Between the larger adventures are novelty adventures. We visit the Hoodoos (it's a State Park) to rappel through a hole in ground and into a cavern of dried mud (actually sandstone but you wouldn't know it)
After a short hike and a lot of navigational errors, we climb down into this mess. It's dirty and loose and I'd put it into the short list of shit climbs I've done over the years. The first being called a "5 10c dirt climb" and ending with this, yet unnamed, dirt slide.
As we get deeper into the 'mud' the climbing gets more and more sketchy. That's climbing slang for dangerous. Eventually we cliff out and have to climb back out and find a line of weakness through the mud that doesn't require lethal exposures. Once we find the proper trail it's an easy climb down to a small shelf with a hole in it that is deep and dark. All the rain that falls in this area drains though this hole and carved out a kind of mud stomach.
Unfortunately, I was the first to rappel into the void and didn't slow down to take a picture. Death and company rappel after me and this is the three of us at the bottom of the cavern. It's really a ravine with a full roof and skylight. We dropped into the skylight and made the 100 foot rappel to the bottom as a novelty.
Exiting the mud tummy and we are on the main trails used by tourist to get into the cavern without the technical approach, which the park doesn't tell people about unless you ask.
Snap, Crackle, and Pop (if you ask me) |
With the rains of the last week, and the intermittent storms, the desert is flowering and life is almost easy to find. The little fella on the right was also walking away from a hole in the ground and saw three large figure in the distance. That's good Hoodoo JuJu. (Gypsie word for luck)
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