Ape Caves — Saturday, Jul. 1, 2023

someone needs to update the difficulty of this hike. It is NOT easy if you do the upper cave. Nor is the 350 ft of elevation gain in any way an indicator of the climbing you will do in this hike. There are NUMEROUS large and smaller Boulder fields you will have to climb over on this hike.
the words two are The Wall and The Squeeze.
The Wall is a section that is a good 8 feet with really no handholds. it goes almost straight up. We had a group of 7 women who helped push and pull each other up The Wall. We were only able to get up it because we worked together. same thing for The Squeeze. It was a group of large boulders with only a narrow passage on the right. As soon as you got up that section, you then had to maneuver a gap and another Boulder that was behind it. lots of belly scrambling.
I highly recommend doing this with a group, unless you are a mountain climber.
I won't lie, this hike was HARD, but I am so stoked that I did it. Totally worth every second. Also recommend bringing at least two really good headlamps as we had several that died or were too dim for this hike.