I went camping in Switzerland. Signed up for caving. I was thinking - Carlsbad, yeah? Big caverns in the mountains. No. I crawled into a wet hole in the Earth. Nearly all of it was single-file. There were places we had to lean sideways and shimmy through diagonal crevices, with cold water ankle-high. Or crawl chest-down across a plank over a small pit filled with water, with the bulbous dome that dripped into it so close above that you had to turn your head to fit. At the end, we came down a length of rope, into an opening barely large enough to fit everybody. In one corner was another unassuming hole filled with water. The guide told us that divers had been down that narrow passageway, but could not find where it ended. Multiple people, of sound mind and body, had slid into that slick gouge in the bare stone, into frigid water, and gone as far as they could fit - and then had to come back, backwards. It was at this point the guide told us to turn off our lamps.
On a sunny day, in the breathtakingly gorgeous alps, surrounded in all directions by solid rock, is the only time I have experienced absolute darkness.
If you’re not in the American west… stick with hiking.
I woulda fuckin’ loved this experience.
I went camping in Switzerland. Signed up for caving. I was thinking - Carlsbad, yeah? Big caverns in the mountains. No. I crawled into a wet hole in the Earth. Nearly all of it was single-file. There were places we had to lean sideways and shimmy through diagonal crevices, with cold water ankle-high. Or crawl chest-down across a plank over a small pit filled with water, with the bulbous dome that dripped into it so close above that you had to turn your head to fit. At the end, we came down a length of rope, into an opening barely large enough to fit everybody. In one corner was another unassuming hole filled with water. The guide told us that divers had been down that narrow passageway, but could not find where it ended. Multiple people, of sound mind and body, had slid into that slick gouge in the bare stone, into frigid water, and gone as far as they could fit - and then had to come back, backwards. It was at this point the guide told us to turn off our lamps.
On a sunny day, in the breathtakingly gorgeous alps, surrounded in all directions by solid rock, is the only time I have experienced absolute darkness.
If you’re not in the American west… stick with hiking.