“We have got to find a way in there,” she said. “Get some real light. Take pictures.”
“First things first,” Benjamin said, slipping off his pack and taking out the trip journal.
They spent a few minutes using the instruments to map the room. Meggie had the laser rangefinder and flashed it on the walls to calculate distances. When they finished, they turned their attention back to exploring.
“The corkscrew is the obvious path,” Benjamin said, pointing at the twisting tunnel descending at a sharp angle below them.
“The other team already went there,” Kaitlyn said. “I want to get in that big room somehow.”
“They didn’t map it all,” Meggie said. “Could be we go down and find a side passage leading up and connecting to that room on the other side.”
“I didn’t see any other passages,” Benjamin said. “The whole room looks like a geode with a single hole drilled in it. Gorgeous, but no way in except that thing.” He pointed at the slender opening.
Meggie wasn’t so sure. “We don’t know that until we explore. Can’t even see most of the room through the hole. I’ll bet it opens up. The water has to drain somewhere, and it’s not coming here.”
The narrow hole was smooth, but not damp. Only when it flooded would water come through, she thought.
Kaitlyn walked over to the hole leading to the chamber they were all dying to explore. “Lift me into the squeeze. I’ll climb through.”
“I don’t know,” Benjamin said, doubtfully. “Hell of a place to get stuck.”
“I’m the smallest, so I’ll go first. You can follow. Might be too tight for Meggie, but she can wait here.”
“No way am I staying behind,” Meggie said.
“Then you can take your chances on the squeeze. You’ve got those wide hips, but maybe you’ll make it through.”
Meggie bit back her response. Anyway, it was stupid. The hole was too small. Maybe you could get in there by blowing out all your breath, but then what? Get wedged and suffocate? That’s how cavers died. Kaitlyn was the trip leader—she should be the cautious one, not goading people on.
When neither of the others spoke, Kaitlyn let out her breath in a hiss. “What a couple of pussies. Fine, we’ll do it your way. The corkscrew it is.”
Chapter Twelve
Meggie kept her vow not to engage with Kaitlyn as they followed the corkscrew deeper into the cave. It was steep, with loose rock and rubble, and occasionally speleothems growing from fissures in the wall. Getting around the delicate formations without soiling them with grubby boots or oily hands proved challenging. Twice, they reached short chimneys, which they descended by pressing hands, feet, shoulders, and back against opposite walls to maintain tension.
It proved slow going, even more so because they stopped to map and chart, and to carefully note landmarks so they could find their way back to the ropes. It wasn’t exactly a labyrinth down here in the dark, but there were occasional side tunnels or narrow fissures to squeeze through. In some well-traveled caves, careless teams would spray paint arrows on walls to indicate the return to the surface. Some people even laid trails of string. Their online group preferred a minimalist approach, which meant careful planning.
Still trying to reach the huge room they’d spotted initially, they tried to follow passages that led back up, instead of further down, but this meant some tight fits. Once they had to belly crawl ten feet, then slide through a slit in the rock that looked like a grinning, toothy mouth. Benjamin and Kaitlyn passed through, grunting and sliding packs ahead of them, but when it came Meggie’s turn, she balked.
“Are you sure this is the way?” she asked through the fissure.
“Come on, it opens up on the other side,” Benjamin said. “And there’s a draft. I think this is the way back up.”
Meggie didn’t think of herself as unusually claustrophobic. Maybe a little, but who wasn’t down here, with 250 feet of rock and mountain above you, and darkness and narrow walls on all sides? After an hour in the cave, squirming and ducking, crawling and groping, she was dying for a chance to stand and stretch. Squeezing into that tiny, suffocating fissure raised an instinctive fear that Meggie struggled to conquer.
Come on, you’ve crawled through tighter fits than that. Get in there and do it.
Kaitlyn stuck her head up to the gap from the other side of the wall. “Fine, you don’t want to come, that’s your loss. Find your way back and we’ll meet you at the ropes.”
Benjamin muttered a protest, his voice muffled. Probably something about how stupid it was to split up. Kaitlyn spoke back, her voice soothing, and Meggie realized with alarm that the other woman wanted to leave her. Let her get lost. Maybe something would happen to her and wouldn’t that be great?
Meggie gathered her courage, slipped out of her pack and scooted up to the fissure. She pushed the pack ahead of her so she couldn’t chicken out midway through. A hand reached under, grabbed the strap, and pulled it through. She squirmed, flattening herself to get beneath an especially bony part of the fissure. Moments later, she got through. The others were waiting in a tunnel that was a good seven feet high and three feet wide. She straightened her back, relieved.
It was smooth going from there. Sloping and twisting more gradually uphill, they discovered a series of small chambers with high ceilings, before entering a room so large that at first Meggie thought they’d circled back around to the magical room they’d spotted after their initial descent. But the room was dry and there were only a few stone icicles growing from a crack that ran along the ceiling. This was not their goal.
“My God,” Benjamin said, looking up at the wall with his helmet light sweeping around the room. “Look at all those passages.”
Half a dozen holes, squeezes, and passageways exited the room, including the one they’d just taken. As he squatted to record their findings, Meggie grew excited at the implications.
“We’ve stumbled on a major cave formation,” she said as she retrieved the rangefinder from her pack. “For all we know, this is another Lehman Caves. We’re the discoverers.”
Kaitlyn scoffed. “We didn’t discover this place. Someone explored down here in 1987. And someone else found the hole way back in the fifties.”
“Yeah, but we’re the first ones to know it’s something big. The ’87 team didn’t get past the bottom of the corkscrew.”
When they finished their work, they took a break to eat protein bars and dried fruit. Nobody wanted to rest for long. After identifying the two most likely passages to lead them to the big cavern, Kaitlyn chose one and led them on.
They picked their way through a narrowing tunnel that sloped upward for about thirty feet before it dropped into another chimney. This shaft was wide enough that they couldn’t chimney crawl to the bottom without a rope. They only had one twenty-footer on hand, which Benjamin lowered into the hole. It didn’t reach the bottom.
“I could run back for the forty footer,” he said. It was too heavy to schlep about the caves, so they’d left it at the bottom of the second landing.
“We do that, we lose an hour,” Kaitlyn said. “Maybe more.”
“Anyway, we’re trying to get up from here, not down,” Meggie said. “I don’t think this is the way.”
“You think you can do better?” Kaitlyn snapped.
Meggie blinked. “That’s not what I’m saying. Just that, now that we’re here, it’s obvious this isn’t the way.”
Kaitlyn was still scowling from the perceived challenge to her authority. She turned on her heel, back toward the previous chamber. They followed. When they got back, Kaitlyn ordered them into the second tunnel they’d identified as leading in the right direction.
It also led to a chimney, but going up this time. The shaft was neither too narrow, nor too wide, and offered plenty of boulders and other protruding rocks to help maintain three points of contact at all times. But the chimney was at least thirty feet long and at a steep angle, and they were exhausted by the time the
y climbed to the next horizontal stretch. They took another breather.
“Got the time?” Meggie asked.
Benjamin’s watch lit up with an indigo glow. “Two-thirty. We’ve been down six hours already.”
It was hard to believe, but that was cave time for you. In all, they’d only traveled half a mile, if that, but between tying ropes, mapping, and rests, the hours dripped relentlessly away.
“We should start thinking about a return,” Meggie said.
“What, are you the trip leader now?” Kaitlyn asked.
“Just trying to be safe. What time did it get dark last night?”
“Not until 9:30,” Kaitlyn said.
“Yeah, but we’ve still got to hike back down the hill. I don’t want to do that with flashlights. Also, those guys have been waiting all day.”
“Not our fault. Anyway, they knew we’d be gone until late. We have until midnight before they go back for help.”
Probably, Meggie was being overly cautious. Without stopping to map, but taking usual precautions, the return would be quicker than the initial exploration. Until they got to the two ropes leading to the surface. Then it would be a slow, exhausting climb via the vertical ascenders. Using a pulley system attached to the shoes, climbing the rope would be like working out on a high-tension StairMaster, as they ascended inch by excruciating inch back to the surface.
“We’ve come too far to go back now,” Kaitlyn added.
“How about another half-hour?” Meggie said. “And if we don’t find it, we’ll turn around.”
Benjamin shrugged and turned to Kaitlyn, who scowled.
“An hour,” she said. “If we don’t find it by then, we can turn around. We’ll still have plenty of time to get back to the surface and down to the truck.”
Then, without waiting to see how the others would respond, she rose to her feet, hoisted her pack, and continued up the passageway. The other two followed. Meggie struggled to fight down her misgivings.
#
They found the chamber about forty minutes later. It took another chimney, a lucky guess at a fork, and then some more belly crawling through a passageway maybe three feet high. It wasn’t the tightest squeeze, except that it seemed to go on forever. In reality, probably less than fifty feet. But if time was different down here in the dark, then so were distances. More so when you found yourself pinched between two slabs of rock, each hundreds of feet thick. Get wedged down here and you’d die. No rescue team in the world could do a thing.
Then she came out the other side to find Benjamin and Kaitlyn standing upright and staring slack-jawed. They’d found it.
The room was a wonderland of speleothems. Stalactites glistened from the ceiling by the hundreds, looking like so many milky icicles. Stalagmites squatted on the ground, some white, others streaked brown or glittering. Waves of mineralized formations smeared across the walls, looking alternatively like frosting, or popcorn, or even strange, glistening faces. Cascading waves of flowstone formed frozen waterfalls. The cavern amplified and echoed the drip of water, which fell into a clear, bluish pool in the center of the room.
For several seconds nobody said anything, they simply gawked, turning on their spare flashlights and flashing them around the chamber. Then they set about mapping the room. Benjamin wrote everything down, while the two women moved carefully around the room with their flashlights, calling out excitedly whenever they discovered a new formation.
Meggie forgot the time. They were squatting in the middle of the room, gobbling up their sandwiches and talking about what to call the room when she remembered. She grabbed Benjamin’s wrist and turned on the light.
“Crap, it’s 3:52,” she said. “We have to go.”
Kaitlyn groaned. “Who was supposed to be watching the time? Benjamin, what were you thinking?”
“Sorry,” he said, sheepishly.
“You’re the trip leader,” Meggie said. “That’s your job.”
“I didn’t see you taking charge, so why don’t you shut up?”
“Come on, guys,” Benjamin said. “It’s my fault. I was supposed to be watching.”
They scooped up their stuff, repacking their bags and strapping helmets into place. As incredible as this room was, Meggie was relieved to be turning around at last. All her worries were for nothing. She could stress about the embezzling later—now was the time to get back to the surface without goading the other woman any more.
“You know what comes next, right?” Kaitlyn said.
Benjamin turned. “Huh?”
“There’s no time to retrace our steps. That will take hours.”
“You should have thought—” Meggie began, then stopped herself. “I mean, if we were going to make that call, it should have been last time we had this discussion. But we pressed on. So now we’ve got to go back as quickly as we can, while still staying safe.”
“Too late for that. Those guys are expecting us at the truck. What happens when we don’t get back in time? They’ll drive off to find help. Then we’ll be stranded until they return. Not to mention having search and rescue show up.”
Meggie stared. “Are you serious? What about what you said before? You said we had plenty of time, that those guys would wait until midnight.”
“I said an hour. It’s now been an hour and a half, nearly.”
“Oh my God. I give up.”
“Stop fighting,” Benjamin cut in. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter whose fault it was. We don’t have a choice—we have to turn around.”
“Not necessarily.” Kaitlyn shone her light across the room. There, like a deeper shade of shadows, was the hole they’d spotted from the other side. The squeeze they’d ruled out after their initial descent. “We take the last squeeze.”
Meggie shook her head. “No.”
“We cut hours off our return, get back to the surface by seven. Collect our gear and we reach the truck by eight.”
“We didn’t like the squeeze then,” Meggie said, “so what makes it better now? We’re tired, impatient to get back. That’s the time people make mistakes.”
“Who’s the trip leader here, you or me?”
“A good trip leader doesn’t push when others are uncomfortable.”
“Bullshit. That’s exactly what a good leader does. She gets people out of their comfort zone.”
“Kaitlyn,” Benjamin said, sounding tentative. “Maybe Meggie has a point.”
Kaitlyn turned on him. “Strap on your balls for once.”
“Oh, come on!” Meggie said. “It’s a question of common sense. Let’s go back the other way. Really, it’s not worth it.”
But Kaitlyn was strolling across the room. Without waiting for the others, she shoved her pack into the hole. She leaned in until her entire head and shoulders were through, then pulled back again.
“See, plenty big.” Her tone was triumphant. “And my pack is through anyway. I’m committed. Now you babies can stay behind if you want. I’m going through. And then I’m going back to the surface—with or without you.”
“You’re out of your mind!” Meggie said.
She made her way to the crawl space that had brought them into the cavern. Compared to the stone birth canal Kaitlyn wanted to squirm through, it was a spacious, airy chasm. Before dropping to her belly and squirming inside, she looked back across the room. Kaitlyn had gone ahead and entered. She was already through past her hips, her legs disappearing into the hole like an animal sliding down the throat of a giant snake.
Damn you!
“Meggie,” Benjamin cried. “What do we do?”
“Come on. She made her choice. We’ll make ours.”
“But she’s the trip leader!”
“I’m not going in there. So help me God, I won’t.” She crossed back to him, then put her hands on his shoulders. “Come on, wake up. We have to go the other way. You know it.”
Grunting and scrapes came from the tunnel. Benjamin leaned down and shone his light in.
Was she stuck? Holy
crap, what would they do then? And Meggie realized with a sick feeling in her stomach, that part of her wanted the other woman to get wedged. That would show her.
No, stop it. That’s wrong.
“Through!” Kaitlyn called, her voice echoing through the tunnel. Her light flashed through from the other side.
“Come on, let’s give it a shot,” Benjamin urged.
A bitter laugh came up. “A shot? There’s no, ‘oops, guess it didn’t work.’ If you get stuck, that’s it. You’ll never get out.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
She grabbed his wrist. “We’re going back the other way. I mean it.”
“Come on, guys,” Kaitlyn coaxed from the other side. “You can do it.”
She sounded perfectly reasonable. Sure, now that she’d forced them into this awful situation. Waste hours going back around, or trust her against their own misgivings. Serious, deadly misgivings.
Benjamin pulled away. “I’m going for it.”
“I’m warning you,” Meggie said.
“What?”
She stopped what she was about to say. No ultimatums. The situation was too high stress. Whatever she said, she’d regret.
But in that moment he apparently decided. He shoved his pack in, took off his helmet and squirmed up into the hole.
“Benjamin!”
He didn’t listen, but kept moving forward. More slowly than Kaitlyn, and with a good deal of grunting, but little by little he disappeared into the hole. While Meggie looked in after him, his boots continued forward. He groaned and made straining noises, while Kaitlyn shouted at him to keep going. She was tugging on him. Then, a cry of satisfaction from the other side. He was through. His face looked back and squinted against Meggie’s flashlight.
“It’s not that bad,” he said. “A little tight at the end.”
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