Erin, George, Lee and I (Ben) went to Camp's Gulf cave on Saturday
night with the intent of setting up camp near the entrance,
spending most of the evening in the cave, and then crashing in our
tents. We ended up getting a late start (usually happens on Ben
time) so we did not get to the cave till after dark. It was 27
degrees outside when we arrived to set up camp by the head lights on
Lee's vehicle.

We set up camp with frozen fingers, made a fire that
just never seemed quite big enough, and cooked some dinner while the temp just kept dropping. It was hard to get the spoonfuls of soup
and pasta past our chattering teeth, but we had fun anyway. After 2
hours of sitting pretty much in the fire to keep warm, we changed
and headed into the cave. At the bottom of the breakdown pile, we
shed our extra layers, so we would actually fit through the climb and
have warm clothes for the walk out. We started the climb and about
half way up the pile, it started to get warmer; what a blessing!

We went straight through to the 3rd room to check out a blowing lead
that George and I had found last year. We were hoping that this
would actually be the way to the supposed 4th room in Camp's Gulf.
The crawl got tighter and the wind picked up a bit, so it seemed that
we were on the right trail. George and Lee pushed on ahead for a little bit further, then Lee relayed down that he had come in a
room.......but that I might not fit through the last squeeze at the
top of the pile. But after a few minutes of trying to make myself
bend in new directions (I'm 6'4 - 225 lbs), I managed to get my
shoulders through!... then my hips took a little longer, but all of
me eventualy made it while Erin cheered me on.

The room was worth it. Tons of formations make it very different from the other rooms. By now we had been in the cave for 4 hours, normally not a a long time, but all of us had worked a full day and then driven 4 hours to the cave, so we were pretty beat. Gravity helped me when I had to squeeze back down. We were through in a flash. I took a short break in the 2nd room while some people went to check out the river. After that, we headed out.

It was 18 deg when we got back to camp. We grabbed a quick snack and climbed in our icy cold sleeping bags for a few hours of sleep. We had to sleep with our water bottles, so that we would have something to drink in the morning. I woke up in the morning when ice from the inside of the tent kept falling on my face. Before we started the drive back, Erin wanted to pick up where we had left off last trip and ridge walk in the valley. She had found something good and wanted to make sure that nobody else had found it yet, so she could have first dibbs. While she and George did that, Lee and I did some more exploring further up when I noticed steam blowing from behind some rocks. We climbed up to it and found a decent sized hole and lots of warm
air. We hope to take another trip back real soon, so that we can check
both leads out. ~Ben