Goshute Cave - Going In

CLAUSTROPHOBIA! That was my main fear when I told my wife's uncle Dan that I'd be up for the trip to Goshute cave. I've never been in a real cave. All of my experiences have led me to the tops of mountains not inside of them. I knew I didn't have big issues with claustrophobia, but I've felt mild to increasing anxiety in tight spaces before so knew I'd probably be ok, but didn't want to freak out or anything.

We left Orem at 7:30am and buckled up for the 3 1/2 hour drive. The Goshute cave is located about 70 miles southwest of Wendover, which lies on the Utah-Nevada border. If' you've never been to Utah, then you're probably unaware of Wendover. Its the home of Utah gambling. Literally just on the Nevada side of the border. The town is a testament to Utah gambling, there's no other reason for the town to exist. I understand that it used to be a way-point for people traveling across the desert. But now it's just a dirty miniature Las Vegas. Head out of the city and you'll find the Bonneville Speedway where all of the land speed records are made and broken each year. You'll also find some decent rock climbing in nearby mountains and Goshute cave, the reason for my visit.

We finally made it out to the trail-head for the short, but steep, 3/10 of a mile climb up to the cave entrance. I saw the big, round, black hole up near the top of the 500 ft. tall summit we would hike too and got a little excited. There were 3 adults and 4 kids(ages 7-12) in our group. We took our time on the climb up, the kids, including the visiting sea level Californian were breathing pretty hard. When we got to the big hole in the rock I looked up in the dark end where I could no longer see around the corner. One of the kids, who had been here before informed me that it was not the cave entrance. She pointed to a small, 3ft tall crack in the rock. Oh boy, it was going to be fun from the start.

After the initial crawl through the cave opening the room opened up quite a bit so that we could all stand up quite easily. First we went into "The Dance Hall" a large mostly featureless room. We then doubled back to the first room and then started our slow walk into the depths. Uncle Dan said it was the wettest he'd seen the cave in the 16 years he'd been coming here. We mostly slid down the damp and muddy 200 ft. ramp called "Devil's Slide". Then we came to the rim-rock pools. Dan said he hadn't seen water in them in 10 years, so it was pretty cool that they were full that day. It did make the passage through a little more interesting. If you didn't want to walk through 6"-8" pools of water you had to carefully walk along the 3" wide limestone and calcium rims that the pools had made over thousands or millions of years they'd been there. At one point the ceiling was pretty low and just as I was about to put my foot on the next ledge my head hit the ceiling and my foot plunged into the water. I tried to pull it out quickly but just repeated the same action. I am happy to report that the waterproof claim for my Scarpa Kailash boots is accurate. My feet stayed nice and dry.

We made out way through various tunnels and rooms, checking out the cool mineral formations. Everything from typical stalactites to crystal formations that looked like sea urchins and coral. We came to the first real belly crawl of the trip. I took off my backpack and pushed it forward as we squirmed our way up a 30% twisting tunnel. It was about 10 ft. long and I managed it just fine without freaking out or feeling the walls close in on me.

As we worked our way through the cave we started going through more and more wide but short areas where crawling on hands and knees or stomach was required. Uncle Dan had conveniently forgotten to tell the rest of us to bring knee pads. I managed to find all of he bumps, scrapes and cuts the next day in the shower when the soap started stinging little spots all over my legs. We eventually came to a tiny hole called "The Toilet Bowl" it was more or less conically shaped with that tiny hole at the bottom. What I didn't understand is that we would be going down that hole, which I didn't think even a tiny Chinese gymnast could make it through must lest a very un-limber 6'3" man. I watched as Dan worked his legs down through then informed us that you had to turn your head sideways to make it through the hole. Then with is arms over his head he slide down through. We each took our turn and somehow I made it through. 
My next thoughts turned to how in the world we'd make it back up through the hole. We worked out way to the end of the cave and ate our lunch slouched under a short roof and looked at the various signatures of the early cave explorers. It made me think and wonder about these people that had gone through the cave with their old carbide lamps and decided to explore these cramped caverns and tiny passageways.

After a little break we reversed our way, somehow making it up through the Toilet Bowl and back to a side cave where Dan had dropped the rope bag for later use. We made our way through a few more narrow tunnels and found the 50 ft. tall wall that we had planned to climb if we had time. There was a bolt at the top, but no other way of placing protection without the full 50 ft. of exposure. We let Dan lead, since he's had a long and full life, while the rest of us chickens waited below. Dan set the rope we each took our turns climbing up. I was the first to take the optional 90 ft. rappel down the chute on the other side of the wall. I dropped off onto a fairly flat space with a drop to a lower cavern down below. I waited for someone else to join me for a while but no one came so I headed down on my own. The room had some really cool formations. Sadly, some previous explorers had managed to break off a bunch of the smaller stalactites when they tried to work their way into a smaller cave.

After spending about 45 minutes by myself Dan and his son-in-law Greg each made their way down to where I was. Dan had simply tied off the rope above and lowered himself down without a harness. Dan is old school. The rappelling didn't look too dangerous, but Greg and wondered how Dan had managed to get back up without a belay. We let him go first since he had put himself in that position and watched as he held one hand on the rope and the other grasping at greasy glassy holds. Greg went next and when I was my turn the rope was tossed town and got stuck about 20 ft. up. I didn't want to my wife to hate me for becoming a paraplegic by making a stupid decision to climb unroped above large mineral blogs that would have surely broken my back in a fall, so I very carefully made my way up the first section of the climb. One side of the chute was covered in flesh ripping sharp crystals, like a coral reef, the other side was mostly smooth glassy blogs that were made all the more slippery by the thin coating of mud that covered everything in the cave. I made it up to the rope, but was in no position to stop and tie in so I kept going, hoping for ledge of some sort. Every time I reached what looked like a nice ledge from below, turned out to be yet another steep slippery slope. I finally reached something that gave me reasonable footing so I tried to bring up the rope to tie in and found it stuck on the sharp crystals below, no amount of tugging could break it loose. I opted to just tie in with my ATC rappel device so the I could at least stem a fall if something happened. I just about had it clipped in when the ATC dropped and pinged down to the bottom. I heard chuckling from above and informed them what happened. I finally just climbed the rope hand over hand until I made it to the top. I tied in to the other end of the rope with a figure 8 and rappelled back down to retrieve the rope and my ATC. I found it at the bottom of one of the lower caves, tied into the rope and started climbing again. By this time I was hot, sweating and tired of climbing. I managed to scoot up the chute and rappel down the other side.

Dan and I climbed out of the cave and out into the snow that was slowly coming down. I was happy to see light and was surprised when I looked at my watch to find out that we'd been in the cave for 6 hours. At least we made the trip out there worthwhile.

I had a great time on my first caving experience. I wouldn't call myself a spelunker just yet, but I've got my eye on the Red Baron cave in Rock Canyon. A 50 ft. rappel over a thousand foot cliff before you swing into the cave entrance. Sounds like a good time to me.