Cowboy Tough - leg 8 (rappel and caving)

(Photos by John Beard)

I had been looking forward to seeing Sinks Canyon again - such a pretty place.  Leg 8 was a nice diversion from the "work" of racing and we spent a pleasant afternoon almost feeling like we were taking a break.

Leg 8 - "Cave nooks, rappel lines, and Sink(er)s"
[4 miles on foot, 100% trail (not exactly), 800' gain and loss, rappel and caving]

I don't think it was quite 4 miles, but we were all quite fine with that!

Arrival and check-in at Sawmill Campground, where we met some nice volunteers:

Surveying the TA and reading the rappel and caving instruction board:

Setting up a spot on the comfortable lawn.  This was probably the nicest TA of them all, not that any were particularly bad.

Dave got some risotto for lunch and went to get his blisters looked at in the medical tent.  They said they had seen a lot worse.  They taped him up but couldn't help much with the blisters on the bottoms of his feet.

Leslie was already ready (I think we had just gotten here?) - how does she do that so fast?  She should give a class on quick transitions.

Tom was goofing around for the cameraman (John) when Leslie - with eyes covered - caught him in the act, reaching up to grab him by the arm and scare the crap out of him.  I was lucky enough to witness this "tom-foolery" and got a laugh out of it too:

We put some lights on charger plugs, got hot water for food, and geared up for the ropes section.

OK, we're ready to go hang off a cliff.  It was a short hike across the road and up to the rappel site:

All helmeted up:

View of the TA from the top of the rappel (John did some nice photo documentation that day):

Leslie was already geared up so she went first.  Oddly, Dave was having trouble putting on his harness (that's usually my job - to clarify, having trouble putting on my harness, not putting one on Dave).  It might have been John who finally couldn't help speaking up that it was upside-down.  Maybe we were lacking a little sleep.

Safety checks (they were watching closely over the sleep-deprived racers) and then it was time for Leslie to rappel:

I guess I'll go next and get this over with.  I'm generally comfortable with rappelling, it's just the first backward lean off a high drop that can sometimes be a bit unnerving:

An excellent rappel location - impressive but not ridiculously high, with great scenery.  We heard that the rappel site had been closed earlier in the day due to winds; happily the small storm blew through before we arrived.

Tom coming down the wall:

Almost to the bottom:

That was fun!  Dave was hobbling a little from the blisters, but we didn't have too far to walk.

Next up - a caving section.  We went up the road and found flagging that led to a rocky drainage where we could leave the packs.  I had no idea this cave was here - it's certainly not publicized by the park.

And it's not an obvious entrance:

One by one we disappeared underground:

Scrambling around big boulders to find a ladder and climb down to a bigger cavern.  Very cool!

We worked our way back, finding a rope that helped us get down and back up a slanted rock.  As we went back we started hearing water from the underground river.  The Popo Agie "sinks" underground, goes somewhere around here for two hours (they don't know exactly where), then "rises" back up - pretty neat phenomenon.  And very cool that we were down there.

We found the checkpoint punch and started back out, passing a team coming in.  Our team did great remembering how we had gotten into the cave (which turned out to be less than obvious) and someone quickly pointed the way to the ladder.

We ended up just a bit dirty but it was worth it.

Hi Dave!

Hi Tom!

Back to our packs:

And back down the road to TA:

That was fun!  Thank you, Sinks Canyon!

After leg 8 (CP18/19) = 78:09:52, 32nd place

Now back to the bikes.  Time for the Ride Across Wyoming (RAW, hopefully not like our butts?).