Deathcricket
01-14-2006, 10:04 AM
Greetings all,
Just thought I'd introduce myself. Really love the website and the wealth of info provided. I just moved to utah (St. George) from San Diego recently (April 05). Moved out here mainly for the wife to be closer to her mom, and the fact that we could actually afford a house out here for half the amount we were paying on just rent back in SD, hehe. So financially and domestically Utah makes a lot more sense.
This might sound weird, but I've never been into outdoor activities. Living in San Diego, we have these beautiful beaches. but unlike everyone else, I never would enjoy them. I would always be concerned about getting mugged by a crack addict, stepping on a syringe in the sand, worrying about my car getting broken into, etc. Crap like that was always happening around me.
So anyways, I moved out here and a strange thing happened. I would take the dogs out for a walk after work and not have to bring pepper spray. I took the loaded weapon out of the nightstand and packed it away (my next door neighbor was raped in the middle of the night in 03, no way I'm letting that happen to my wife). I basically realized once it was gone how much fear my wife and I were living in. Once we both "relaxed" and started looking around nature snuck in hooked us.
Probably too much background, sorry. So when we got out here we started noticing these beautiful rock formations. I started taking the dogs on walks to the higher places nearby and looking around. That was my intro to hiking. Then we (me and the wifey) went up to Zion, I cannot even use words to even describe the beauty in that place. We initially just drove through, then we started hiking to the easy places Like first mile of Temple of Zinewaba (sp?), Emerald Pools, lower, middle, and finally upper. Then we graduated to Hidden Canyon.
If any of you have been to hidden canyon, you will know that there is a spot where the actual trail ends and you can keep walking up the dry riverbed. We tried it (we called it offroading) and loved it! Then we went past this freestanding arch and the trail started getting rocky. this was our intro to rock climbing (scrambling). A couple hours later we arrive at this amazing waterfall where the water would freeze on it's way down and land in a huge pool of ice cubes! I've never seen anything like it in my life. our next goal was to get to the top of it. We started climbing but realized it was beyond our current skill level once we got to the middle portion. That and we were getting fatigued and scratched being such noobs. After that we tried a couple local places like Red Cliffs and Snow Canyon. In Snow Canyon I saw something something that hooked me even worse.
My wife and I were hiking Snow Canyon one day and we saw a sign that said "lave tubes". We went to check it out and saw the opening to a really cool looking cave. Sadly, this is where my wife chickened out. She wasn't down with getting that dirty. I think she might also be claustrophobic, not sure. But my brother is coming out to visit this weekend and is very exited. I go out and buy us 2 headlamps and 4 flashlights (2 for each), a rope, and that's about it. We both agree that if it even looks mildly dangerous we'll just find something else to do. We enter our first cave.
The opening to the lava tubes in Snow Canyon are really cool. Sadly they just don't go in that far. the first opening we went into was huge, but it ended about 50 feet down. There was a small crevice that it appeared people were crawling into, but not having helmets or any previous experience we both agreed to pass on anything remotely dangerous. Our $10 LED lights weren't really doing a good job of illumination also. So we started back out. On our way out just before crawling up the 10 foot overhang/exit, we discovered another tunnel leading to the south we had previously missed. we gave that a go and were pleasantly surprised as it led to several lower chambers. Once we got out of the sunlight areas and total blackness, our $10 LED headlamps also started working perfect! We ended up spending an hour or so exploring the lava tubes, saw some bats and had a total blast.
Later that night we were re-living our adventures over dinner at my mother in laws house, and she mentions an article she read in St. George magazine about the "Bloomington Caves". She finds the article, and low and behold it has directions on how to get there. We plan a trip for the next day. The next morning, we wake up early and start heading out. Not being a nature dude, my car is a Honda Civic hatchback. The article says it's a dirt road but this ends up being the dirt road from hell. It is washed out in so many places I get stuck several times. We end up putting rocks in several ditches but arrive there in an hour instead of planned 10 mins being only 4 miles. But we're there at least and ready to rock! We park the car and begin looking for the entrance of the cave.
Now keep in mind this is our 2nd cave experience. We read that this is Utah's 4th largest cave and we are looking for an entrance similar to the lava tubes. The directions in the magazine are perfect but neglected to mention the entrance is a hole 2 feet wide by one foot high. And on top of that it's at a right angle, so unless you put your head in there you would never even know it was a hole in the first place. The only reason we even found it was I looked at a rock and said to my bro "Look - some jackass spread drywall mud all over that rock, why do people like to make messes everywhere?" He said "maybe he thinks he's a drywall mud artist, haha" Then as I looked at the base of the rock I noticed it was very worn down. So my bro gets of his hands and knees, takes look inside, and then disappears in to the mountain. We must have walked by that spot like 10-15 times and felt like total fools for not checking it out, but then it make the "discovery" so much cooler. We didn't feel bad for long though.
The Bloomington cave is simply amazing! It goes on and on. We were initially very concerned we might get lost, but someone had gone in there before us and marked the ceiling with these bright green tags and named nearly every single room. They had also assigned room numbers in descending orde,r so to go back you simply had to find room #1 again, making it very easy to navigate. Several other people had already gone in and spray painted arrows on the main trails, making it even easier to find our way. Despite a recent cleanup, there was also an extreme amount of graffiti in the cave, so getting lost is nearly impossible. We climbed down until we got tired, ate lunch, then left the way we came in. We would like to have spent more time in there, but I told my wife I would be back by a certain time, and if we weren't then "something was wrong". We had lost 2 hours trying to find the place also. But there would always be more trips now that we had located it.
I've since gone back 3 times. Once more with my bro when he came out for Christmas which was awesome. And another time with a friend that turned out cool too. But I made the mistake of inviting some co-workers once that didn't turn out so well. One member of our group brought what must have been like 30 lbs of water. And he got tired about 45 mins into it and we had to turn back. Then after we got out, no one wanted to go back in, lol. Oh well.
So that's me in a nutshell. My name is Jacob but I tend to go by Deathcricket. It's my nickname from when I used to play this video game called starcraft back in the 90's and it kind of stuck with me. I got a handheld GPS for Christmas (garmen Legend) and am very interested in trying out Geocaching but have not yet. Want to do some serious rock climbing with ropes and all that, but have not tried also. My next purchase will probably be some of the slick little special shoes i see all the rock climbers wearing. Then when the weather gets warmer I'll head out to the local hotspots and ask if i can tag along to learn and see if it's right for me. I also purchased a mountain bike and have been riding it to work to build up my stamina, well not this last month, it's been pretty darn cold in the mornings.
Very glad to be in Utah, where everyone is nice. Hope to meet some of you on the trails or whatever. One last bit of personal info. My wife and I have been trying to have a child for 5 years now. We found out recently that she is 9 weeks, woohoo! Might have to curb the extremer stuff for a bit, but that's ok. those rocks will be there when we're ready.
Late
Jacob
-Deathcricket-
P.S Here's a pic of me and the wifey at Weeping rock. If you see us on the trails, say HI!
Just thought I'd introduce myself. Really love the website and the wealth of info provided. I just moved to utah (St. George) from San Diego recently (April 05). Moved out here mainly for the wife to be closer to her mom, and the fact that we could actually afford a house out here for half the amount we were paying on just rent back in SD, hehe. So financially and domestically Utah makes a lot more sense.
This might sound weird, but I've never been into outdoor activities. Living in San Diego, we have these beautiful beaches. but unlike everyone else, I never would enjoy them. I would always be concerned about getting mugged by a crack addict, stepping on a syringe in the sand, worrying about my car getting broken into, etc. Crap like that was always happening around me.
So anyways, I moved out here and a strange thing happened. I would take the dogs out for a walk after work and not have to bring pepper spray. I took the loaded weapon out of the nightstand and packed it away (my next door neighbor was raped in the middle of the night in 03, no way I'm letting that happen to my wife). I basically realized once it was gone how much fear my wife and I were living in. Once we both "relaxed" and started looking around nature snuck in hooked us.
Probably too much background, sorry. So when we got out here we started noticing these beautiful rock formations. I started taking the dogs on walks to the higher places nearby and looking around. That was my intro to hiking. Then we (me and the wifey) went up to Zion, I cannot even use words to even describe the beauty in that place. We initially just drove through, then we started hiking to the easy places Like first mile of Temple of Zinewaba (sp?), Emerald Pools, lower, middle, and finally upper. Then we graduated to Hidden Canyon.
If any of you have been to hidden canyon, you will know that there is a spot where the actual trail ends and you can keep walking up the dry riverbed. We tried it (we called it offroading) and loved it! Then we went past this freestanding arch and the trail started getting rocky. this was our intro to rock climbing (scrambling). A couple hours later we arrive at this amazing waterfall where the water would freeze on it's way down and land in a huge pool of ice cubes! I've never seen anything like it in my life. our next goal was to get to the top of it. We started climbing but realized it was beyond our current skill level once we got to the middle portion. That and we were getting fatigued and scratched being such noobs. After that we tried a couple local places like Red Cliffs and Snow Canyon. In Snow Canyon I saw something something that hooked me even worse.
My wife and I were hiking Snow Canyon one day and we saw a sign that said "lave tubes". We went to check it out and saw the opening to a really cool looking cave. Sadly, this is where my wife chickened out. She wasn't down with getting that dirty. I think she might also be claustrophobic, not sure. But my brother is coming out to visit this weekend and is very exited. I go out and buy us 2 headlamps and 4 flashlights (2 for each), a rope, and that's about it. We both agree that if it even looks mildly dangerous we'll just find something else to do. We enter our first cave.
The opening to the lava tubes in Snow Canyon are really cool. Sadly they just don't go in that far. the first opening we went into was huge, but it ended about 50 feet down. There was a small crevice that it appeared people were crawling into, but not having helmets or any previous experience we both agreed to pass on anything remotely dangerous. Our $10 LED lights weren't really doing a good job of illumination also. So we started back out. On our way out just before crawling up the 10 foot overhang/exit, we discovered another tunnel leading to the south we had previously missed. we gave that a go and were pleasantly surprised as it led to several lower chambers. Once we got out of the sunlight areas and total blackness, our $10 LED headlamps also started working perfect! We ended up spending an hour or so exploring the lava tubes, saw some bats and had a total blast.
Later that night we were re-living our adventures over dinner at my mother in laws house, and she mentions an article she read in St. George magazine about the "Bloomington Caves". She finds the article, and low and behold it has directions on how to get there. We plan a trip for the next day. The next morning, we wake up early and start heading out. Not being a nature dude, my car is a Honda Civic hatchback. The article says it's a dirt road but this ends up being the dirt road from hell. It is washed out in so many places I get stuck several times. We end up putting rocks in several ditches but arrive there in an hour instead of planned 10 mins being only 4 miles. But we're there at least and ready to rock! We park the car and begin looking for the entrance of the cave.
Now keep in mind this is our 2nd cave experience. We read that this is Utah's 4th largest cave and we are looking for an entrance similar to the lava tubes. The directions in the magazine are perfect but neglected to mention the entrance is a hole 2 feet wide by one foot high. And on top of that it's at a right angle, so unless you put your head in there you would never even know it was a hole in the first place. The only reason we even found it was I looked at a rock and said to my bro "Look - some jackass spread drywall mud all over that rock, why do people like to make messes everywhere?" He said "maybe he thinks he's a drywall mud artist, haha" Then as I looked at the base of the rock I noticed it was very worn down. So my bro gets of his hands and knees, takes look inside, and then disappears in to the mountain. We must have walked by that spot like 10-15 times and felt like total fools for not checking it out, but then it make the "discovery" so much cooler. We didn't feel bad for long though.
The Bloomington cave is simply amazing! It goes on and on. We were initially very concerned we might get lost, but someone had gone in there before us and marked the ceiling with these bright green tags and named nearly every single room. They had also assigned room numbers in descending orde,r so to go back you simply had to find room #1 again, making it very easy to navigate. Several other people had already gone in and spray painted arrows on the main trails, making it even easier to find our way. Despite a recent cleanup, there was also an extreme amount of graffiti in the cave, so getting lost is nearly impossible. We climbed down until we got tired, ate lunch, then left the way we came in. We would like to have spent more time in there, but I told my wife I would be back by a certain time, and if we weren't then "something was wrong". We had lost 2 hours trying to find the place also. But there would always be more trips now that we had located it.
I've since gone back 3 times. Once more with my bro when he came out for Christmas which was awesome. And another time with a friend that turned out cool too. But I made the mistake of inviting some co-workers once that didn't turn out so well. One member of our group brought what must have been like 30 lbs of water. And he got tired about 45 mins into it and we had to turn back. Then after we got out, no one wanted to go back in, lol. Oh well.
So that's me in a nutshell. My name is Jacob but I tend to go by Deathcricket. It's my nickname from when I used to play this video game called starcraft back in the 90's and it kind of stuck with me. I got a handheld GPS for Christmas (garmen Legend) and am very interested in trying out Geocaching but have not yet. Want to do some serious rock climbing with ropes and all that, but have not tried also. My next purchase will probably be some of the slick little special shoes i see all the rock climbers wearing. Then when the weather gets warmer I'll head out to the local hotspots and ask if i can tag along to learn and see if it's right for me. I also purchased a mountain bike and have been riding it to work to build up my stamina, well not this last month, it's been pretty darn cold in the mornings.
Very glad to be in Utah, where everyone is nice. Hope to meet some of you on the trails or whatever. One last bit of personal info. My wife and I have been trying to have a child for 5 years now. We found out recently that she is 9 weeks, woohoo! Might have to curb the extremer stuff for a bit, but that's ok. those rocks will be there when we're ready.
Late
Jacob
-Deathcricket-
P.S Here's a pic of me and the wifey at Weeping rock. If you see us on the trails, say HI!