2002-11-08 & 09 Ape Caves


Friday November 8th we left for Mt. St. Helens at about 6:30pm. Kory White, Kevin white, Ryan McClellan, and the adult leaders, John Dubinsky and myself, Derek Rowley were prepared to hike through the ape caves. This would be my 4th time hiking the ape caves since I was 13 years old. We arrived at our campsite at about 10:00pm. It took about an hour and a half to set up the tents and to suspend the tarp, along with spending some time on the fire. We lit the campsite with 2 halogen lights attached to the Whites van. We decided to start the van later on with no luck. The battery had lost most of its juice. After setting up camp and starting the fire we all were ready for our nice warm dry sleeping bags. I didn't realize the weather would consist of a constant downpour all night long! Unfortunately around 3:00 am I awoke to the feeling of cold wet feet. I felt my socks and instantly knew that the next few hours were going to be hard to sleep through. And I was right; it was quite difficult to get back to sleep. Even with a large, slightly holey tarp within a tent with a rain fly on and with a tarp bottom and a tarp underneath the tent cold rain water managed to "puddle" into the lower end of my sleeping bag. It wasn't exactly fun! It was very cold and uncomfortable. In all my years of camping I have never woken up to find water in my sleeping bag, this was a big surprise for me. In the morning we were all ready to get out of the rain. We checked the van again to make sure it was still dead, it was. We stopped the next elk hunter that was driving up the dead end 1 lane road. He also had a buddy behind him who stopped as well. We decided to push the car to a spot that was easier for the hunter’s truck to reach the van. John put the van in neutral and we pushed but our efforts were useless. John got out shut the door and then realized the keys were still in the van. Which when put in neutral, auto locks all the doors and since he never shut the door while we were pushing the van, the lock never unlocked. Unfortunately my keys were also in the van. Now we had a little bit of a problem. We hunted for a spare key, looking everywhere on the underside of the van. With no luck we thought about breaking a window. The window we decided on was actually the most expensive on the whole van. Good thing we didn't have to break it! We tried the "Slim-Jim" attempt, using the oil dip stick. After the flimsy strip of metal broke we decided to poke it through the weather striping and manually push on the electronic unlock button. Once again the dip stick was too flimsy. We tried using a branch to perform the same idea, although after assuming it wasn't working because the battery was so dead the electronic locks had ceased to function, we had to get a new idea. Our trusty scout master though proved the task could be done. By using the stick with a thin rope he tied a loop on one end and hooked it onto the door handle. Easing it down the door to get more leverage he was able to give a little pull and the door was open! We quickly grabbed our keys and kept them in our pockets. After getting a jump from the elk hunter we ate breakfast, took down the tents and cleaned up camp. We drove back down the ever so narrow road to the trail head of the ape caves. I must say we probably set a world record for the fastest hike through the caves. Inside it was dark and damp I didn't see any bats this time but we did have some large mud puddles to dodge. At the end we climbed up the latter and into the open. After reaching the car we headed for the nearest McDonalds and all ate till we were full.