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| Tyler, Cooper, Tim and Jeff in the Cave |
Every year in Jackson, our crew of friends has several traditions that are cant miss. From "
Stoked to be Alive day", "
To Pond skim day" to this one, "Cave Day". Cave Day involves digging down more than 20 feet sometimes to find the tiny 3 foot wide entrance to "The Cave" The cave which sits near the start of the 4 Pines hike and the bottom of Breakneck was found over 10 years ago by
Jeff Annetts in the summer while on a hike. Since then I have been a part of Cave Days since I meet Jeff when I moved to Jackson. We have a relatively good idea where the mouth is located by pacing off from a certain tree, while keeping your self in line with another. The mouth being only a few feet wide, we start digging, and digging and digging. Depending on snow fall for the year the mouth can be between 15-25 feet down. After our hole is 6-10 feet down we start probing to see if we hit rock or can find the entrance. This year it took us just over an hour of 4 of us digging to strike rock with our probe which is almost 10 feet long. Within another hour we had found the entrance! Our pacing was spot on.
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| Tyler and Cooper move snow |
Once inside the cave opens up into a vast room that you can stand and move around in. Several other smaller rooms can be accessed by crawling on hands and knees through the darkness. Once we made it into the cave and were able to push snow into the cave rather than moving it the 20 feet up, we made a circular slide similar to a toilet bowl, so you cloud slide feet or headfirst into the tiny cave entrance. Additionally of course we built a jump to jump over the hole and the entrance to The Cave.
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| Jeff Annetts flips the Cave |
This year the crew was relatively small with several normal cave day crew members out of town on various filming missions, or on the injured list. This year
Tim Swartz,
Jeff Annetts,
Cooper Kalhlenberg and I were the only ones to rally. Overall even though key members were absent it was a great day with friends digging holes in the snow, cause what adult male doesn't love digging holes, especially if they lead to a cool underground cave. More pictures can be seen on my
Facebook page.
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| Tyler working deep |
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| The Slide |
About 4 weeks ago my buddy and fellow Fischer Skis athlete Tim Swartz took a nasty fall in the Triple Cliff Zone of Cody Peak just outside the JHMR boundaries. We were filming for an upcoming Fischer Team Video and Tim misjudged his line and took a nasty fall that left him a a baldly sprained ankle and LCL. Also one of his skis became lodged mid cliff band. We were able to see if but not get to it. So yesterday was Tim's first day back on skis and we decided to bring climbing gear and repeal down to retrieve his ski. Its been very warm in Jackson for the last week or so and some of the massive cornices that linger atop Cody Peak have been falling apart. We set up a T anchor well back from the edge, and I was able to belay Tim down to retrieve his ski. It was a fun adventure in 50 degree heat that winter has turned into in Jackson. There are more pictures on my Facebook page.
