Back out to the badlands to painstakingly log some mud cave survey. Being my first trip back out since April 2025, I was curious to see if any of the rain events led to some notable changes. This time around a 5am departure got me to the Domelands turnoff a little before 8a to meet Carol and Fredrik. We went through the usual routine of carpooling to the trailhead, packing, and hiking our commute route to the badlands west of Andrade Canyon. This time we would head far west to Realm of the Rattler, so named for a snake I was not delighted to see ahead of me in a fairly constricted crawl passage. From Andrade we went up, across, then down and up, down and up, down and then a final up and over into the Rattler catchment. I unfortunately forgot how unpleasant the cave immediately downstream was and so we brute force went through it with our packs instead of more intelligently bypassing it. It was a slowish 2 hours of travel by the time we arrived.
After a snack at the resurgence entrance we split at 11am, with Carol and Fredrik heading in the resurgence, and I working my way over the cave to survey the submergence entrance solo. As I approached the entrance I got a surprise with a small Desert Kit Fox darting out the entrance, it as surprised to see me as I was it. As I readied my gear for the solo survey I painfully learned that my tablet and survey device were both at 20% battery despite me charging them right before. Later at home I realized the GFCI was tripped on the socket I was charging them which explained the mystery. Despite the threat of the battery dying on one of my devices, I was fortunate that I ended up having just enough to get through the day's survey.
Desert Kit Fox after darting from the shade of a mud cave entrance
The survey was fairly brutal, certainly the least enjoyable I have done in the badlands. My knees were bleeding and my arms thoroughly scratched by the end of it. Some knee crawling led to about 100 feet of pleasant standing passage which then broke down into some knee crawl meandering bends and then an uber terrible helmet-off abrasion squeeze. I struggled inch by inch to a particularly tight constriction that I would have to widen to get through. Awkwardly in the squeeze I managed to set a survey station with some green flagging and with one eye I shot a further station to a fairly distinct flat topped rock. A strong draft told me the cave continued downstream to another entrance. My sincere hope was that this was the worst and only squeeze and I could merely go to the next entrance down, and head up the stream passage to continue my survey. I also tagged the couple upper level passages to thoroughly tie-off all the passage in this submergence entrance.
Back at the entrance I drank some water and climbed back up the mud slope to stage my gear at the sinkhole entrance 60 ft downstream. This was steeper and harder to get into than I remembered and I had to take care to kick in some footsteps and choose my handholds wisely, inevitably letting loose a cloud of dust. Eventually I made it down the two tiered slope to the stream passage at the bottom. I left everything behind except the instrument, tablet, flagging, and spare light, and belly crawled into a smaller passage than I hoped. On and on I went around several tight twisting bends, near constantly cursing and every time thinking the next bend must be the squeeze. Interestingly I found a few patches of very wet mud cracked mud for the first time in the badlands. I must have gone down at least 100 ft of passage until I got to a mud collapse area I could imagine was the other side of my squeeze. With much cursing and unpleasantness I poked my head into the helmet-off squeeze. I could not see the flagging. Curses! I wiggled inch by painful inch forward, my head cocked at uncomfortable angles as I tried to cast my light forward. Finally the glint of the green survey station!!!
With a huge relief at this connection landmark, I could then work out which rock was my end of survey, then backsight to it. I had just enough time to place a few more stations and end my survey at a comfortable spot with a clear station to revisit. I was thrilled to be able to make the connection; I don't think many would have the patience or determination to deal with the horrible thing. I carefully climbed back out and rejoined Carol and Fredrik a few minutes after our scheduled 2:45p. I managed 35 stations for 100m of survey while they did 16 stations with Carol learning how to digital survey. We compared notes as we snacked and drank and then decided on our exit from the badlands. It was my first time sketching with a dedicated stylus on a Samsung tablet and I really enjoyed the precision upgrade over my finger. I marveled at how sinuous the cave was; the end of my 100m survey was only about 25m from where I started!
I suspected it would be quicker to recross the many ups and downs through the badlands back to Andrade Canyon but there was some enthusiasm from the other two to climb straight up out of the badlands up the steep bedrock slope to the ridge, which I had done once before. Slowly we climbed 800ft vertical up the slope, gaining a spectacular panoramic view over the badlands from the top.
Once on the ridgetop of the Coyote Mountains we still had some up and down as we followed an old jeep trail back towards the wash network at the head of Andrade Canyon. We got a nice pink sunset and then made the final jaunt in the very last light.
The 80 minute drive was brutal on my neglected stomach but Carol and Fredrik joined me for some tasty Mexican at Casa de Pico, which I had been craving, then we parted with full stomachs. Once again it was an annoyingly large amount of effort and long day for 100m of cave survey which more more to survey to finish the cave. I can only hope the "missing link" portion we haven't seen is somehow magically large pleasant passage.
I came dangerously close to having a blog post-free month for the first time since I started in 2008, but was saved by this short hike exploring an inhospitable corner of the Anza Borrego badlands. Heather took the initiative to plan us a weekend getaway to Julian with the primary goals of chilling and drinking cider in the scraggly SoCal forest, but we did venture down to the heat of Anza Borrego for a half day's adventure. After stocking up at the small town store we drove out to the badlands northeast of Font's Point, an area I was intrigued by due to its many mud karst features visible on satellite imagery. Wanting to get a feel for the cave potential in this area, Heather and I set out on a 1.5 mile loop sampling some of the terrain. We started off across some bizarre mudrock slickrock cut into a dramatic anticline. With considerable effort we found a way into the steep and narrow slot of the wash. The going was hyper-sinuous, causing much awkward scooting around the corners, greatly slowing our progress. After a few small tributaries joined the slot finally relented for open wash and much easier travel. I checked out a few mud karst features but overall the karst forming layers seemed to be too thin and the catchments too small to develop readily traversable cave systems. At least my curiosity was scratched and I did not feel the need to make a specific trip to explore this area further.
We worked our way down the wash and then back up a junction. Glistening selenite panes, shell fossils, and armored mudballs added to the interest in this otherwise empty and desolate place. An area I tagged as potentially having arches in blurry satellite imagery ended up only being more sinuous turns. As the wash opened up we clambered out and beelined back towards the car to end the hike.
With time to spare we drove to the much less visited Vista del Malpais. While nice and we enjoyed the solitude, it was certainly a less impressive vantage than the more popular Font's Point.
We navigated the connecting road over to Font's Point and enjoyed the view here as well. It wasn't the clearest day but there was still plenty to see and it is always an inspiring view with many intricacies.
When we regained the highway Heather and I both had the same idea, and with a little searching she found us a pool pass to the nearly empty Borrego Springs Resort. With a shady cabana, pleasant pool, and ice machine, it was money well spent for a couple hours. After, we drove back up the hill to our quaint room at the Apple Tree Inn and walked the thin shoulders of the highway 5 minutes to sample a flight of ciders at Calico Cidery, then 5 minutes the other way to Julian Cidery for a second flight. Takeaway pizza from across the street led to a chill dinner. All in all a nice mellow weekend away with just a pinch of dusty adventure. Thanks to Heather for planning the getaway.
After morning stops at Mt St Helens and the afternoon Davis Creek scout, we drove on to enter Mt Rainier National Park through its eastern Stevens Canyon entrance to the exceptionally popular Paradise region. We had last seen Mt Rainier at a 30 mile distance where it was an exceptionally imposing peak coated with glaciers and icefalls, but as we turned the corner crossing Backbone Ridge we got an even more sobering view. Though we were still 10 miles away from the summit, the effect was of having to look upward at a high angle out of the car's windscreen to see it. We stopped at a pullout and I snapped a quick picture (below). Unfortunately soon after clouds invaded and this would be the clearest view we would get of the peak's complex south slopes!
Our late afternoon arrival into Paradise had us meeting a full parking lot with cars parked on the side of the road for over a half-mile away from the visitor center but we managed to snag a well-timed vacancy opening in the lower parking lot. My previous research had suggested the 5.5 mile Skyline Trail loop to be the most exceptional tourist hike on the mountain. Despite the late hour (the days were longer!), we packed for a possible hike across miles of snow and walked up to the visitor center to check it out. We quickly strolled through the crowded building and upstairs exhibits, noting the "not recommended" status of the Skyline Trail and deciding to give it a try anyway. The trail started with a paved strip through lush meadows with a near-constant parade of slow people and strollers to dodge and weave through. I tried to temper my disgust at the shear number of people walking right past "no entry, fragile plants" signs to clod mud over delicate alpine plants so they could snap that more important selfie.
Past Myrtle Falls and then past Paradise Creek the trail finally began gaining elevation with the path covered in near-continuous icy snow. Here Heather put on her microspikes while I chose to stick with my trekking poles as my main form of support. There were still plenty of people for the remainder of the hike, but from this point on only a small fraction of those that we saw in the meadows. We spotted some marmots chowing down on grasses and run-slide-hop fleeing over the snow slopes as we approached. We would never get a view of Mt Rainier towering above us, but did have excellent views of the minaret peaks of the Tatoosh Range to the south, including Unicorn Peak, The Castle, Pinnacle Peak, and Plummer Peak.
Soon we reached the snow-covered western outwash basin of the Paradise Glaciers where I request a short detour off the trail to investigate a meltwater cave system that seems to seasonally develop. A further 0.75 miles to the north off-trail was the site of the Paradise Glacier Caves, a remarkable terminus cave system that had been mapped to over 13 kilometers in length in 1978 and now does not exist at all due to glacial recession. I would have to settle for a couple meltwater cave throughtrips about a hundred feet in length each. The scalloped melting patterns of the walls and ceilings, and constant dripping were mesmerizing, which is to say nothing of the multicolored splotches of ice from algae and the filtering of light. The top cave had a double falls with arch that was also quite cool to see. This little detour was probably my favorite part of the hike. After snapping many a photo I returned to Heather and we continued on, the trail now climbing more steeply up slopes and benches, giving nice views of the interesting dendritic melting patterns below. We saw a few people once we regained the paved portion of the trail near the visitor center, but nothing like the mayhem of earlier in the day.
We continued to follow the well-trodden snow up a ridge and then a traverse across a don't-slip slope. We gained the top part of the trail in near-whiteout conditions, having a quick snack and drink before continuing downhill. Between the poor visibility, frigid cold, and anastomosing trail this felt like the wildest part of the hike. We were prepared for the conditions but it was shocking the number of people we ran into in shorts and sneakers feeling their way along. We managed to bypass Panorama Point and instead beeline down a steep snowfield to regain the trail below us. After one more semi-glissade near Glacier Vista, the terrain became less steep and we started to enjoy pockets of life with marmots and wildflowers. The further we descended the more we dropped out underneath the clouds, temperatures warming and views of the Totoosh Range reappearing, glazed in low angle light. A new peak, Tumtum Peak, appeared as an oddly conical shape on the horizon.
We heard then spotted a sooty grouse just before the parking lot, then a deer enjoying the empty lot as we packed up. Altogether the hike took us about 4.5 hours to go 6 miles between the conditions and leisure. We returned the way we came back out the Stevens Canyon entrance then drove north through deepening dusk to find a spot to free-camp at the Ranger Creek airstrip, all in all nicer than I expected. This ended up being our longest day of the trip and it was somewhere around 10pm when we finally ate our freeze-dried dinners. Despite the late night the plan was for an early start to make sure we got into the White River entrance on Rainier's northeast side before the timed entry reservations kick in at 7am. With a quick pack-up in the morning we entered the park and were soon greeted by a roadblock announcing our destination of Sunrise Road was still closed for the season (later I would find out it opened July 4th, the next day!). This shifted our plans considerably, and after contemplating the 6mi/+2000ft round trip just to get to the roadend overlook, we instead opted for a mellow short hike onto the moraine of the Emmons Glacier. The day was crisp and clear so we got great views of Mt Rainier's northeast face including nearly the full extent of the Emmons Glacier, Little Tahoma Peak, and Fryingpan Glacier. It would have been a much better day to have hiked the Skyline Trail and have seen the south side!
With that teaser hike in the books, we decided it was time to continue our drive, on through the mountains to the town of Enumclaw where we got groceries and used cellular reception to plan our next move. We decided to snag two nights of backcountry camping up the Hoh River Valley with the hopes of missing most of the mayhem and camping challenges surrounding the 4th of July. This left the matter of trying to find camping tonight, close enough to our destination, the day before a major holiday which had me worried. Most of the first-come first-served campgrounds I knew of were small with 6-12 spaces. With an aspirational plan in place, we now drove through the capital of Olympia and onto painfully trafficked roads leading to the southwest coast of the Olympic Peninsula (much of the worst of it tackled by Heather driving). As we began to near Olympic National Park, Heather correctly suggested we might want to look at some campgrounds for availability near Lake Quinault, to gauge how grim our scenario would be. A mile and a half off the 101 we pulled into Willaby Creek Campground, which was ominously full but suggested trying other campgrounds. We drove through the five building main street of Quinault, then pulled into Falls Creek Campground. Here a friendly camphost abruptly greeted us, pointed out three sites remaining, and suggested the best one for us. We immediately claimed it and less than a half hour later the campground was fully booked. We got really lucky with this one! It was a stunning lakefront site and I could park our vehicle for a superb tent window view of the lake. Once claimed, we drove up a wildly overgrown forest road to a forgotten trailhead and took a short leg-stretching walk through the forest to Gatton Creek Falls. We then had a look inside Lake Quinault Lodge (fancy!). We were tempted to sit for a beer or expensive meal on their scenic deck overlooking the lake to treat ourselves after days of frugality, but opted for tasty quesadillas and cheaper drinks on our site's pebble beach as we watched kayakers and paddleboarders lazily plying the calm waters. I think we made the right choice on that one. It was probably the nicest campground site we had on the trip and it felt like a small victory snagging it.
It was a day almost as long as our previous one. Heather and I were both impressed at the immensity of Mt Rainier; it was a park both of us were interested in returning to see more of after a couple quick tastes. The plan was to get an early start the following day, the 4th of July, to get into the Hoh Rainforest entrance station to Olympic National Park before the holiday crowds to begin our backpack trip (foreshadowing...).
One of my highest anticipations for our Oregon-Washington road trip was to explore the Mt St Helens area and it did not disappoint. As a child I was given a small vial of ash (that I still have) from the 18th May 1980 Mt St Helens eruption, turning it endlessly to watch the clumps shift and collapse in the vial and think about the devastation that in the greater scheme related to a fairly small eruption. My first visit, I was very interested to see the snapshot 45 years after, what fresh legacies remained and which were being overridden by erosion and regenerating forests.
We arrived at the mountain's south side in the late afternoon on the 30th after a particularly unpleasant drive through Portland traffic. As we would come to realize time and time again, it is an elusive mountain. Between its skirt of tall trees, valleys, and half-gone top, it was almost never visible even when we were close to it. It was also the first of several areas where we would have excessive wildflowers blanketing the forests, roadsides, and clearings. Pink-purple foxglove were everywhere in cleared forestry blocks, white avalanche lilies coated roadsides, and the surprisingly mammillarian clumps of white beargrass were particularly notable (each pictured below). We first drove up the potholed dirt road to the Climber's Bivouac trailhead where we knew there was unofficial camping. We found the parking lot full of dozens of campers, families and groups looking to climb the mountain's only allowed slope for a view of its north side crater. I sent my drone up for a quick view of the mountain and some of its viscous "worm flow" lava flows. Opting to pass on the busy parking lot camping, we drove a couple miles back down the road where we set up camp at an ideal dispersed camping spur road in the forest that we had all to ourselves.
With only 15 minutes to drive for our Ape Cave reservation, we got to have one of our more relaxed mornings of the trip. At 2.5 miles long, Ape Cave is the third longest lava tube cave on North America, yet is only one portion of a now disconnected lava tube system that is over twice as long. The cave is hosted in a 2000 year old basaltic lava flow and is unrelated to more recent explosive eruptions. The main collapse entrance to the cave near the parking area offers access to a family-friendly downstream portion of the cave 0.75 miles in length and a more adventurous 1.5 mile long throughtrip upstream across breakdown piles, up frozen lava falls, and past one skylight. Armed with lights a plenty, we entered the main entrance and descended the stairway into the spacious tube. The brisk 42F ambient temperature hit us right away. We first hiked the tube upstream, soon reaching the most spacious portion of the tube at nearly 90ft wide. Beyond was the first of several formidable boulder breakdown piles, which slowed our progress compared to the flat sediment floors or solidified pahoehoe flows.
The dimensions of the tube changed considerably and at some points an upper and lower tube could be seen. The frozen lava falls were easily some of the better features in the caves, with one being about 8 feet high. We kept running into a somewhat obnoxious group of teens, but most of the time traversed the cave in silence. After what felt like quite a long time, we reached the one and only skylight in the cave apart from its upper and lower entrances, enjoying the green light bounced by moss and algae.
After several more breakdown piles we reached the upper entrance. Climbing its steel ladder we were bombarded with the abrupt transition from 42F to a humid 90F surface, all over about one body length. The surface trail back down had some excellent berry patches, interesting lava features, and was comfortably downhill.
Next we reentered the main entrance for an out-and-back jaunt down the lower cave, the temperature change no less surprisingly abrupt the second time. This lower tube was indeed comparably easier travel with fewer breakdown and more popular, but with no shortage of interesting features either. The "railroad track" section was one of my favorite, where the last gasp of the flow created a curb-lined inset floor, appropriately reminiscent of walking railroad tracks. We continued to the convincing end of the main passage and returned the way we came and back up the main entrance stairs.
Overall I was thoroughly impressed with the length, size, features, and general adventure the cave offered. It was certainly the most interesting and lengthy of many lava tube caves I have been in. The upper section was sufficiently long that it was easy to forget that most of the time we only probably had about 10 feet of lava over our heads. I could have done without the screaming idiots and people illegally walking their dog, but the groups of parents on an adventure with their kids was a nice sight. The person working the gift shop was predictably unknowledgeable about the status of road closures on the north side of Mt St Helens, understandable as we later found highway signage to be deliberately misleading.
After the cave we drove a short distance to the Trail of Two Forests parking lot where we had our lunch then walked the short boardwalk over the lava. I was impressed with the interpretative signs along this trail, which did a great job of explaining how the 2000 year old lava flow overtook an old growth forest, with tree wells formed from the casts of incinerated stumps, lava falls formed from logjams against these stumps, and tree cast caves formed from the casts of these old-growth trees piling on top of each other as they burned and the lava solidified in tandem. Some of the tree wells still had the radiating pattern of tree roots spreading away from their bases. The main tree cast cave the trail leads you through had excellent preservation of burning campfire log textures on its walls. The log piles allowed us to traverse from one tree cast to another to make a short but very satisfying throughtrip. Overall this was a really nicely done little trail. After we hiked out to one other section of the flow nearby, which had some more interesting lava log jam falls and a lengthy cave nearly a half mile in length made from the interconnected casts of 41 logs!
After a brief roadside view of Mt St Helens looming over Swift Reservoir, we stopped in the town of Cougar to get some dirt on getting to the north side of the mountain. They confirmed that trying to traverse the forestry around the mountain would be the slow and rough choice and that our best course was to return west to the highway to clockwise spiral into the north side.
So this meant more driving! As we cruised along Interstate-5 we repeatedly passed signs announcing closures and no access to the west or north approaches to Mt St Helens. I was fairly convinced I knew how to avoid the closed bridge and to link forestry roads to get to my desired destination for the night, then the following day onto the road leading to the Windy Ridge roadend on Mt St Helens northeast flank. As we finally circumnavigated the central peak to its north side and began climbing up the one-lane forest road to Burley Mountain (+4100ft over 9 miles), my anticipation grew. The road was steep and narrow with some deep potholes and ruts to avoid throughout and a final approach of a tight hairpin turn and a narrow rocky stretch as we broke out of the trees into the confined alpine summit and parked within feet of the 150+ foot lava cliff. With excitement I could see our destination was vacant: the decommissioned Burley Mountain Fire Lookout strapped to the summit that we would be staying at for the night. Though the 1934 wooden structure was spartan inside (two old metal chairs, a wooden cot platform for one, and a central pedestal that would have hosted a turning alidade to take directional azimuths of distant fires), the 360 degree window views of distant volcanoes felt fit for millionaires. We were thrilled to call this small room home for the night, this eagle's perch with four major volcanoes surrounding. Heather got started on dinner as I worked to move in and cut some of the window and door drafts to combat the strong winds outside. The wind only abated a little but the views were too good and I had to put my drone into the sky to record some of it. To the north was the high peak of Mt Rainier, to the east Mt Adams, to the southwest Mt St Helens, to the distant south was Mt Hood, and to the distant northwest we could make out the faint silhouette of the Olympic Peninsula ranges. Both the sunset and the sunrise were fantastic in all directions and the photos below are a mix of both. Wildflowers and some neat alpine stonecrop succulents added to the delight. As the light dipped we settled into our sleeping pads on the wood floor of the lookout, my earplugs successfully cutting the noise of the blowing winds. I've stayed all sorts of places before but could say that this ended up being one of my favorite stays anywhere in terms of novelty, isolation, and views.
Mt Rainier
Mt Adams
Mt Hood
Mt St Helens
The morning light started early being high and surrounded by windows, with some wisps of clouds settled into some of the valleys for a little something different. We ate breakfast, packed, and drove back down the mountain and onto Forest Road 25. At one point we approached a major active construction site, which gave us pause that the road might in fact be closed, but then they waved us on through the dirt detour without any questions. Beyond that there was zero cars on the road! It was a surreal experience as for the next several hours we had the entirety of the road, its many pullouts, overlooks, trailheads, and interpretive signs all to ourselves. Though technically Mt St Helens is a "national volcanic monument", effectively it was if we had an entire US national park all to ourselves. It was surreal, creepy, and wonderful. We made a few stops on the way, including an eruption smashed miners' car and some viewpoints, then drove on to the current end of the road at Windy Ridge. As I mentioned Mt St Helens is administered by the national forest as a "volcanic national monument" that has some special rules for different portions of the mountain that included proximal no entry areas. Happily my very careful reading of these rules documented on their website meant that their "restricted area #3", which includes [appropriately named] Windy Ridge and Spirit Lake, does not restrict the use of drones (at least currently). So with that I could send up my drone for a nice view of Mt St Helens over the end of Windy Ridge, which I was just able to catch between the fast shifting clouds.
Next we drove back to the Blowdown Harmony Viewpoint, which had excellent views of an entire hillside of trees snapped like aligned toothpicks due to the lateral blast of the 1980 eruption. We then took the short ~1 mile hike down the Harmony Trail to the shore of Spirit Lake. Along the way we past through a lush forest on an overgrown trail, some spring-fed trickling waterfalls, across a sparse pumice flat, and then down the glacial scratched bedrock to the lake shore. More than any other aspect of Mt St Helens, I was very excited to see Spirit Lake close-up.
Years ago when looking at Mt St Helens in Google Earth to put together a lab assignment I was struck by the odd hazy pattern on Spirit Lake that was persistent but shifted between the timestamped imagery. Zooming in you get the remarkable pattern of thousands and thousands of toothpicks spilled across the floor, except these were in fact a flotilla of old growth trees instantly rendered into flotsam by the May 1980 eruption. Some of these logs exceed 5 feet across and 100 feet in length. In the 45 years since the eruption they have seemingly decayed little, still confined to their fate of migrating around Spirit Lake at the whims of winds and winter ice. I'm sure a high resolution top-down view timelapse would be absolutely mesmerizing, but I was quite happy to settle for the shoreline view of the wasteland and drone snapshots. The top-down view was particularly interesting I thought- at once abstract but also very reminiscent of what some crystalized igneous rocks look like when you look at a polished slice under a microscope.
We stayed long enough for me to get in a 20 minute drone flight and to enjoy a snack at the shore, then hiked back uphill to the car. Finally we were starting to see other signs of human life in the very occasional car. On the way back down the mountain we stopped for a quick hike to the roadside Iron Creek Falls, a nice overhanging cascade plunging into beautiful blue-green water.
We has a bit of a delay at the construction zone, chatting with the attendant while we waited. We then drove on to the town of Randle and then had a look at the bridge over Davis Creek, one of the highest rated canyoning trips in Washington. There was some deliberation but despite quite moderate flows Heather was quite disinterested. The canyon looked great and it took me some time to get over passing on the opportunity, but we drove on to Mt Rainier to taste a new national park for us.
Overall our time in the vicinity of Mt St Helens was one of my favorite parts of our road trip. We saw some spectacular oddities and the fascinating legacy of volcanic eruptions, including rather fresh reminders of the storied 1980 eruption. Ape Cave was the most interesting lava tube cave I have ever been to and the tree cast caves were really neat. We felt so fortunate to get to have Burley Mountain Lookout to ourselves, and with clear views around us. Having the entire Windy Ridge drive to ourselves was uniquely satisfying. Flying a drone over Spirit Lake's log flotilla was every bit as cool as I had been imagining for years. Someday I might like to come back to explore some more. Perhaps hike up to the mountain's summit and perhaps packraft through a floating log maze.
