Lava tube! Laaavaaa tuuuuuuuube

[gement]

Washington State has one of the best publicly accessible lava tubes, Ape Cave.

I'm going! Along with J and corivax, who is kind enough to drive

Comments

[randomdreams]

My reasonably extensive spelunking experience says: HELMET. hardhat. hardshell bike helmet. Something. I don't care how large the tube is. You hit your head a lot underground. Duct-tape flashlight to side. Lanyard on flashlight in your hand for the three thousand times you'll drop it.

Does the food prohibition stretch to water bottles? because gatorade isn't as good as food but it's better than nothing.

[randomdreams]

note real headlamp is way better, but duct-taped flashlight got me through more caves than I can count.

[gfish]

Hrm. There are only a few sections where the ceiling is low enough you could clonk your head, iirc, but it's not a terrible idea. The big fear I had doing the upper section was just a twisted/sprained/broken ankle, since you're climbing over piles of wet and slippery boulders most of the way. One wrong move and it would suddenly become a very bad day.

But I have 3 Attoparsec-branded hardhats, if you want to borrow them. :)

[randomdreams]

Within the confines of the largest single underground room in Colorado, I've hit my head so hard that even with a helmet I saw sparky things that weren't supposed to be there.
The lava tubes I've been in have been vastly friendlier than my usual speleological encounters, but, man, all it takes is one misjudged move.

And yeah, twisted ankles can be potentially deadly. Again, advantage lava tube, since EMT's can usually get in there and get you back out.

[thewronghands]

...now I am wondering if Seattle Mountain Rescue does caves too. Bet they do; they do all our high angle technical rope rescues, so it's probably similar. (That's way out of King County jurisdiction, but we get a bunch of cross-county assist calls since we're the biggest population center. Now I'm interested and will ask at next month's training!)

[randomdreams]

There's a ton of specialized training stuff for subterranean rescue. I looked into doing this at one point. It seemed cool, but lots of work for rare utility.

[gement]

I would be highly entertained to borrow your hardhats.

I work downtown business hours and bus everywhere. If we wanted to do an evening meal, Tuesday is free. Otherwise, a drive-by at my house or coffee date drop-off would work great.