Lava Tubing

All of our Christmas posse went caving today! Most of Christmas Eve was spent near Mount St Helens in the "Apes Cave" - a lava tunnel some 2.5(?)km through the rock and underground. My headlamp failed immediately before the start, but luckily C had another one in stock such that we all had a working lamp; highly necessary in an environment without daylight. Here are a few pictures of the day.

This is the whole crew, underground of course.

C doing a little climbing through the tunnel, there were numerous steps along the way that needed climbing over & ducking underneath ...

The cave contained a lot of weird & wonderful structures, both on the ground and overhead. Unfortunately, have no idea how the bottom picture came about, whether it was restricted by a flashlight or by my inability to keep the flash uncovered ... no idea. In any case, the picture is neat.

After about two hours in the cave, we were welcomed into a winterwonderland!