Caving!

Okay, one last blog to catch you up on my adventures. Just know that I've already started a blog from today's adventures, which will most likely be posted later on tonight.
Anyhow, last week, for Outdoor Pursuits, we went caving! Not so sure on how keen I was for this activity. The last time I had been in a cave was when I was about 8. We stopped by Mammoth Cave (in Kentucky) on our drive home from a family visit to Florida. All I really remember was this story about how this guy got stuck/lost in that very cave and had finally found a tunnel that he thought would take him out. Well, the tunnel got smaller and smaller, until poor "Abe," I think his name was, got stuck and suffocated. Little did he know, he was only about 100 m away from an exit.
So, great story. Are you a bit uncomfortable yet? If not, now imagine after remembering that story all throughout your childhood and adult years and finding yourself face to face with an environment fully capable of putting you in the same, exact situation. Yah, not so fun. However, the entire ride there, I rationalized with myself that if they were still taking us there, then there was a good chance that no one has ever gotten stuck and suffocated before. That helped a little.
So we arrived in the Brecon Beacon National Park once more, about half past 5 in the evening. We had previously decided to wait until after dark to go so that we'd have the caves to ourselves. Good decision. That, in combination with the fact that last Thursday was a crummy, rainy day, resulted in absolutely no one else besides our group in that cave.
Because of this, we were able to enter the cave in a non-traditional way. We loyally followed our instructor to a mere hole in the ground. Seriously, it looks like the hole Alice fell into in Alice in Wonderland. I was just waiting to see a rabbit wearing a waistcoat or a Cheshire Cat. However, we soon learned that absolutely NOTHING lives within the cave. So it was very important that no food was dropped or trash or anything, because bacteria can't even survive in these conditions and break things down. So what was left in the cave, stayed in the cave. It was quickly pointed out though, to many of our dismay, that things could live near the openings of the cave. What, you might ask? Spiders. HUGE, nasty looking spiders. Ewwww. Yah, that freaked a few of us out.. but once we got further in the cave (by repelling down through the hole), the spiders were gone and we were already looking at our first challenge.
Our first challenge was the most narrow passage in the entire cave. Well, at least I'd get my fears over and done with first thing. In order to go any further in the cave, we had to go one at a time through a gap that was no bigger than 1.5-2 feet between two giant slabs of rock. We even had to have someone push us from the other side in order squeeze through. Since I was determined to conquer this fear, I volunteered to go first. Believe it or not, I didn't get stuck and die!
In fact, quite the opposite happened. After I made it through that first, and certainly for me, the most intimidating obstacle, the rest of the caving we did was cake. We did some more tightly confined crawling, and then later on towards the end, we got into the "wet" side of the cave. Oh, I don't think I mentioned that this cave has a river that runs through it. Somewhere above, the river just kind of starts seeping through the ground and then has carved a path through the cave, which consists mostly of sedimentary limestone. It then exits from the mouth and main entrance of the cave. But it was here, on the wet side of the cave, not far from the river, that, despite our extremely attractive caving suits and rubber boots, we got soaked from the waist down. We started at a place called, "the toilet," - a hole in the floor that has water at the bottom and a tunnel to climb through to get back to where you started. And then later, we actually got to experience walking against the current of the water that was rushing into the cave and got to see where exactly in the cave it comes in. That was probably my favorite part. Even though we were all soaked afterward, I feel like the caving experience wouldn't have been complete without it.
Welp, it looks like I finally have you caught up with everything so far. Like I said, I'm almost complete with today's entry, however, I'm now thinking that I probably won't post it until tomorrow. So, until next time!