May 17, 2008

Wow!  I couldn’t believe we were going back to Whipple.  It had been like 15 years since the last trip there and we were now showing the kids and the Cutlers.  Great company, good first vertical cave.  One issue, the heat!  We happened to leave town on a record setting hot day. Going through Anaheim on Friday it was 110!  Yipes!

Well we drove all night to get there and with the directions we had, we drove straight to the saddle near the cave and camped. 

In the morning it was beautiful!  Cool, but the mosquitoes were annoying.  Chris was the first one up and then Jenn and our family.  We ate breakfast and prepared to rig the pit.  Chris and I walked the rope over to the cave and looked around at our options.  The little scrub brush bushes that we saw in our slides were now 4 foot tall and very solid anchor points.  So I defaulted to rigging there and backing up to a rock.  There were two bolts there, but I didn’t trust them, never do.  While we were rigging; the nest in one entrance with the turkey vulture chicks was bustling with activity and noise.  As a matter a fact the chicks squawked and squeaked most of the time.  Anyway with the pit rigged we went back to get the rest of the crew.

I defaulted to go down the rope first. It’s kind of a tradition that the person rigging tests it first. Then one by one the Cutlers and the family came down.  The cave was nice and cool.  It was also different than I remembered.  Bigger and prettier too.  The passage was about 40 by 60 and reminded me of Mexican borehole. It felt good to be back. 

Exploration ensued.  We went first to the little side passage that took off on the left.  It is roughly 30 feet long and peters out to a passage too small for humans.   We walked back into the main passage and made a left down the main passage.  We climbed up and over huge breakdown blocks and eventually came to a pretty serious step down.  I rigged the webbing I had brought and went first.  It was certainly farther than it looked and it felt good to have the webbing there.  This led to the back of the cave and the prettiest part.  The 30  foot plus tall column and area of beautiful and active flow stone and deep rim stone dams were worth every bit of work it took to get back here.  We took numerous photos and sat for quite some time taking it all in. 

Believe it or not we started to get cold so the consensus was to leave.  We took the same route back, climbing the step down and scrambling up the breakdown.  At the bottom of the rope, we decided that the order would be Chris first and me second just in case of any issues.  Both of us rigged up and climbed out without incident.  We let Lisa decide the order of exit for everyone and waited in the 92 degree heat for everyone to climb the 60 foot drop and pass the gear back down.  We were pretty hot!  Anyway, Lisa came up last and after her, we derigged and packed up. Back at the trucks we decided to break camp and move south towards Las Vegas.  Not for any relief from the heat, but due to the fact that the state highway was closed that Sunday for a race and we would be stuck.  While we were packing the camp up the wind came up fast and furious.  It blew so hard it broke one of our tent poles!  Damn we had to drive home! Was my only thought at the time. What an insane turnaround!!!! We all mulled it over and agreed to hit the road and go all the way home.  If we stayed anywhere and drove home during the day on sunday, it would’ve meant driving in the heat of the day again and that alone is not fun.

We made it home without incident.  Everyone enojoyed themselves and the Chris and Jenn got to see what drove us to go underground.  They may just be hooked like we are.

D

Out!

In January of 2008 we went camping to Anza Borrego with Chris and Jenn Cutler.  The trip was over the Martin Luther King holiday and we expected to see people on this trip due to it being a holiday.  We went to Arroyo Tapiado Canyon and found a nice meander to camp in.  It was a beautful spot with the solitude we wanted and caves within walking distance.  The weather also cooperated and we had a blast both during the day and again that night around the lanterns.  The next day as we drove out we saw how many camps there were.  At every nook there were at east 4 people and the larger ones had bigger groups.  Back in the 1980’s when we first discovered the area for it’s gypsum mud caves, we used to be the only ones out there for miles.  We would see an occaisonal dirt bike, but never caravans of Jeeps doing 50 mph, or large groups of people camping in the arroyo.

We have noticed that it doesn’t matter where you go; you see more people than in the 1980’s.  There was also less noticeable impact on the environment.  Now the signs of people in the form of trash is everywhere. I know it’s not the people that are avid outdoorsmen and women and I’ll leave it at that. 

We are launching our adventures once again, we’ll let you know how the old areas have faired.

Out…

Welcome to Outdoors and Not… where we take you along on our adventures.  You will see National Parks, Caves, Animals and everything along the way!  We are avid outdoors people using any excuse to hit the road. 

The progression of the site at http://www.deluciaoutdoors.com is based on our history of adventures up to and inclusive of recent ones.  The older trips were shot on Kodachrome 64 or 200 using my Nikon FM camera and various lenses.  Unfortunately, that medium has led to issues of mold and color degradation over the years, however Photoshop aids me in fixing some of it.  We will add slideshow content as our scanning efforts allow.  As of now we have only just scratched the surface of our library and have over 35 slideshows available of various places.

We started our lives together very young by some standards.  Lisa was 17 and I was 18, we started living together less than a year after we met.  We ended up marrying at 22 and 23 respectively and waited 12 years to have children. In June we will celebrate 28 years of marriage. Our children Dani and Josh are now teenagers and make us proud at every turn.  Excellent students and avid outdoors people, they have inherited our love of nature and animals.  Both of them can out climb us and frequently are leading both the hikes and climbs.  We used to call the stereo type “tigers”  in our youth. 

Lisa is writing a book on on our lives and how she balanced the glitz of Hollywood with the grit of caving.  (We were expedition level cavers in our youth.)  One night she would be in Armani and the weekend she’d be wearing rags as the caves ripped at her clothing. The stories she conveys will captivate you.