A Look Back at the                                               Paradise Ice Caves 26 Years Ago

                               By Larry MeTigue

                                           July 4, 2000

The following is an excerpt from a letter I wrote my sister nearly 20 years ago of a previously unpublished cave trip report. I include it here purely for its historical and entertainment value. Me part I quote begins as follows: "Curt Black’s spaghetti feed bombed out and eventually turned into an ice cream feed down in Southwest Washington around Mt. St. Helens. The spaghetti is still in his mom's freezer in Tacoma."   (No, I know what you're thinking. It's not still there!! Remember, this was 26 years ago.) "Curt has an apartment in the U district where he is attending Summer Quarter at the U.W.' the ice cream came from the Cave Ridge Expedition which also flopped because of deep snow. Seven feet in late June!!

Yes, we did climb up the lower part of Mt Rainier to the Paradise Ice Caves where we were initiated or, should I say 'baptized' into Glaciospelcology. Charley Anderson was the leader of our group of intrepid cave explorers (more appro- privately termed 'suckers' since we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into). Eight people were able to come on this trip. Most famous was Clarence Hronek, a Canadian from Vancouver, B.C. He is considered by some to be the 'father of Canadian caving'. He is a kindly old gentleman with many strange and exciting stories to tell about his past caving adventures. If my memory serves me right, the others included Bill Halliday, Bob Brown, Jan Roberts, Curt Black, Rod Crawford and Mark Vining. The purpose of this trip was mainly to impress a park ranger with the size and complexity of the ice caves. Charley was doing this in hopes of increasing the federal money grant he was 'receiving from the Park Service to explore and map the caves. The Park wanted a map of the cave system in case a tourist got lost somewhere in its more than 10 miles of passages.

We picked up the ranger at the Paradise R.S. This was in August and there was still several feet of snow on the ground!! First time they had snow there in August since around 1920. Walking across the parking lot at the ranger station was like crossing a shallow river caused by all the melting snow. We had to go thorough long snow tunnels on wooden boardwalks to enter the Paradise Lodge and Ranger Station, which were surrounded, by huge snow banks. There were even people still skiing the slopes at the ski area! 1 The elevation here is about 5400 feet and the caves are located another 1000 feet higher up. Once everyone was packed and ready to go, we began the hike over hard packed snow up to the cave entrance. It was a long hot hike, since there were blue skies and a bright August sun baking us as we did the stiff trudge up to the Paradise and Stevens Glaciers, which contain the large ice, caves.

Upon reaching our goal, we were delighted to find the entrance to the main cave had melted open even though there were still several feet of un-melted snow at the ranger station. We brought small aluminum snow shovels fully expecting to have to dig our way in after the long hot hike up. What a relief'! The glacial melt-water was also very cold and re- fleshing to drink, which helped, cool us off.

Charley took the ranger through the cave first, while we stayed outside. The ranger was on a tight schedule so, they had to hurry. They set some kind of speed record as Charley put it when they returned.

The ranger was very impressed and Charley now has an oral promise of $2,000 per year, a radio for use while in the cave to keep in touch with the ranger station, free accommo- dations at the Paradise lnn, free transportation to and from the park, use of park vehicles and other equipment and the service, of all park rangers who are now required to help Charley explore, survey and map the caves!! 'Me ranger left shortly thereafter and it was now our turn to 'experience' an ice cave. Imagine for a moment crawling on your hands and knees up the middle of a freezing mountain stream at night and you have a pretty good picture of what it was like!! Most of the ay was standing up but it seemed like endless miles when we had to crawl.

Water was constantly dripping from the walls and ceilings of the passages and collects in the middle of the rock-covered floor creating a raging torrent of water in every passage. The ice-cold water also tends to drip off the ceiling and fall right down your neck and flow down your back!! A real spine-chilling experience. We were told to bring rubber gloves, boots and a full rain- suit but the very first crawlway required us to get down on our hands and knees. The ice-cold water from the stream we were crawling up flowed right into our boots and gloves and down our sleeves and pants legs!! Pure misery ensued. I thought we would all die from hypothennia and wanted to abort the trip. But, Charley told us he would take us to a big room where we could stand up and get out of the water. So, we kept going shivering violently with our teeth chattering all the way. What a horrible way to die!!

The cave is like a maze with side passages going off in all directions. A one junction, we counted five different ways in which to go!!  Charley knew this part of the cave well though so, we didn't get lost.                                  

We finally arrived at a large ice chamber within the cave. Charley whipped out his beautiful Nikon and started snapping pictures of everyone, while I held his stroboscopic flash bulb unit.  He got a choice picture of Clarence standing under a waterfall in full rain-gear and we are all crossing our fingers hoping it will turn out good. One of the first things we noticed here were the walls of this large room. There are made of thick deep blue glacial ice. At this point in the cave, we are so far    I underneath the glacier that the weight of snow and ice above us has compressed the ice was so hard it has literally             squeezed the air bubbles out of the ice!!  The ice is so clear; you can shine your headlamp several feet back into it. While we were admiring the ice, Rod Crawford got out his collecting bottle.  He started probing the ice with a pair of tweezers. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was looking for ice worms. Of course, I assumed right away he was just pulling my leg. That is, until he actually collected one and put it in a small bottle of preservative to take back to the Burke Museum!! That's right. They actually exist and live on nutrients in the ice. I know because he showed it to me!!  As I recall, it was only about one millimeter long and its a body was as clear as the ice it lives in. I tried looking for some and, Couldn't find a single one. I don't know how Rod found any. He must have the eyes of an eagle or hawk. The ice, worms must have some sort of natural anti-freeze in their bodies and are able to somehow bore their way thorough the ice.        

 While Charley still had his strobe unit out, he had one of us hold it up next to a large column of ice in the middle of this ice chamber. He told us all to turn our headlamps off and then he shot off the strobe into the column. The ice glowed and cedes green color for several seconds after the strobe went out. Dr. Halliday was quite impressed with Charley's demonstration of fluorescent ice as were the rest of us. I'm sure there are many other mysteries yet to be discovered in this large cave system.

Charley has many other true and even hair raising stories to tell about his adventures in exploring this cave. He told us about one time when he and Mark Vining were in the cave. They were in a large room or passage. Mark noticed that Charley was standing directly beneath a large boulder that was stuck in the ice in the ceiling high above their heads. He suggested to Charley that it might be a good idea to move out from underneath the boulder in case it broke loose and fell from the ceiling unexpectedly. No sooner had Charley agreed and moved to a safer place than the rock came crashing down right where he had been standing only a moment before!! He narrowly escaped being killed.

Standing still for picture taking tends to make one freeze in an ice cave so, about this time everyone made a mad dash for the entrance of the cave in hopes of finding the sun still shining outside. We were in luck. A change into dry clothes, eating some food and soaking up the warm sunshine helped raise our spirits quite a bit after such a chilling experience.

Another incident I forgot to mention was about the daypack I ended up having to drag through the cave. I packed everything in plastic bags so they wouldn't get wet.  It was very heavy once I got everything packed into it.

The problem arose while inside the cave. I had put extra carbide fuel for my carbide lamp in a plastic bag (a dumb move as I found out later). The crawlways were too low and the pack too heavy to keep it out of the water all the time. So, I had to drag it along most of the way. Water from the stream got into the bag of carbide and started the usual chemical

It reaction giving off acetylene gas and a large amount of heat and slop.

Carbide looks like ordinary gravel until you add water and then it turns into a gross mush. I thought it was going to burn a hole thorough my pack but luckily it didn't. The pack itself stayed quite cool due to the icy cold water it was being pulled id through inside the cave. My pack held a variety of delectable foods. Because of the weight of the cave gear I had in the pack, I ended up with mashed banana for lunch along with a melted mess of chocolate chips caused by the long, hot hike up to the cave. After the pack went trucking' through the cave, the chocolate chips were quick frozen into a solid mass, my raisins were inter-mixed with sand and my plastic bag of, dried apricots was flooded with strewn water!! My sandwiches metamorphosed into flat pancakes turning the food I ate after exiting the cave into a meal fit for a king!! I'm sure on ice caving has its good points too. At the moment though, my mind is a blank. Perhaps my brain still hasn't thawed out yet.

 We all had a good time but most vowed to wear a full diver's dry suit if we ever come back again. While the sun was still out, we enjoyed glissading back down the mountain to the ranger station at Paradise Lodge.