Cave Day 2013

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.  

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.  

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.

Tyler working deep

The Slide