Caving in the Rat's Nest Cave with Canmore Cave Tours. I'm not sure how to log this since we were away from the parking lot for almost 5.5 hrs but caving doesn't always mean moving. At times, it means calling on more upper body strength than I have so that must count for something.
We started with a snowy, uphill hike on Grotto Mountain. Our group was 'Bent, his sister Mimi, her husband Frank, our niece Talia and nephew Leo (not with their parents) and me. Our excellent guide was Annie.
As we approached the cave, we made our way up a canyon that had ropes placed to help us along.
Near the entrance to the cave, we went under a tarp and put on the coveralls, kneepads and helmets that we'd carried up the hill.
Then we used a rope to pull ourselves up to the cave entrance - the narrow opening in the mountainside. This is one of the longest caves in Canada and it only has this one entrance.
Beside the entrance is a "Keep Out" sign warning that blasting from a nearby quarry might cause the cave roof to collapse. Right, I'd forgotten that part of the waiver.
Once inside, we were treated to a true wild cave experience. There are no walkways, no guardrails and no lights except headlamps. There are also no washrooms so we were advised not to carry water and to limit our breakfast coffee. (In an emergency, the guide can provide a container that must be carried out of the cave.)
Early on, we did a 20 m rappel. 'Bent went down first into total darkness, landing on lumpy, sloped rock. He then removed rappelling gear from each of us and sent it back up to the guide, who descended last. It was a pretty cool way to arrive into one of the larger chambers.
Soon we were doing squeezes through the narrow passages in the cave.
I get claustrophobic in elevators so I'd wondered how this would go. The more time I spent in there, the more natural it felt. It did require trust. The hardest part was that the light on my helmet rarely pointed in the direction I needed to see. If I was crawling on my stomach through a small passage, I couldn't easily see where to go so I didn't know which way to twist my body or aim my head.
A narrow passage called The Laundry Chute ended up being my favourite part. I went through most of it by sliding along on my back in a narrow, rocky tube with a downhill slope. I had to stop for 5 minutes in the middle because I ended up being the point of communication between our guide in the chamber at the end of the Chute and a member of our party who was stuck near the top. ('Bent ultimately helped haul him out of the hole and the guide went around to bring them the other way.)
A lot of the time we were in larger chambers and the biggest challenge was getting up or down slippery rock slopes. Sometimes we clipped into fixed ropes for safety. We were often on all fours as we scrambled up slippery rock.
Most chambers had multiple exits. Sometimes you didn't want to fall into the wrong exit.
There were some gorgeous formations.
After a stiff climb through a narrow passage, we reached the finish and hiked back down the mountain. What a fun day! Many thanks to Carbon's Offset for this suggestion.