Ape Caves

We went with our friends, the Mahoney's, to the south side of Mt. St. Helens to a place called Ape caves. It was so much fun. I loved getting out and doing something different. It was a rainy weekend, but when we were out hiking around the rain stopped for a bit, and turned out to be a gorgeous day.

The ape caves are totally dark encolsed chute formed by lava a long time ago. We hiked through a nice forest trail, had lunch, and then descended into total darkness. I was worried about how the kids would do, but once given flashlights they were ready to go. The boys enjoyed it incredibly and we had try our best to keep up with them. In one part of the cave they got pretty far ahead to where we couldn't see their lights and someone walking the opposite way said "There's something you don't see everyday, two boys walking around in a cave." They were in heaven, able to be total boys.

It was a much more difficult endeavor than I had anticipated. Many portions of the hike are climbing over big huge boulders. Another difficult spot was decending down two straight walls of lava rock. One was 4 feet and the other 8. I was so glad we had friends to go with as I think it would have been near impossible to get down on our own. At one point we turned off all our flashlights and experienced total darkness. It was very disorienting and had I not stood still, I would have lost track of which way I was pointing. It was such a great day and something out of the ordinary to do.