TR: Onyx Cave

[mrbrejcha]

The weather wasn’t cooperating so it was a good time to go underground. We arrived at the trailhead with snow coming in sideways. We hopped out of the truck and quickly began the hike. We scrambled up a steep hill, it warmed us up. The wind was letting up, but not the snow. After a half hour or so we arrived at the cave’s entrance. We scrambled in a little ways to get out of the wind and snow. We took a little break and got our lamps and helmets out.
The cave starts off with a choice… up or down. We decided on up. A fun 20 foot climb led to some fun exploring and scrambling. Once we were up the climb the cold air was gone. There are some cool features and lots of tasty bacon. We poked around for an hour or so. There were lots of fun squeezes, climbs, slippin’,slidin’, dust….and bats. After we explored everything we could fit into, we headed back to the entrance.
A short break to munch some food then we headed down into the lower section. We headed down a small chimney/crack for what seemed like forever. It just kept dropping and dropping. Eventually we hit a floor of sorts. A brilliant thought crossed my mind at this point…”We get to climb up everything we just slid down!!!” Might at well make it worth it.
We explored around until we found more ways to keep dropping. We found a few nice features and lots of fun scrambling. One down climb stuck in my…well…
We were at a nice rest spot and it was my turn to climb through the next hole. I started sliding down on my back, my feet were dangling in the air and I couldn’t turn my head far enough to see what I was dangling over. I kept in chimneying and sliding my way down, inch by inch. Then I slowed way down, and then stopped. “What is this odd pain I’m feeling?” . I hadn’t felt this since my sister was bigger than me all those years ago. My pants had snagged on a small horn of rock, as I slid down my pants slid up. By the time I realized what was going on, I was dangling by my under-roos, for all I knew, over a bottomless pit. I couldn’t do much about it. I tried to wriggle out of the atomic cave wedgie, but couldn’t because I was laughing too hard at my absurd predicament.
After a nightmarish struggle I was free and finished climbing down. We reached the lowest point we could go and it was time to turn around. I’m guessing we went down about 150’ feet, so we got to go back up 150’! It’s so easy sliding down a chimney, but going back up takes some work. Lots of grunting, cursing and wiggling later we were back at the bottom of the first down climb. We could feel the cold air coming in and remembered it was snowing outside! We chimneyed up the final 50 or so feet and we were back at the entrance. The snow had let up but it was cold! We hopped down the hill, I took a sweet digger. We got to the truck, undusted, and headed for home.

[jumar]

Sounds like fun! I haven't been down in the lower section. Glad you guys checked it out.

[millsclimber]

Sounds like fun. It's a lot of exercise to get up there, but worth it. I haven't been farther than about 10' down the bottom end. I kicked a bat down there then decided I didn't want to chimney for hours. But nice work on getting all the way down there.

[JONBOYLEMON]

Glad it worked out. I was tempted to invite myself as I live in AF but after seeing the weather I decided to to sleep in vs climbing up there in a blizzard. Sounds like you had a great time.

Do you keep track how long it took to explore upper and lower section in total???

[tmaag11]

I live right behind this cave and i have been up there plenty of times. I havent gone down the lower section. does anyone know a specific time going down and if it opens up ever