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Adventures in Spelunking. Sort of.

Spelunking, what a funny word.  It sounds so much more adventurous than “Cave Exploring.”  Yesterday Handsome and I didn’t exactly go cave exploring spelunking, but sort of.  I haven’t been to Timpanogos Cave(Tim-puh-NO-gus) since I was in elementary school, and finally I decided it was high time to hike up to the cave and check it out; well, it’s actually a series of three natural caves with man-made tunnels along fault lines so tourists can walk from one to the other.  Mount Timpanogos towers over my hometown with beautiful Native American legends about two lovers who commit suicide because they cannot be together, Romeo & Juliet style.  (It really is much more beautiful if you read about it  here, or here.)  The general gist is that the Great Spirit took pity on these two young people and bound their hearts together forever and buried it deep in the mountain.  More on this later, with pictures.

Firstly, I would like to announce that I am kind of in-love with riding on the back of Handsome’s bike.  Not a Lance Armstrong type of bike, but a really really fast bike.

Yes, I wear a helmet.  Yes, he is a careful driver.  No, we haven’t gone on the Interstate yet.  Yes, I feel a bit sexier on the back of his bike than in Roxy.  No, I won’t be mentioning that to Her Redness.  Moving along.  I’m not quite sure what possessed us to choose one of the hottest days of the year (the trail thermometer said 101, in the shade) to hike up to Timp Cave, but that’s exactly what we did.  And when I say “hike”, I mean HIKE!  It’s about a mile and a half trail from the floor of the canyon to the cave, and it is a 20% grade; 1,065 feet rise in elevation in 1.5 miles.  You do the math because I am still too tired to think about those kinds of numbers.  Let it suffice to say that this trail is steep!  Thank heavens it’s also gorgeous or I would have quit by the second switch-back!

Here I am, in my biking finest, although not necessarily well equipped for a 1.5 mile jaunt UP THE SIDE OF A CLIFF in 100+ degree weather.  (Obviously, this picture is taken at the beginning of the hike, I can guarantee that after 5 minutes I was a sweaty, soppy mess.  And no one wants to see that kind of picture.)

The actual cave is a delicious 43 degrees year-round, and after an hour of wheezing and cursing sweating myour way up the mountain–hi, I’m heidikins, I’m out of shape!–we I collapsed and relished the cool breeze coming from the inside of the mountain.  Ahh, it was heaven.  The only thing that could have improved that feeling would have been a strawberry shake and an elevator for the trip back down.  I took quite a few pictures of the inside of the caves, but only a few turned out.  It’s awfully dark and the flash made things look kind of weird.  With a little color-adjusting (thank you Photoshop) may I present the insides of Mount Timpanogos. 

The three caves vary in size from a good-sized living room with a low-ish ceiling to a soaring 110 foot cavern with a small lake at the bottom.  I kept looking for Gollum, but Ranger Becky said there are only spiders and crickets living in the caves.  Timpanogos is a “living cave” which means it is still growing, at the bustling rate of 1/4 inch per 100 years.  The whole thing is kind of like a white-tan-orange-and-pink coral reef, water drips down rock and the minerals form into strange and sometimes surreal shapes.  There are some that look like animals, or household objects, and some that just look like alien tchotchkeys–beautiful alien tchotcheys.  These caves were absolutely stunning, I would love to go back when it is less busy and take my time looking at all the different formations.  In the last cave hangs a 4,000 pound stalactite, the Heart of Timpanogos; which, legend says is the eternally-bound hearts of the young warrior, Timpanac and the lovely maiden, Ucanogos (although, depending on what version you read, these names can change).

According to Ranger Becky, Timpanogos Cave has one of the widest variety of rock formations in the world.  (And there’s no bats, which sadly means no Christian Bale, but I’d rather also not have to deal with slippery, smelly bat guano, thankyouverymuch.)  If you live in Utah and have not visited Timpanogos Cave, um, why not?  Make sure you take lots of water, wear good walking/hiking shoes and if you’re a wuss like me you will probably want a jacket for the inside of the cave.  43 degrees is downright frigid after a mile-and-a-half bake in 100-degree weather!

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