Again Earlier this fall Heather and I took a group of younglife kids caving. Caving always turns out to be an awesome experiance. The mixture of adventure, hard work, the beautiful surrondings, and great friendships cannot be re-created anywhere else then the YL Cranbrook Caving Trip. Hopefully you will enjoy all the pictures and perhaps get a chance to take a glimpse into this amazing adventure.
The YoungLife Caving Camp is usually only a two day adventure. The first day we leave from cranbrook very early in the morning, then we drive to the Crowsnest Pass. This is where the first leg of our adventure starts. 4X4ing in the Canadian Rockies.
Jake's Little-Big Rig that got us to the Trail-head. You got to love a suzuki!
One of the many, many creek crossings that had to be made to get to the trail head. Thank-goodness for 4X4s.
Here is our sleepy group rarrin' and ready to go at the trail head. From here we have a steep 2-3 hour hike to our Camp site.
There are 2 different caves that we usually explore on our trips. The first is called Cleft which is a smaller cave that goes right through the mountain. Cleft has narrow hallways with tight, ice-walls that windthrough the limestone mountain.
Looking up towards Cleft.
The Winding tunnels inside cleft. The walls are very icy and often have little ice blobs all over them.
One of the highlights of Cleft Cave is having to squeeze into this little hole. It requires the spelunker to lie down on his or her back and push with their feet. Although not very long it can be a bit of a challenge for most people. However, everyone is very proud to overcome tis challenge and it often sticks in the mind as a great life experiance.
This is Hunter entering Cleft.
Let me introduce Hunter...Hunter really helped make this trip happen. He helped go the extra distance to collect water, firewood and was a huge support for everybuddy. His awesome presence and attitude added so much warmth to our group. Thanks for being such a great leader Hunter.
After a long day of hiking and caving we decided to do some eating and get some sleep. We had another big day ahead of us with Gargantua as our destination. Gargantua is a huge cave system with large Caverns. One of the Rooms is the size of an olympic sized gymnasium. Most of the hallways could easily fit a semi truck through them. Gargantua has multiple pots or holes in it. Many of these pots are 50 + ft drops. so care and attention to the maps is needed.
On the trail to Gargantua. We had to go up and over a saddle then around the back side of a mountain.
On the trail towards the upper entrance of Gargantua. There are 3 entrances to the cave.
I decided to break this post up into two parts because the last one proved to be too big for all the pictures I wanted to post. On the Trip up to Gargantua our group stood on top of the world with nothing around us but open sky and the mass of giant rock that had been there for thousands of years.
Daniel and Steve.
Simply put, Heather and I love this. Infact we live for this, hanging out with High school kids in God's wilderness talking about his great love for us. This is real Adventure. This is real Joy. This is a glimpse of what Real life was supposed to be.
