The hike was long, and we frequently bushwhacked rather than following the dirt road that runs near the cave, wanting to search for shed antlers along the way. We did end up finding one. There were originally five of us who started the hike, but two had to turn back. The remaining three, Justin Murray, Peter Jones, and I, pressed on. It was a grueling stretch, especially having already put in some miles earlier in the day searching for the other pit.

After about 3.5 miles of bushwhacking and nearly 1,900 feet of elevation gain, we finally arrived at the entrance. It was large at the top but quickly narrowed into a crack. Curious about the potential depth, I threw a rock down. I managed to loft it cleanly enough that it didn't clip the walls, and it slipped through the crack without a sound. We waited for the expected thud or boom, but it never came. I threw another. Still nothing. I had never experienced that before; usually, you eventually hear something when a rock hits the bottom.

Excited, we quickly rigged a rope to see if we had stumbled onto the next bottomless pit. I dropped in first, immediately noting the crumbly walls; the rock was total junk, just falling apart in my hand. As I approached the crack, I could see it only lasted a few feet before appearing to open back up.

I continued down through the crack, and open it did. The entrance room was massive, not Nielsons or Big Brush Creek massive, but large by almost any other Utah cave standard. From there, I could make out what appeared to be the floor, though it sloped around a corner, leaving open the possibility that it kept going.

When I touched down, I could finally see around that corner and confirm I had reached the bottom. I also figured out why the rocks we threw had made no sound: the floor is an almost perfect mud and clay consistency, dense enough to completely absorb the impact. Combined with the narrow crack at the entrance funneling sound poorly, it had created what amounted to a near-silent pit.

All told, the drop was probably around 100 feet, better than what we typically find. The room itself was spacious, though unfortunately, it had no passages leading off it. The rock throughout was unlike typical cave limestone: crumbly and conglomerate in nature, a mix of different rock types. My best guess is that we were in the Wasatch Formation, or right on the boundary between it and a limestone layer.

It was absolutely worth the trip, a genuinely cool pit to drop, and satisfying to finally check it off the list. It was especially meaningful to get Justin down into it, given that he had spent years wondering what lay at the bottom of that hole he had spotted from a snowmobile.

As for the name: Red Dungeon Pit comes from the bones scattered across the floor, the deep red color of the rock walls and mud, and a few mice that had apparently made themselves at home down there.