“Rope!”

“Rope!”

The instructor’s precautionary exclamation echoes momentarily before it is grabbed and swallowed by the lightless abyss that awaits my group’s decent.  The descent–300 feet.

As I prepare my harness ad rappelling equipment, the thought of lowering myself 300 feet into Earth’s dusty entrails on a single rope makes me laugh aloud.  It’s this kind of adventure-bred lunacy that attracts me to backcountry activities. 

“Willie: you’re up.”

Some last second safety checks and I’m “on rope” and ready to rappel.  After several minutes of steep and technical reverse walking I arrive at an exact point in the wild cave’s anatomy that separates the cavers from the spelunkers: that point is where the light ends and the darkness begins.   And it just so happens that in this particular cave the filtering point require a 120 foot free-hanging rappel into a subterranean arena of imposing darkness.  The halogen beam barely escapes my headlamp before submitting to the massive room’s insatiable appetite for light, rendering my efforts to survey secondary cave formations futile.

My feet soon convince my hands that the floor is near and the absolute grip of my brake hand on the rope weakens, setting me gently on the surprisingly soft beach-like sand of the cave floor.  Off rope and in a safe position, I slither out of my harness and roam until the entire group is ready to advance its underground exploration and shed light on the geological wonders that lay waiting ahead in the dark corners of Deep Cave…

(Willie Oakley, Semester in the Southwest Two)