S
snengineer
Well-known member
Saturday was another adventurous ride in the Uintahs, six if us all headed into a favorite riding area 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 an open meadow skirting around the Lightning Ridge cliff band and heading back west Dale (Modular man) 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 onto the edge, we still cannot figure out how he did not fall off 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!
(Little did we know the drama that was unfolding around the corner about .15 miles away from us with Rock Star and gang, two happy endings!)
We knew it was a cave and not a mine shaft because of the moist WARM air flowing up at us, also the entire circumference was iced over very hard, we figure that’s what kept the sled from breaking loose and falling in. The cave opening was about 5’ in diameter and dropped straight down to an unknown depth, we dropped stuff in there to see if we could hear the bottom, nope.
Those who are interested in finding or not finding this cave here are the GPS coordinates;
40 32 57.56 N.
110 55 40.26 W.
We tried to mark this hole so people wouldn't follow our tracks into it, kinda did a piss poor job at it I guess, Man can you imagine how useless this thread would be without pictures!
(Little did we know the drama that was unfolding around the corner about .15 miles away from us with Rock Star and gang, two happy endings!)
We knew it was a cave and not a mine shaft because of the moist WARM air flowing up at us, also the entire circumference was iced over very hard, we figure that’s what kept the sled from breaking loose and falling in. The cave opening was about 5’ in diameter and dropped straight down to an unknown depth, we dropped stuff in there to see if we could hear the bottom, nope.
Those who are interested in finding or not finding this cave here are the GPS coordinates;
40 32 57.56 N.
110 55 40.26 W.
We tried to mark this hole so people wouldn't follow our tracks into it, kinda did a piss poor job at it I guess, Man can you imagine how useless this thread would be without pictures!
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