Caving Adventure

Experience the thrill of underground exploration on this three night adventure. On the first day, you’ll make our way to the Gifford Pinchot National forest surrounding Pahto, also known as Mt. Adams. You’ll stay at a beautiful campground alongside the Little White Salmon River, and from there, explore the forests, lava tubes, lakes, and rivers of the White Salmon river drainage.

Price: $450 per person

Itinerary: 9 AM Friday, May 23, through 5 PM Monday, May 26

Meet Location: Sahale Outdoors Education Center,  5007 Pacific Hwy E, Suite 19, Fife, Wa, 98424

Highlights

Caving – Adventures – Building friendships

Difficulty Level

Intermediate: Underground travel over difficult, rocky terrain with some scrambling and crawling, sometimes through small spaces

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“These mountains are very important to… my people. On these mountains along the Columbia River is about one of the only places left more or less untouched for some of our Native foods and medicines. All of our upper valley… have all become farmlands. So what we have left are these mountains.”

Chief Johnny Jackson

The area south of Pahto (Mt. Adams) is a part of the traditional territory of the Klickitat people, who lived along the White Salmon and Klickitat Rivers, and traded with the tribes of different language families that surrounded them. They spoke a Sahaptin language most similar to Yakama, and their Native name is recorded as being Qwulh-hwai-pum. Facing threat and violence from the government of Washington Territory, the Klickitat made an effort to resist signing treaties that signed over their rights to their homelands, but they were forced to cede their lands in 1855, at the Yakima Treaty at Camp Stevens. Since then, the majority of the Klickitat have been a part of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. 

Today, the Klickitat people are active along the Columbia River, preserving ancient traditions, and working to protect lands and wildlife from industry and pollution. Chief Johnny Jackson of the Cascade Klickitat spent his life fighting for tribal rights, and was instrumental in protecting Native Americans ability to feed their families through fishing along the Columbia River in the 1980’s. In 2001, he led an effort to stop Enron, a major energy company, from building a 15,000 acre wind farm in the Columbia Hills, the location in which the Klickitat fought for the right to live on their traditional lands. These hills are sacred to the Klickitat as the burial places of their people. Chief Jackson continued to fight for the rights of his people to protect and care for the land they have lived on since time immemorial until his death from Covid-19 in 2020.