WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Off the Trails: Caving In

Episode Date: April 25, 2026

Join Nicole Sighiartau and Storm Drexler as they discuss some of their wildest experiences in the great outdoors! This week they talk all things caves. From salt caves to sea caves, venture at your own risk. 

You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome to Off the Trails. Hi-ho, I'm Storm Drexler. And I'm Nicole Seguirot, and we'll be your adventure buddies every week as we discuss some of our wildest stories from our outdoor endeavors. Today, we are talking about caves. Caves deep in the ground. You know, up until recently, up until like the last few years, I thought that Spalunking was when you take a big rock and throw it in a lake. Really? Because that's the sound to make. Spalunk. Yeah. And that's what, there's a Calvin Hobbs strip about that. So I always thought that's what it was.

But then I learned like four years ago, five years ago, and I was like, no, this is when you go into deep places, dark places in the earth. And you go caving. Yeah, caves have like an appeal, you know, like a mystique around them. There are so much of this world, this planet that we live on, most of it's underground. We just live on the top little layer. That's true. There's a ton of stuff down there.

There's probably big old layers with dinosaurs. and things and melt into deep creatures. Deep wells in the ground. I like to think there's like underground, like big water things. Oh, yeah, there probably are. Yeah. And then, of course, not to mention the bottoms of oceans. That's true.

And like trenches and deep sea caves. Really scary. Super duper spooky. There's always a bigger fish. There's always a bigger worm. Worm? Yeah. I've learned anything from Dune.

It's that if you go too deep in the ground. Big worms will come out and they'll go, oh, num, num, num, and eat you up. And then you'll never be able to splunk in any lake again. Spalankan lakes. But before we get into our cave stories, and we have got a good one, a good one at least. I don't know what Kunnacles got.

No, I have some little ones. I don't have like a good one, but I have lots of little cave stories. We have a mutual trail marker this week. Oh, okay. Because I guess we do. Unless you have another one. I have an additional,

but we'll talk about this first. Well, we have a mutual one that I was, we were both there for. It was today. We were out at Bobby's Lake nearby, which is great. Yep. And we went out there,

waited around. I didn't know, but a bunch of the lake, if you're a local Hillsdell first son, You want to go wait out in the lake. The weather's getting warmer. You should do it. A lot of the lake, especially on the park side, is extremely shallow.

It's very shallow. And it goes out. How far are you thinking to the lake? About, you can walk about halfway. Across the lake. Halfway across the lake. With one to two feet foot deep water. It gets deeper, but you can still walk.

Like I walked all the way out, but it does surprise. You walked a lot and you're three feet tall. I'm three feet tall, so it's, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was great. We did that. We were like, oh, wow, this is awesome. And then friend of the show, Nathaniel Gallagher, co-host of Boys on the podcast, friend of the show.

Was like, guys, I think it's going to probably start raining. Like, look at those dark clouds. Well, hang on, hang on. I think it was Andrew and I who said, it's going to rain. And you guys are like, what, it's going to rain? Because we picked them up from Simpson. And then we point out the clouds. But Nate did have an astute observation at the lake.

Yeah, and it was like, you know, it's probably going to start raining any minute very suddenly and powerfully. And we were like, no, we'll, you know, we'll feel droplets first and whatever. Which we did feel a few. Wham! Monsoon. Like, out of nowhere, just pelting. And, like, little hail as well. Little hails, too. Little hail guys.

So we were like, woo! And we ran all the way back to the car and it was fun. Yeah. No, that was very fun. That is a good trail marker. I don't know what it is, but running out of the rain with your friends is kind of an adrenaline. It's so fun. Run away.

Yeah. Run away from the water. Exactly. Run away from something that gives us life. Yeah. It's not like fires running down from the sky. What did you do this week? What's your trail marker?

My trail marker is more so, like, a general one from the past three weeks because sorry, oops, we haven't been releasing episodes. Listen, guys, I was in Tennessee for a little bit. Storm was having fun. Yeah. And I accidentally was very lazy and didn't record anything. Yeah, or as Nathaniel friend of the show would say. But, but what?

A Nathaniel friend of the show would say, bored. Bored. I was not bored, though. I was playing beach volleyball for the past three weeks, typically on Friday evenings, which is when we record. So I had become a beach volleyball fanatic. Not that I'm very good. I have improved a lot.

We should play together. We played. We played a few weeks ago. You should join because the, are you in the group chat? No, I'm annoyed by it. You're not in the group chat. I was previously and I've left the volleyball group chat. No, you need to join because people are actually playing.

Like we've been playing a lot recently and I feel like I've improved quite a bit. The ball is no longer flying in weird directions. It's mostly going over the net. Is that your marker? They've been beach volleyball and it up. Yeah, with friends. Like, I've, I've just been having a blast because I think. feel like I'm a solo outdoor activity girl.

Like, I run by myself, I swim by myself, I bike by, like, I don't really do stuff with other people unless if it's like climbing or skiing. But volleyball, it's like you're playing with... You're too fast. No, I just, I'm kind of antisocial in that way. But friends make everything. But no, you're right. Like beach volleyball with four or five, six, seven other people if you're playing eights.

Like, it's awesome. It's so fun. You're mixing up the teams. You're talking to new people. Some people are really good and you're like, yikes, I'm horrible. And then other people are right there with you. and they are struggling just as much. And some people are even worse than you,

even though they're really tall. Hi, guys. I'm Storkegwick. Well, have you heard about cave volleyball? It's next to... No, you hit it over the roof of the cave. Yeah, you have to hit it back out of the cave. It's like you're in two different caves

and you have to hit the ball back and forth. Now, guys, cave stories. So I have a story of one time when I was in a cave, and if you have claustrophobia, content warning, this is a time where I was like, oh, the ground could kill me. me. So we were over in the great country of Israel visiting a few years ago. How long was that? A while ago now. You're so old. They have these mountains made of salt. Like the entire mountain is

made of the salt residue pushed up around the edges of the dead sea. And so, you know, everyone goes to the dead sea and goes, oh, I'm floating in the dead sea. But people go, like, I'm going to hike the mountains around the dead sea. So we had this guide and we were like, we're going to go up and hike this mountain, so we hiked this, this like salt mountain thing. It wasn't too tall. And you get to the top, and then there's a big hole in the top of the mountain. It's like this just giant maw. And the mountain's kind of like that same, like, arid, rocky dust that most of the Middle Eastern countries have,

where you look like you're in genosis from Star Wars. But in these mountains around the Dead Sea, you can like scrape a little bit and, like, get a few layers of soil down, and then you're going to see like salt crystals. That's cool. The whole thing. It's not like big rock or anything. It's salt. Yeah, it's salt.

And it tastes like salt. I was like, um, numbed. Does it mean that it erodes very quickly, like when it rains a lot? I think so, yeah. But they don't get a lot of rain there, right? Not a ton. Okay. Yeah.

I don't know. It was definitely very, very hot and dry when we were there. Okay. And it was like December. Yeah. So we get to the top. There's this big old hole and the guy like does his thing with all the ropes and stuff. And we're like, awesome.

We're going to, like, the plan is hike the mountain, repel down into the salt cave. and then like hike out of the cave. I'm like easy, right? So we get strapped in. We'll get our like helmets and our equipment on and our buckles, buckled and all that. And we slowly get let down. And for like a little bit, it's like this little hole that repels.

And we're like, oh, I'm just rappelling down a wall. And then they're like, okay. And you get to a certain point where you look down and the edge goes away from beneath your feet and it just has a huge opening that you're like up in the middle of. So now they just will let you. like lower you down by rope. In midair.

Mid air. You're just hanging. That's so cool. And I got lowered down this huge, enormous salt shaft that I was hanging in the middle of it. And it's probably like diameter wise, 50 feet. Oh my gosh. That's a big hole.

It's very, very big all around you. And like it gets bigger so that you could come from the top. Almost as if like the mountain was hollow. But there's a lot more mountain. Yeah. As you see later on. And you can't see the bottom. So it's just like pitch black beneath you and you have your flashlight.

And you're like looking around. as you're getting lowered by whoever's above you. We all got lowered all the way down one by one. And, you know, it's a couple hundred foot drop. So it's like slowly making your way down. But it's beautiful and you shine the light of the walls. And the walls of this are just like these like layers and layers of different sodium mixes, like different salt mixes with different kinds of silts.

So it's like this like rainbow color of all these different kinds of like salts basically that are just in rings around and down the whole. So you can slowly get down to the bottom. We're like, wow, this is so cool. Get to the very, very bottom. Feet touchdown. It's just this pitch black dark cave. And it's like, now you're like way down.

So it's like in a mix of rock and salt. And it's like, whoa. And so we get down there. Everyone slowly repels all the way down. Repels to the point and then it slowly let down. And we all get down to the bottom. And the last guy like flies down so fast. We're like, how do you do that?

The guide? Yeah, the guy. Oh, okay. He's like, I've done this much. Like Spider-Man. Yeah. I was like, holy moly. Like, I don't know how he does that.

He probably has to hike up the mountain again to get his ropes later. Yeah. But we get down there and he's like, all right, now we're going to hike out through the caves. And so we turn over and there's like these like these different pathways going to give a direction. Wait,

so when he lowers you down, is there another guide down there or is he just like, wait for me? No, I was the second one. My little brother went first. Oh, your little brother?

Yeah, yeah, one of my younger brothers went first. And we, there was no one down there. We just got let down. But the time I touched down, the rope was back up in the darkness for the next person.

and it's just me and my brother in our flashlights in a cave. And like it's so far up that it's dark about us. We can't see the light that we were like that. That's scary. I wouldn't like that. Yeah. So, but a huge open cavern of space. Okay.

So we're like, okay. So we like find a wall. You know, like, you walk over and you find a wall. Put your hand on it. And you're like, wow. And you lick the wall. That's like part of the experience. Salty.

And so we were like, okay. So we all get down there, a whole family in the guide. And we're like, all right, where are we going? And so we start like hiking our way out of these caves, which it's not like an underground created pathway. It's natural cavern. So we have to like climb over some stuff and like climb up some stuff,

come to drop down a couple times. And it's, and there's one point where it's very scary because he's like, okay, look at this. And he points down and it's this little hole in the side of the wall. And it's like, we're all going to crawl through here. We were like, what?

He's like, yeah, it's a little hole. It's like maybe like 10 inches tall or like a foot tall. Okay. With something like that, maybe less. And you need to get on a little. get down, not on the hands and knees on like your stomach and like slowly squirm your way through and it's like that tall and like, you know, two feet wide. So it's just this crevice in the side of the rock.

Oh, that's scary. And so we're like, okay, and he's like, it goes for like, you know, like 15 feet that way through this and then you will like climb out up into this other like cavern over there. And we're like, are you, are you serious right now? He's like, yeah. And he gets in and it's like, I'll show you. And he squirms and he just wren into the wall and go. And we're like, oh my God. And so then I get down and I do it and you go through. And, and you go through. And And like I get, you know, six feet in, so my whole body is now in. You can't kick your legs because your foot is also almost as tall as the thing. You can't move anything other than like have your arms like this and or have your arms

like this. Oh, I have motion. You can't see. Have your arms kind of squunched up next to your shoulders like with your hands pulling yourself forward inch by inch. And then he waits till that point to tell me, oh, there's like a really tight point, like seven things in. Just like jerk forward with any motion you can.

And he's like, most people get stuck there. And I was like, I don't know if anyone seen me in real life. I'm pretty thin. Storm is a string bean. Yeah, I'm a string bean. I'm a tall, thin guy. Yeah.

And even I was like, oh, my hips are not moving anymore. The thing has come too close to me. That's crazy. And I was like, I don't know how other people do this. Did they, before you guys went through the cave, I've seen this before where they make you fit through like two pieces of wood. They're like. They just eyed us up and down.

They just eyed you. They eyeballed it. Yeah. They were like, you all with it. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So did you get stuck? I got stuck briefly. Like I felt like I would have gotten stuck if I was any fatter.

That's crazy. Yeah. If my butt was big, then I would have been trapped in that salt cave forever, ladies and gentlemen. But fortunately for you, unfortunately for the show, I have a flat butt. So I was able to squeeze right on through. And there was like a couple other like, I don't know, like maneuvers. could pull. So like when my parents went through, they hit the key like helped him out a little bit. Oh, okay. It didn't help any of us. I don't like, I don't know how the people got through.

I still am like confused about that. Yeah. But I was kind of exploring ahead. So we get through. I get to the other side. And it's like the hardest part I think was like pulling yourself out of the hole because you can't like like seal your way up. Like you can't bend your back or like what are you do with your legs? You have to like fully pull yourself all the way out before you can stand up. And so get out there. I'm like, oh, oh my gosh. And he's like, that's great. There's only two more of those before we're done. I was like, oh. So we had a couple more like,

like crawl through points. But overall it was incredible. I sparked my wonder for cave systems. The salt stalagmites and stalactites with like the perpetual drip, creating the different points in spires. Like we went through like like almost a forest of stalagmites of salt stalactites. And it's all the different like like when you're not like a naturally constructed underground area, there's like just jutting off crevices and and places that go off in bizarre directions with distant

echoes and probably strange critters and people who live there people and the mole people the mole people here are down there somewhere in the subterranean lands how comforting but eventually on that last of the three like crawl-thrues you go through and there's light ahead and you pull yourself out up up in the sunlight it's not like you to walk out until you pull yourself pop up out of a tiny hole in the ground you're the mole people yeah and you're like I'm a mole person and then you're like wait no I'm just in the character and you get up and you're back out in the dry cracked arid desert and you're looking around and you're like, whoa, and the Dead Sea's over there and you're like, this is awesome.

So we survived. Is there any water in the cave system? Like little trickles of rivers or not rivers to streams. Or like salt blended with like water. Like mineral water that's like like way more salt than it is water. Yeah. Okay. But really not much because like most like salt is a kind of a like will dry out. Yeah.

Yeah. Any water that's there. That's cool. I was sorry. You can finish. No. No, you're done. Okay.

Storm's done. I have a couple of stories. One kind of related to salt caves. When we were in Romania, I was five years old, I remember like basically nothing. I just know we went through caves and it was like there were steel pathways and rails because you kind of zigzagged like switch back to your way through and you made your way down into the cave and there was like I think there was a waterfall. or something. But it was, it was very crowded. It was very crowded.

But that was like my first cave experience, you could say. My next one's a bit cooler. It was probably like seven years old. And there's an island off the coast of California called Catalina Island. It's like 20 miles offshore from where we live. And Sophia's dad has a boat. And so we went out like with her family, my family stayed on the island for a couple of nights.

and over on the beach Sophia and I were playing in the ocean we're looking up at like these cliffs and we see this hole with like a slat of wood kind of blocking your entrance and we're in the water and we look at each other and we're like

we need to go into that hole oh 100% and so we get out of the water like we dry off we put clothes on at this point the tide is kind of like coming in and so we realize that we have to like climb up this rock like it's literally it's not that tall but we have to rock climb our way up.

There's no way you can like walk up. And so we wade into the water a little bit and we start climbing our way up. Again, we were seven. It probably wasn't that tall, but I'd like to think it was 10 to 15 feet up that we climbed. And then we get to kind of like the entrance of this little cave. And we like, I think we stepped over the wood or maybe we went under. But it was a very circular entrance, probably like four feet in diameter. I don't know.

Like, we could fit through pretty easily, but again, we were small. And it was just very circular, and it just went straight back. And we maybe didn't, we probably went 12 feet into the cave. Like, we didn't go very far because we got scared that we were going to run into, like, minors or a dead person. Miners? I don't know. We were seven. Like, we learned about the California Gold Rush and School.

We were, like, there could be minors in here. But it kind of smelled like pee. So, Sophia was like, I think a person lives here. And Sophia's like a year and a half, two years older than I am. So I was like, oh my gosh, she's right. We have to leave immediately. If somebody's older than you, they're always correct. They're always correct.

And so I think we kind of went out closer to the entrance of the cave and sat there for a little bit, looked out at the ocean. And we're like, all right. And I think we're done. Ocean caves are kind of scary. Like, what if the tide comes in while you're in there? And there's like some sort of water, the way the water gets in there that you don't know about. Yeah. But there is dry sand.

Like, and, you know, the tide cycles every 24 hours or whatever it is. or like 12 hours. So we're like... Some outer banks type stuff. We're fine. And like yeah, when we got out, like the water had like rose a little bit. But it wasn't a big deal because again we like climbed up this wall. So that was very fun.

And then kind of like my final cave story, it was 10 or 11 and we're up in Oregon and there's the Oregon caves. And that was really cool because like it's a national park where maybe it's a state. state park. I don't remember exactly. But it's like pretty, pretty untouched. There's some sort of trail, but it, I think it's just developed over people walking for many, many years. And that, it got dark in there. Like, we went pretty deep in. I think with like a park ranger or something, they were giving a ranger talk. But yeah, not a whole lot of cave stories, because I'm not the biggest fan of caves. They kind of stress me out. Yeah, that's fair. My more recent cave

experience. It's also quite pleasant. I went into a wine cave when I was visiting when I was over in Hungary. Yeah. And it was great. They keep wine underground in this little hamlet outside this small village we went to in Hungary. That's like a 30 minute walk outside of a little town. And there was like this hamlet of all these different caves. There's like 40 of them. And they're numbered. So we knew there was like 40 of them. Each one's kind of like a miniature little restaurant almost. But it's just like wines and cheese. And and little meats and like shirkidry board things. I can do that. I know. That's fine. You go down into the cave and you walk back through the cave until there's this big setup with all this wine and this like person there and they're like wine. And of course it's in Hungary.

So we were there. I was there with some guys and we dropped like 15 U.S. dollars for like 15 glasses of wine or something like that. It was like a dollar glass. It was great. But yeah, caves are so cool. I like that they change the taste of stuff. You keep things down there. Yeah.

Why is that? Oyster probably. I don't know. Moisture, I guess, like, I don't know. Yeah, the air. Yeah. But you know, it's even scarier than regular caves, kind of touching on sea caves, underwater caves that scuba divers go into.

That's a whole other level of like mental. Because if you get lost, now it's like, what if your headlight goes out? What if you start running out of oxygen? You're maybe 40 or 50 feet under the water depending on where you are. Like there can be shallower ones. But you have all your gear on. It's not like you can just drop all your scuba gear. So then there's like the equalization thing of like you can't come up too fast.

And I don't know. That just that freaks me out. I remember swimming through an underwater cave, small underwater cave system in Florida. I don't remember when we did this. But coming up like for air and just being rock above you is crazy. Like that's like a, that's like a, you have to lock in or you're going to panic. Yeah. But we like you swim down under through like caves and up another caves.

It's like there's no like. danger of getting lost or anything. That's good. But it's like a smaller little cave system where you like come up and it's like, oh, Pirates of the Caribbean looking out chambers of like sunlight coming in from above. And, but you're like underground kind of.

I think, I think I could do it if it was like that where you could still kind of see sunlight. Like that, that's fine. I've just like read stuff and listened to podcasts of like, you're, you're not even in the ocean. You're like in a,

right. Like just a cave system and there's water and you go scuba diving in there. I'm like, that's just another level of. Yeah. insane. When I'm in water, I feel like the other things that live there are better at being there than I am. Same. And they might get to me. Yeah. Yeah. I've snorkeled through like a little arch and that frightened me. A little arch. Like, okay, maybe it was like five feet across or something. But when I was under it, I was like, uh-oh.

There's rock above me and not just water. Like if I want to get up, I have to get through and then I can get up. Water in caves bad combo. Yeah. Unless you're an adrenaline junkie. So that's a lot of adrenaline junkie. Some of these divers love to go down in the caves and not even keep track of it and then find their way out. Or like free divers? Yeah. That's incredible.

That's, gosh. Now we're just talking about stuff that scares the living daylights out of me. No, I couldn't. I couldn't do that. Yeah. Take your time and go into a cave. Just make sure to bring like a spool of red for red

to see like tie it to something to the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. Be safe. Enjoy them. But do so. Thank you for little. Listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.

We hope you have a great week and make time to go outside and enjoy the great outdoors. We'll see you out there. Happy trails. Hello down there. Bye, guys.