Fulford Cave

So Davee told me that the FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) at Mines had a spelunking expedition going on this weekend. I'm always up for an adventure so I pulled myself out of bed at 4:30 Saturday morning and drove down to the IM fields to meet the crew heading out. Turns out only two people showed up besides me - Jill and Ruslan, to people I had never met before.

After dropping my truck off to get it aligned, we drove up to Eagle, CO - not too far from Vail. About two and a half hours later, we parked at the beginning of the road to Fulford Cave. Yes, that's the beginning of the road unfortunately since the fresh pile of wet snow covering the road prevented us from driving any further adding about two miles two our hike. It was a good hike though and the snow quickly began to pile up over four feet deep as we hiked out of the valley and onto the actual trail to the cave.

Inside the cave close to the entrance, the ice formations were incredible. One icicle towered I'd say about ten feet tall from the ceiling to the floor. There were quite a few ice stalactities and stalagmites that had formed. In another area, it looked like a stream had frozen in place and the expansion and contraction of the ice due to freezing and thawing had created really cool looking crystals on the surface of the frozen stream.

Continuing down the cave, we fit our bodies through tiny little holes and climbed up and down rock walls, eventually coming to an underground stream. We spent about eight hours underground soaking up the beauty, exploring, and challenging ourselves as we overcame some tough obstacles.

After we had thoroughly exhausted ourselves for the day, we poked our heads out into daylight, hiked back down the wet snow and mud (after falling in the snow up to our waists a few times), and ordered an extra large pizza back in Eagle to be fully consumed by all three of us.

It was a blast to get to know the two that I went spelunking with. Ruslan was from Russia and Jill had been working as an engineer for the Golden for two years, but we all had a blast getting out and doing something together and learning more about one another, ourselves, and what God meant to us. Life's not about being lazy or doing work at the office - it's about relationships, adventures, and challenges! Most of the things that are worth it in life require great effort, eh?