a move I dubbed "straddling the pony," I actually stood up in a pretty spacious chamber and looked down at a heart-pounding drop.

Moments after straddling the Pony

"Ben. . . " I said. "You've got to come see this. It goes."

The rest of our party was in disbelief that this was the correct route to the bottom chamber. We still didn't know for sure, but it was clear that the passage opened up and was at least another place to go. After a considerable amount of time taking stock of ourselves and deciding whether we wanted to pursue it, we pressed on.

As we meticulously set up a three-way anchor on surrounding boulders, I asked Ben if I could go first this time (in some sort of fit of insanity.) He and I went either first or last, with the less experienced climbers sandwiched in between us. He readily agreed, and I began to lower myself down after making dead sure I had every piece of ascender equipment necessary to come back up. Still, it was with a sort of feeling of no return that I dropped down.

The drop was more like two than one. After about fifteen feet I landed in another chamber, and this time I saw immediately down a hole into the ceiling of a vast chamber below. I called up nervously to my companions and asked if I should wait here for them or continue. I don't think they really understood what I was saying, but they urged me on. I took a deep breath and threw the rope down the hole, was relieved to hear it hit the floor, and went after it.

The free drop

The bottom chamber of Ophir was so vast and beautiful that I forgot to be nervous. As soon as my feet touched solid ground I got off the rope and shouted up to the others that I'd made it, then looked around in wonder.

The room was easily 100 feet long, and toward the back of the chamber, as much as 60 feet high. The walls glowed with what looked like white waterfalls of calcite. And everything, I mean everything, was soaking wet. Including the cave register, which was sadly a pulpy, unreadable mess.

The others were taking an awful long time to follow me. I wandered back to the rope and looked up to see their headlamps bobbing in the blackness above. I'd been alone in the chamber for a good twenty minutes before they relayed their decision to me. Dean and Kay, having seen the 40 foot free drop, would stay at the ceiling chamber because of the time and effort it would cost them to ascend back up.

Ben, though, would join me. I was glad to see him--spending time alone in the chamber had been magical, but I was more than ready to share it with someone.

Much of it looked a lot like poop, to be honest.

We did a quick exploration and snapped some photos, Ben just as awe-inspired as myself at the size of it. There was more passage to explore, but it was nearly ten o'clock and we were feeling the pressure of the task that lay ahead of us--getting back out. So we bid farewell to Ophir's 184-foot depths and started back out, which was to be the true adventure.

Ascending the 40 foot free drop was surprisingly easy. The 15 footer after that, not so much. That drop involved a sharp overhang that was impossible to get the ascenders over with your weight pinching them against the rock. It proved tricky to get over, nearly impossible if you didn't have the brute strength to essentially do a pullup over it, as Kay did not. We were delayed at that point for quite some time--the only part of the trip where I truly began to wonder if we were going to make it out at all--but we kept relaxed with jokes and casual chatter. Kay would only get up over it if we stayed calm. She refused to give up, and swung herself over and around the rock with great difficulty.

We were much more relaxed after that, because we knew we'd already gotten over the most difficult part. It was interesting how, after many hours in the cave, we became more at ease there--with the cramped spaces, dripping water and persistent darkness.

Fascinating and sort of mildly gross at the same time

My own terrible moment was to come at the Pony of all places--the squeeze I'd already made multiple times. I went at it the wrong way and somehow got myself trapped, my ribcage stuck between a hard point of rock beneath me and the ceiling above. It was difficult to breathe and even harder to stay calm when I could go neither forward nor backward. I kicked out my legs in effort to turn on the spot and get a more favorable angle, but my leg was twisted up funny against the wall.

I realized I was panicking a little bit and forced myself to take a shallow breath. Ben helped me get my leg behind me and I turned just enough to slide out of the trap.

I was definitely ready to be out and breathing the free air again. Without further mishaps we made our way back out. Toward the end my arms began to tremble from the effort, and I realized that my energy was rapidly disappearing into a vacuum of hunger and weariness. Caving is even more difficult work than I ever imagined--we had been under the surface for around ten hours.

Back at the entrance room, we gathered all our gear and carried ourselves out into the fresh night air, then collapsed in a pile. Head to foot we were coated in sticky, poo-like cave mud. We were exhausted, filthy, and radiant at our accomplishment.

To welcome us back, the outside world rained.

The fresh air was pure heaven. But it was 1 AM, and we all had lives to get back to, which we had completely forgotten about for a brief time. In the cave, nothing else seemed to exist.

I will not lie--at times, I wondered why the heck we were there or why it was enjoyable to crawl around in freezing mud amongst the bat poop. And even now I'm not entirely sure I can answer that.

Except because. . . adventure.

--Ophir Nothing

Riding Solo

The older I get, the more often I seem to run into a particular barrier with my adventuring. Occasional day trips are one thing, but planning multi-day, complicated trips is quite another. I'm pretty sure there must be a mathematical equation somewhere that calculates the percentage of difficulty as multiplied by number of people coming on the trip.

And it looks something like this.

That's right--14 people is 20,000%. Actually, that doesn't sound too far off. . .

Anyway, this leads me to something I've been pondering. When it comes to getting out and doing things, I am a social outdoorswoman--I like to have company. However, I greatly prefer getting out and doing something fun by myself than sitting home bored.

That's my Bessie!

I first began to run into this problem with my motorcycling. I can rarely find anyone else to take trips with; therefore I spent a lot of time riding alone last summer. I was fine with it, although my mother probably gained a few new stress lines. When I broke down (once!) I was reliant on total strangers to help me out.

I was assisted by some amazing people in getting her running again, at least enough to limp home.If I had ridden with a partner, at the very least they could have given me a lift somewhere when I broke down, so of course, I was vulnerable riding alone (not to mention safety in numbers/visibility). I know these risks, and have decided to continue riding solo anyway.

Now, as I am slowly becoming a more experienced hiker, I am confronted by the same decision. Where do I draw the line with solo adventures?

I would love to say that my being a young woman has nothing to do with it--and it doesn't very often, but it does make me pause to think on occasion. On a recent camping trip with friends, some random strangers joined our group, got drunk and rowdy and hit on me pretty hard. I was okay with my friends there, but it was an interesting reminder that even out in the woods where you don't expect to run into people, you certainly can.

And then you can always push them into fires!

But no, my mind is less dominated by fears of hillbillies hiding behind trees, and more of twisting an ankle, facing off with a mountain lion/bear, or simply getting lost and facing exposure (most likely option). 

People like Aron Ralston are widely criticized--after the fact at least--for going out alone on their trips. But if they chose not to go alone, and waited for companions to be free to join them, they probably wouldn't be having those adventures at all. Ralston should have left a note then, they say, but I ask you, who would have been able to free him even if they had found him? One way or another that arm was coming off.

They're hungry for your arms. . .

And yet, if I backpack in the wilderness alone, even after informing friends and family (select ones anyway) if something goes wrong, I would be another Aron. Labeled an idiot, maybe even deserving of what I get.

It is a balance of risk versus reward. Is it worth it?

I know my decision about my motorcycle already. But as I tackle bigger things, I do have to remind myself to ask, where do I draw the line?

Extra ordinary

Epic adventures are fantastic, of course, but most of what makes up our lives lies in between. They are the spices of life, adding that necessary flair, but meaningless without the cake they are sprinkled on.

Cake is picking up your phone to call your friend and invite them on a walk, only to find that they are calling you at that exact moment for the same reason. Cake is hiking up a short trail on a warm spring evening and enjoying the beauty of the sunset over the distant mountains, just enjoying one another's easy company.

It is squeezing one free hour into a day of studying to run around in a park and kick a soccerball back and forth rather badly. Meeting up every week with people you love just to share dinner together. Sometimes, it is sitting through the same dull lecture every day with someone and occasionally rolling your eyes at each other.

Making a new meal you've never made before, wearing an outfit that makes you feel fancy. Dropping all your worries for a few minutes to help someone out.

Running across a new flower!

These things might not seem like adventure. My life hardly feels very exciting when I spend a whole week cloistered in the library writing page after page of essays. And individually they might not be worth writing home about, but life is made up of a billion tiny little parts that make it so. One small event--sharing a joke with a stranger, getting to pet a new dog--can unexpectedly make you soar.

Life, of course, is an adventure. . . what was yours today?

Nothin, just sniffin around. . .

9,000 Feet, No Plane

*This is my experience from the previous summer, but I never did a proper write-up of it, so here it is: my first time skydiving.

I was about to go skydiving. Holy shit. I was freaked out for a while, but I settled into a calm once it became clear we had hours to wait after arriving at the small, unassuming building by the takeoff point. Those hours made my fellow jumpers impatient, but just allowed me to work my nerves out.

It had been a somewhat last minute decision, at least for me. During the pages of paperwork we had to fill out, I hesitated just a moment before filling in "Yes" after the statement "You are doing this of your own free will, not under coercion from any other party." It wasn't strictly true--my friend had messaged me "You are skydiving on August 25th and I made a deposit for you," after we only briefly discussed the possibility beforehand, so I didn't have much choice.

As we waited, a bunch of old skydiver dudes had a party on the lawn and got drunk and sang songs like a ragtag crew of pirates. They cheered on and/or critiqued the skydivers who came down before us--people who started out as incredibly tiny dots in the sky and hurtled earthbound. I wasn't sure if their presence made me more nervous or less.

Can you see them?

We had arrived around noon, and as the hours passed I found myself getting incredibly jumpy every time I watched another landing. My adrenaline shot up as I (impossibly) tried to imagine what it was going to be like. Hint: you won't know what it's like to leap out of a plane 9,000 ft in the air until you have done it.

Finally, I watched the first of our group to go. We all jumped in pairs, as the size of the plane dictated, and there were seven of us. For some reason, watching people I knew tumble through the sky made me lose my fear. Either that or my body's reserves of adrenaline were just completely sapped.

Either way, I was more eager than nervous when my jumping partner Mel and I jumpsuited up for our flight. Mine was a fancy embroidered wedding jumpsuit, which according to my instructor "didn't work out."
My instructor turned out to be a #1 badass (unsurprising when you consider his profession, I suppose.) He was the good looking 30-year-old daredevil "Robin", who I would later find out liked to ditch his parachute for those flying-squirrel wingsuits. This jump was little more than a morning commute to him, fear-wise.

I'd developed quite a mouth on me after the bear crew field season, and as we walked out to the plane I apologized "if I kinda cuss a lot. . . " and he laughed his ass off. "You better be sorry," he said, "I am a delicate flower."

I enthusiastically climbed into the teeny, tiny compartment of the plane that was for us. It was unbelievably small, and we wedged our legs together in order to fit. As the little plane rose smoothly into the sky, we attempted to chat over the roar of the engine. The takeoff and ascent was fantastic and not scary at all--the scenery around us, the mountains of Glacier National Park in the distance, it was so beautiful all I could do was look.

Should come with warning: SMALLER THAN APPEARS

Robin and I had been chatting so casually, I'd almost forgotten our purpose (other than a lazy, lovely plane ride) until he got up on his knees and started doing up his harness straps. I peered out the window of the plane down to the ground and felt an impending sense of doom.

With some tight maneuvering in our limited space, I shuffled backward into Robin and he hooked us up together, my back to his front. We hovered in that position for a few minutes, rather intimately--I could feel the movement of his chest breathing against my back, and he spoke directly into my ear. (You didn't see me minding this a bit.) It was go time, and the first pair of jumpers, Mel and her instructor (who I had watched sleep all the way up to this point) made their awkward shuffle toward the door. I watched them, paralyzed.

"You ready to have the wildest fucking day of your life?!" Robin asked. I grinned and pumped my fist in the air, shouting "Hell yeah, I'm fucking ready!" even though inside I was not so sure. I half-wondered if I would change my mind and wedge myself in the door of the plane, refusing to come out.

When the door of the plane came open, allowing the rushing cold air in, my previously forgotten adrenaline shot up, my thoughts wiped away. All I could do was react to Robin's commands. I watched Mel swing her legs out of the plane, and next thing she was sucked downward out of sight, whirling away into nothing but air.

No time to think, fortunately--it was my turn. I scootched awkwardly over with Robin to the door, then as per instructions swung one foot out of the plane to a large silver peg. The wind immediately wanted to pull my foot off the peg, but Robin told me to put down my other foot. Knowing I was turning over all control to him now, I did.

There wasn't even enough time to wonder "when?" before he'd flung us both out of the plane, and we tumbled in a big old somersault through the sky and I screamed one long "fuuuuuuuuck!" as I fell.
I kept my arms crossed over my chest in freefall position until he gave me the signal by tapping my arms, and I opened them wide, giving him two widespread thumbs up that he probably couldn't see as we hurtled down. As he'd promised, Robin put his head down by mine and gave a little finger wave to see how I was doing, and I screamed back "hiiiii!"

Everything was a blur except for the far-off mountains on the horizon, which were crystal clear. My eyes watered ridiculously until I heard our chute slip out behind us. We were jolted hard, twice, and then the roar in my ears stopped. The falling stopped. The world, and my mind, opened up again and it was serene. It felt right somehow to be up at 5,000 feet looking down at everything below. Robin showed me how to change directions by pulling on two yellow cords, and let me steer for a few minutes.

After five impossibly fast minutes, we descended for the ground.

I lifted my feet for the landing and we slid home--safe!--and lay in a tangled pile. As soon as Robin unbuckled me, I got up and ran to Mel to have a giant, adrenaline-spurred hug. Then I bounced back over to Robin and we did a double high five, both grinning like idiots. He said "that was fun!" and it sounded like he meant it. He loosened my leg straps so I could walk proudly back with him.

Moments after the epic hug.

After that, it was (of course) easy watching my other companions make their jumps. They were all people I'd met on the bear crew and would probably never see again. A few months ago, I would never have guessed I would be skydiving with these people. Life is funny that way.

The jump was a great distraction from my sadness at the field season ending, and a great way to sum up the whole summer experience of trying something new and conquering fear. How can I back down from anything now that I've been launched out of a plane 9,000 feet up?

Skydiving ended up being something I would recommend everyone do at least once. Here's an awesome place to do it: http://www.skydivelostprairie.com