This is not your regular walking tour or even one for the timid or sensitive to total seclusion, vertigo or claustrophobia.

From the moment a registration is made, an instruction page is mailed to the participant explaining in great detail the conditions of the tour. You must not be more than 45" wide on the hips or chest, you must be in good physical condition, you must not be over 30 pounds overweight.

There's a reason for these warnings. Six participants and two guides dive head first into total darkness wearing knee and elbow pads, special gloves to protect the sensitive environment of the cave and hard hats with powerful lights that blind. It feels as if one is traveling through the intestines of the cave, except nothing is flexible, only your bones and muscles.

The cave passages have strange names that will make sense only after you get home and wonder how you made it through. Fin rock, castration passage, filter tube, down to earth stop.

The guides give you a sample test and make sure you can drag yourself in the dirt like a snake without eating too much dirt, slither though a small opening where you maneuver the soft tissue of your body around so it fits and then come out of an even smaller hole at the other end. A few inches above you will be another wall which the guide will tell you to be careful not to touch but to make sure you get on your back to look at it, then back on your stomach to slither some more to get out of the cave, right back the same way you came in.

All the time you are wondering why you did this, and if it's worth the $130.00 you paid to subject yourself to such torture.

It is worth it, if you like adrenaline flowing through your veins, sweating profusely and wishing you'd never come. The six plus hour tour will take you behind the normal tour where thousands of people walk through with an over sized flashlight and a knowledgeable guide. You will see your guide disappear head first into a tunnel and will only hear him say loudly "CLEAR" which means you can now enter. You'll turn your body upside down and under to travel through yet another tunnel where the lights will be turned off and you'll experience complete darkness while your face is only inches from the ground.

Yet you will see nothing you'd ever experienced before. The stalactites hanging delicately from the ceiling dripping slowly and just knowing they've been doing that for thousands of years will blow you away. You'll see pools of crystalline water and watch the formations of the marble get lost on the bottom of an underground lake. You'll feel the thrill of knowing that only a few people will ever enter those caves and explore the narrow passages and view such beauty.

You'll be sore and bruised and you'll never forget it. Whenever your remember your experience, you'll be proud.

If you go:
Crystal Cave Wild Tours
May to September, Saturdays only
Sequoia National Park