Good Things Come to Those Who Explore

Saturday could have been a total bust. In fact, it almost was. We wandered aimlessly for two hours, in the high dessert north of Las Vegas. It didn't matter that it was a beautiful day; we weren't out there to take in the sights. We had a purpose to our wandering. We were cave hunting. But, with the lack of proper approach directions and sheer amount of space we had to cover, our search wasn't going so well. Finding this elusive Pinnacle Cave was turning out to be no better than hunting for a needle in a haystack. We almost gave up. We had thoroughly scoured the mountainside with no luck, and the afternoon was fading fast.  Evening was quickly approaching, and our chances of finding this hole in the ground were waning. We were at our wits end, and knew it was nearing time to call it quits. We made one final sweep. And then... success.

Thanks to our late-day discovery, we knew we didn't have much time, so we didn't waste a moment.  We donned our harnesses, set up our ropes, and rappelled more than sixty feet into the bowels of the earth.  This brought us into a large chamber, from which we descended even further into the blackness.  The complete darkness and stillness that welcomed us was almost stifling.  It stood in such contrast to the world above.  If not for our headlamps, we wouldn't have been able to see a few feet in front of us.

Our next challenge was to squeeze our bodies through a hole so tight we gave it the moniker of "the birth canal".  As I watched the feet of my caving buddies disappear into the rock, I couldn't help but wonder what we were getting ourselves into.  They made it through safely into the next chamber, as did I, but this is where our journey to the center of the earth would end.  We found several other promising tunnels, but knew we didn't have time for further exploration.  Instead, we made our way back to the main chamber, ascended the sixty feet back up the rope (Which is no easy feat, I might add.), and found ourselves rejoined with the surface world.

We lucked out.  The day had gone from a near-bust to total success.  This is what I love about my trips to Las Vegas.  I never know what adventure will unfold.  And this adventure was totally worth the effort...