My roommate Matt invited me to go sledding. He did not invite me to go normal sledding down a hill covered in snow; he invited me to sledding down a cement tube inside of a mountain in the Provo canyon. I was sort of terrified of the thought of going sledding on a plastic sled down a cement hill in the pitch black.

Many terrible fears were running through my head. Some of my fears were falling off the sled and rubbing my arm off, or just injuring myself on the cement. I was also afraid that I would drown. Where we were going to go sledding was a man made tube in the mountain to channel water for irrigation and other water needs. I was also afraid of the dark and the spooky things that are associated with dark caves, such as crazy murdering people.

Matt invited two girls to go with us. One of them said she would be afraid of the dark. We convinced her to go and we all got in my roommates junky car. He spent $150 on the thing, so basically all the thing does is gets him from point A to point B and you wonder sometimes how that is possible. So we all got in his car and drove up and we got to the mouth of the cave.

I did not realize it till this point what I was really getting myself into. First of all, I did not know that we were going down an irrigation ditch. My roommate was not very specific with me. All he said was that water goes down it because you can see where the water mark is about 6 feet up on the walls.

One of the girls started to get really scared. We approached the mouth of the tunnel and when the girl read the words of No Trespassing, she decided that she was not going in. She was terrified. The black tunnel was even making me nervous.

The remaining 3 of us started to walk the tunnel to get to the slide while the other girl went to sit in the car. There was about an inch of water on the ground on the flat surface we were walking on that went in about 300 yards.

The tunnel was about 10 or 11 feet tall and it was a round cement tunnel with a flat bottom. After about 300 yards we got to this giant pit. At this point it really started to question going sledding. The pit was basically an accumulation of everything gross that had floated down into the tunnel over the last several months. It was like a sewer. Lots of gross things were floating in the water. The water in the pit was about 2 feet deep. It did not get deeper than that because there was a runoff that took small amounts of water elsewhere. The pit was about 7 feet deep. We climbed down a ladder to get down inside and when we crossed to the other side wading in that gross water; we had to jump up to get to the slide.

I was the first to scale the wall. I got up and put my foot over the ledge and I saw that once you get up out of the pit, the slide began instantly. There was a little room to stand at the top of the slide, but only enough room to get about half of your foot on it.

The tube that we were to slide down was about 6 feet in diameter and was a perfect circle. The cement was smooth.

My roommate and this girl that came with us were the first to go. They hung onto a metal bar that was at the top of the slide and situated themselves on the sled and let go. They took off into the darkness. When they went they took a flashlight with them and I could see that once you got to the bottom of the slide that was probably 40 – 50 feet long, the slide took a gradual turn and bumped you around a bit.

They climbed back up the slide with the help of the rope we brought with us. Without it, I don’t think we would have made it back up because the slide is at a 45 degree angle. When it was my turn I sat on the sled looking down that hill into the darkness. I was going without a flashlight. I knew I would be ok, because those two fools went down and came back. I was scared and I let go of the bar that I was holding onto. It was a thrilling experience speeding down the hill and taking turns having no idea where it would take you.

It was a blast and I was ready to go again. It was fun and we became more and more daring and the highlight of the night ended with the three of us going down the hill backwards on that little blue sled. I was on the front so I was holding onto that bar keeping myself from prematurely rolling down. We somehow managed to get all three of us on and we took off. I thought I was dead for sure. I was clinging onto the girl in the middle because I thought I was going to fall off and I figured they would run me over and hurt me.

We made it to the bottom of the hill and I survived the experience. Next time we go, I want to walk down the tube that we slid down to see how far and where it goes. I was terrified when I was down there because the thought of running into crazy murdering people was always on my mind.