Blowhole and adventure through west desert trip

Saturday, April 8th 2006 - Cami Litchford

Location: blowhole cave and west desert Trip Leader: Rob Cranney On Trip: Rob Cranney, Thorpe Cox, Rachael Keske, Cami Litchford The four of us leaped into Rob's Monster Truck early saturday morning, and began our journey to Blowhole Cave. To avoid the Allen's Ranch Do-Da's, we took an alternate route and eventually found the hill where the cave was located. Rob pulled his truck right to the entrance, we got our gear on, and Rob made the first descent into Blowhole Cave. I followed with the second rope, while Thorpe and Rachael came afterwards. When I got to the 200' mark, Rob mentioned that there was a strange odor in the cave.... like something had died. He was then attacked by a huge flesh eating fly. When Rob had descended further, the monsterous creature went after me. When Rob and I got off rope, we soon found what was making the lovely stench. not one, but three dead rabbits were lying near the register. Two of them were still fresh. One had its eyes open and appeared to be looking right at us. Rob and I waited below the stinky section, to see what Rachael and Thorpe thought of the rabbits. Rachael came into sight and we shouted "watch out for the rabbits!" She then replied with "what rabbits... eeeekkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!" It was pretty hillarious. We then went to the bottom of the cave. We skipped the mine part, because we did not have nough rope. Rob soon became the comedy relief, when we noticed that he had torn a huge hole in th back of his pants. He then told a ghost story and tried to Scare Rachael. After a while, we decided to head back up. The cave was really warm and humid, so we had to take many breaks (at least I did) to cool off. I was the first to go up the slippery, mud slope, and scared everyone when I made a loud shriek. I had only slid a couple of inches, but i was sliding toward the mine entrance, and it scared me a bit. I then realized that it would take more than a couple of inches to put me into danger, so I recovered and headed up the slope, followed by going up the rope. When we all were out of the cave, we ate lunch and headed off to an old train tunnel. We took a walk through it and then went over it. Thorpe showed us where the old telegraph wires were, and then Rob drove through it, and went up a really steep, and scary hill really fast not once, but twice. Our next stop was the Copper leaf mine Shaft (or what some cavers call the "Great Deep" mine shaft). It was strange standing over a 2,000'+ deep hole. Rob then told us how cool it would be to come back at night and throw a huge fireball down it. We agreed with how cool it would be. The last stop for the day was an old mining town. We walked around the old buildings, and even found some old papers with employee's names on them. We also tried to figure out what each building was, and what it would have been like to live there. Overall, it was a great trip. The End