Prince of Wales Island 2023 caving expedition
![Image](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7nBziIBdyzyLEtRGKxxior7sjn3KiqzZKBpt2Y_-Y3adx-5N0lQlSFwodeYR5qOxjq5hhRlBXFcCjCqVJR5UO45N7agvEjkP_MSGySn2L75RVWjZ76LQDOtk3IrQnSyFtIUDaXI1_bRF7UlaCCGMIvGy8U6Cb1s1R0AW1EBJgZTeTnvrV9fi-rxFYigM/w640-h426/DSC06510-ARW_DxO_DeepPRIME.jpg)
This past week July 8th thru July 15th, I returned to Prince of Wales Island for a week long caving expedition. I was there for a week last summer as part of a Glacier Grotto/US Forest Service expedition to explore and map unexplored caves on the island. This year we were returning to continue exploration of caves we left going last year, and to start exploring new caves in the area. I was most excited to return to Fast and Heavy Cave, a cave on El Cap Peak (several hundred feet from the famous El Cap Pit, the deepest pit in the US) that we first entered and started exploring last year. Last year we made it down several drops to ~270 ft deep and turned around at an open pit taking water and sucking air because we ran out of bolts on the last day of the expedition. I had been thinking about that lead for the entire year since then! What lie beyond that pit? More and bigger shafts descending deeper into the mountain? Miles of borehole taking all the water that seeps into the earth on the