Guler Ice Cave, Washington

Today Laurie, Keith and I took a road trip to the Guler Ice Cave near Trout Lake, Washington. Driving along the Columbia River Gorge with some short stops to Starvation Creek, Horsetail and Multnomah Falls, we crossed this crazy-narrow bridge to the Washington side to the National Forest and proceeded to drive along some very bucolic landscape, featuring barns, fields, meadows and llama farms.

Our ice-cave equipment sucked. None of us had proper shoes and we were sliding all over the giant lava-boulders that line the 680-foot long cave. A lot of melting ice is creating some weird see-through puddles that are actually a walkable solid surface but they look like liquid puddles. Some of the icicles are curling from the ceiling, "like dreadlocks," said Laurie, but most look like your standard (if gigantic) pointy icicle. Many from the floor surface are rounded like sparkly alien creatures.

Our flashlights and lanterns were dim at best but we really felt like we were having an adventure, down in the ice cave there. I took some photos with my little camera and I'll see if anything comes out when I get the film developed. That's right: I use film and a scanner. Wanna fight about it?

Here's a video from Wend Magazine, shot in February of this year, when it was even icier. We would have died if we had attempted this. Thanks for risking your safety for the sake of video, Wend.