The day after Thanksgiving is a designated adventure day thanks to the efforts of REI over the last two years. Not that it wasn't always an adventure day for us. When we're home we've been tackling Mt. Teneriffe on the annual Turkey Burner and when we're on the road I take the day to go opt outside.

This year found us south of the (Washington) border again so I picked a couple of possible destinations for another large crew. If the weather promised goodness, Mt. Hood would be our destination. Failing that, we'd go underground. The weather was not good.

The Guler Ice Caves are a partially collapsed lava tube. If you're not familiar with lava tubes just think of them as an exhaust pipe for a volcano. Lava flowed underground from the volcano until it got to the surface. Lava tubes can flow for miles. In the Northwest there are lots of lava tubes. Some are highly developed like the Lava River Cave in central Oregon and others are hardly developed at all. The Guler caves fall into the latter category. We had a two hour drive from Portland, arriving to an empty, snow-covered trailhead.

The draw of the Guler Ice Caves has to do with the cold temperatures that persist in the caves into the spring and summer. In the days before refrigeration the caves were "mined" to keep the Hood River hipsters' beer cold. It was definitely cold as we descended into the cave on a moss-covered, but sturdy set of stairs.

But it wasn't ice cold. Even with snow above ground, the cave was just enough above freezing that the ice stalactites were merely drips kissing our heads. The ice comes later in the year, but that doesn't mean we couldn't explore.

From the bottom of the stairs there's a small room to your left called the "Crystal Grotto". It must be amazing when it's frozen. We saw a bat huddled in a crack of the rock and kept our distance. Poor little guy looked terribly uncomfortable.

Passing the entrance we followed the longer arm of the cave west. The big entrance has several side rooms and narrows dramatically requiring some real scrambling. As I climbed up over a set of boulders I hit my head on the roof. Thankfully, we were all wearing helmets. I turned to look back at the girls, my light shining along the roof.

Why'd it have to be spiders? I hate spiders.

(I was going to go with "spiders on a plane," but I don't think it's quite appropriate.)

I very, very slowly backed away and found another way around. Clara and I ventured the furthest. We found another bat and a way out, but it would be a gnarly crawl. We opted to retreat to the stairs to find other pits. A trail led from the mouth to a set of snow-covered roads.

Well, maybe it was a trail. We wandered through the snow for about an hour just enjoying the outdoors. Returning to the parking lot I wandered across the road from the cave entrance and found the pit we had almost come out.

No worries. The promise of a "Crystal Grotto" and "Ice Pools" is too much to let go of. We'll be back when the caves are cold and the ice is sparkly.