The Ape Cave is a lava tube cave from an eruption of Mt St Helens that happened a couple thousand years ago. Most of St Helens eruptions are the explosive type like what happened in 1980; where this cave formed from lava flow that cooled on the surface while the interior kept flowing out.
It’s a really fun cave to explore.
Stairs lead into the cave dividing it into 2 parts, upper and lower Ape Cave. Lower cave we do first, down and back to the stairs, then past the stairs to the upper cave and (eventually) out. We both think the upper cave is the best part as it’s more adventurous with all the boulder piles from old ceiling collapses to climb over- which is also why it’s avoided by many. It takes some climbing!
Lower cave
This is Cory just inside the entrance. It’s already so dark and we had only gone down the stairs!
I couldn’t resist a selfie in the dark haha!
One of many survey markers. I liked the Bigfoot!
The end of where the lower cave is passable.
Upper cave
The boiled textured of this rock/boulder I found really fascinating. The purple is leftover spray paint from some jerks.
One of 7 noted ceiling collapses we scrambled over. Some go up pretty high, you do have to climb some and squeeze past. It feels like an adventure!
Looking down from where I climbed.
Pretty close to the end at this point and it’s the first light we have seen the whole time (that wasn’t out of a flashlight) so we took a lot of pics. The abundance of moss in this one lit spot is wild.
Crazy shiny cave slime!
You can just see the ladder with this second vent near by.
Hike back
Lots of beargrass!
Lots of funky rock formations leftover from when the lava was cooling.
It’s an awesome hike! If you decide to go, I would recommend wearing a light rain jacket, gloves, a beanie, hiking shoes, and a headlamp. It’s cool down there year-round but you get really warm after a bit from the work of crossing the boulder fields. The gloves will help you keep from tearing your hands up. Headlamp is more necessary than a suggestion, especially for the upper cave.
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*A note on the tagging we saw- Park rangers have to scrub the paint off with steel wool and local spring water while using a tarp to collect all the debris to prevent it from contaminating the ecosystem. Tagging is selfish and whomever does it is a jerk, that’s why I didn’t share any of the big tags we saw and only the remnants of purple. People like that don’t deserve any extra attention.