Today I went back into the forest north of Flagstaff for a little impromptu duathlon. I have been using a guide book called "Cosmic Ray's Mountain Bike Guide." They listed a lava tube cave off the trails near where I ran yesterday. The cave is the remnants of past volcanic activity and the map showed it being just over 3000 feet long and just above freezing inside. I rode about 9 miles out some nice fire roads to get to the parking lot that marked the trail head.
There were two families just heading down into the cave in front of me and it was three adults and about 6 kids. One set of parents got spooked right off the bat and decided to head back up after only 50 feet, leaving just one dad to keep an eye on all the kids. You quickly left all ambient light and were totally dependent on your flashlights, luckily I am totally a geek for high power lights and I had one in my hand and another on my head. The footing was a bit rough with all the loose lava rock and a bit of ice here and there, so you spent most of your time looking down at your feet. I moved past the kids after about 10 minutes as the dad was telling them that they needed to turn around. Ever the bad influence, I intentionally pushed ahead a little further to draw the kids behind me for company. Dad totally lost on this fight as the kids followed me over his protests. This happened 3 times before he finally won out and they turned around leaving me about 1/4 mile undergound and all alone. I continued on about 10 minutes by myself till I reached the low crawl point in the tunnel, after crawling through I found another high cavern and from my memory of the map I knew I was about half way.
It was about this time that I got a little spooked, being in the cold and dark by myself started to mess with my already screwy mind. I decided that I could live with not going all the way to the other end, and headed back hoping my bike would still be leaning against the rock wall when I got there. 2-3 times along the way I got weird feelings that I was going the wrong way. Lots of doubt creeps into your mind in weird situations. About 3/4 of the way out I finally ran into a few college students heading in. I ended up hiking in the tunnel for about an hour and it was really pretty cool, though I probably wouldn't do it again alone.
Turns out my bike was still there and I continued on the loop from my guide book. The loop was listed as about 30 miles of easy fire road. The return trip on east side of the highway turned out to be a decent climb taking me to 8500 feet of elevation through a mix of Ponderosa Pines and Aspens and was really beautiful. That lung busting climb lead to a nice fire road decent back to my car. Turned out to be a nice mellow 28 mile MTB ride with a cool hike in the middle.
I did the Duathlon, but didn't get a shirt.
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