What luck! Brad was perusing our guide book and ran across an article about El Capitan Cave. Luckily for us, we were cruising right past it the very next day. And better yet, there was a USFS dock right there. Sweet! And even better still, there was nary a boat using it so we had it to ourselves! This turned out to be a really good thing as our boat took up the whole dock. Man, did we luck out! A free dock. No need to haul out the dinghy or the kayaks to get ashore.
El Capitan USFS volunteers give three tours per day of the cave. We got there on Saturday too late for the last one of the day and sadly, they do not give tours on Sunday. Seems our luck had just run out. We decided to climb the 370 steps to the entrance just to get a little exercise and check it out. Good thing we did. When we got to the entrance, the tour party of four was just getting ready to go in. We spent a half an hour talking to the guides while the guests caught their breath from the steep ascent. They could't take us stragglers as they had no extra hardhats and lights to give us. Besides, we weren't expecting to go in and hence didn't have on enough clothing to stay warm and dry inside. When we mentioned that we were cave divers from Florida (way back when in our past lives), one of the guides, warmed right up to us and offered to give us an "off the books" tour the next day. Super sweet!!! Our luck just got reinstated.
The next morning we were geared up and ready to go. Our guide gave us a great tour and we are forever grateful. El Capitan is the longest known cave in Alaska. We saw some nice examples of flowstone, bacon, and some neat calcium crystals. Quite a bit of swiss cheese-like holes. It looked like an awesome cave requiring a lot more exploration in the future. Sure wish we could help with mapping it out but alas, we have more adventures down the water to explore. So we had to shove off and leave this magical place for the local spelunkers to enjoy.
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