The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Brent McGregor has photographed and documented caves molded by lava and carved by glacial melt water, along with the world of rock and ice blanketing our highest peaks.

Sisters folks can explore the wonders of lava tubes, limestone, and remote hidden gems of Oregon on February 26, at 1:30 p.m. in the Sisters Fire Hall community room as part of the Friends of the Sisters Library Diane Jacobsen Speaker Series.

McGregor will share the adventures he has just about every time he steps into, slides down, ropes down, and climbs into and out of Oregon's magnificent underground wonders.

This is what he says about getting into the glacial cave pictured above: "This was a very intense trip. We needed a four-wheel-drive truck, snow machine, mountaineering boots, snowshoes, crampons, ropes, trekking poles, an ice axe and ice tool each pickets for anchors, webbing, binders, ice screws, rappel device, ascending systems, avalanche beacons, shovels, probes, extra winter clothing and gear, stoves and sleeping gear - and I took two camera systems with multiple lens, full-size tripod, and I'm forgetting tons of other stuff. I was checked in with a 70-pound pack; my climbing partner Eddy was closer to 80.

"But it was our best trip yet, we entered a world no one has seen before, at least not to my knowledge. A few hiking clubs know about Snow Dragon Cave, but I found a new cave last summer, Pure Imagination, which is sealed shut with snow all but two or three months of the year. The moulin 1,200 feet up the glacier from the main entrance is stunning..."