Dally Kellogg: My family went to the Glenwood Caverns and did the cave tour and it was awesome and it made Kenny and I and Brody, Grady and our friend Eric Walton want to go caving again. We haven’t gotten snow in weeks, so we are getting a little restless for adventure. We decided to search for a new cavern high above the Glenwood Canyon.
So the next day we planned to go into the Glenwood Canyon and hit up some of the caves we’d never been in before, like the Big Opening Cave or as we call it, Deadman’s Cave. Kenny named it Deadman’s Cave because a while back Grady, Brody. and our Dad went to go caving in Big Opening Cave. When they got there there was a door on the cave and it was jammed shut. Our dad looked in through a little window and he saw a dead man lying on the floor of the cave. They called the police and the search and rescue team came and when Grady, Brody, and our Dad saw them they got their attention and started to head down the mountain.
They met the Search and Rescue guys halfway down the mountain and told them about the guy and where the cave was. The search and rescue team cleared out the area and the police interrogated our dad as well as Grady and Brody. It turned out he had Guns,ammo, and Dynamite and was a well known homeless man. It was pretty sad for everyone.
But, back to our caving day.
Neither Eric nor I had a caving helmet, so we all went to an outdoor store called Factory Outdoors and bought two caving helmets. Then, when we were done we drove to No Name, turned around at the rest area and pulled into a dirt parking lot off the highway.
It’s a really steep climb up the canyon to get to the caves. We have to be careful climbing up the canyon, especially as the snow begins to melt because the rocks are very loose. In fact, even as careful as we were being, when we got about halfway up one of us accidentally knocked a rock down, we yelled “rock”, but it still bounced off Eric’s helmet and landed on Grady’s back. It left a big dent on Eric’s helmet. It was a fist size rock with a really sharp edge so it definitely would have done some damage if he was not wearing a helmet.
We kept hiking and climbing and finally we got there and it was so crazy to see how much stuff was still laying around from when search and rescue was there. They just pulled everything out and left it in front of the cave. The cave had a wooden door and wooden shelving. Outside the cave was a pile of junk and rock walls the guy living in the cave must have made.
The cave was very small so we kept hiking and we found the “Ampitheater”, located on a very popular climbing route.
We also found four little caves one cavern was a rock with a opening that was about a foot in diameter. Kenny was the first to go in and the hole. He went about 6’ then the small opening opened into a little room.
The other caves were just little cracks in the cliff that opened up. One cavern we we were sure was a den for some animal because there were bones, and footprints in it.
After a lot of exploring, and not finding any really good caves for deep exploration, it started to get late and really windy so we started hiking down.
We had fun “rock boarding” on all the loose rocks to get down faster. It started to snow and it was getting dark in the canyon. It was a great day and we got down quickly and safe.
