CAVING IN SOAPSTONE

Saturday was another adventurous ride in the Uintahs, Dale, Chad, Steve, Joseph and my dad and I all headed into a favorite riding Soapstone Basin. We crossed the majority of the basin before heading back to the truck later in the day, the snow was great and the sun was bright!! As we were heading back crossing open meadow after open meadow skirting around the Lightning Ridge cliff band and heading back west Dale decided he wanted to explore an open pit cave! Well not exactly, as we all crested this little hill coming out of a creek bottom I saw what appeared to be a nice drift to go busting through. Dale was several people back, I went first and saw that it was actually on open pit so I rode on by, my dad right behind me slowed to get a better look and saw how dangerous it would be to get too close and he turned around to wave the others off, Dale had approached from behind my dad and didn’t see his waving in time, Dale drove right into this hole and LUCKLY with the speed he had coming in the snowmobile wedged across the open hole and stopped, Dale fell off to the side, we still cannot figure out how he did not fall off the sled and into this cave…miracle. By the pictures you can tell that we were very lucky in that nobody got hurt or that the sled didn’t get swallowed up in the cave opening. After 2 hours of digging out all the snow to the ground around the sled and with 2 ropes hooked up to the other sleds pulling we got that sled out of there and we were all able to have a great rest of the ride back to the truck, we got back just in time for the sun to go down so no big deal I guess. Enjoy the pictures!

(Don't worry Mandie your sled faired well)