A dark and damp experience – Caving Part 1

Back in the olden days (graduate school…that’s a long time ago), one of the professors in the geology department was 1)a Boy Scout troop leader,  2) an experienced spelunker, 3)Liked to get away from his wife on weekends. Put these all together, and I wound up with many opportunities to go on spelunking trips in Indiana and Illinois. This was serious caving – wet caves, high water entries, lots of mud, no lighting, rappelling down cliffs, mandatory hard hats. And a lot more risk than visiting tourist caverns. I don’t remember seeing too many exciting things from any of the caves we explored – I only remember lots of mud and water, slimy crawls along really small holes, fighting his 6 year old son trying to crawl by me, and the smell from the carbide lamps we used to light up the darkness. Fun stuff when you are 21 and single.  This same professor even managed to get us access to some really huge lava tubes in the Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho. A very sharp and painful place to crawl. Where am I going with this?

I vaguely remember somewhere along the way, visiting one other touring cave, where there are guides, dry paths, electric lighting, and large magnificent rooms. A much more civilized way of caving, and my wife may have been with me. So, when I started looking for things to do in my forced detention in Northern California this summer, I discovered that there were a few caverns in the area which had guided tours. One was relatively close to home in Amador County, the other a longer drive in Calaveras County, and another up by Redding. So, I chose the one in the middle for my first caving adventure. 

The California Cavern is located just outside of the cute town of San Andreas, about 90 miles from where I live. At one point in the past, the cavern was in an even smaller town, Cave City, populated by local miners (some people lived in the cave). It’s a pretty drive from where I live, traveling down along the foothills of the Sierra.  Warning, here comes some sad stuff – I have a lot of good, and some not so good, memories on this drive since my wife and I used to spend a lot of time in that area. We traveled along there a few weeks before she passed – it was spring, and everything was bright green from the rains, and Jan wanted to see it. Like I said, a sad memory. Enough of that. 

The instructions for the tour in their website were specific about what you can bring along inside the cavern – no backpacks, hiking sticks, food, water bottles – pretty much nothing other than the clothes on your body. The cave formations are very delicate, so they don’t want you grabbing anything or dropping anything in the cave. So, I decided to bring one camera with a small telephoto lens, my phone, and have the GoPro on a chest harness. I neglected to read the instructions about no videos allowed. When I finally got there, I had a chat with the tour guide, who said I could shoot video, but only small sections of the tour. I figured at that point it would be better to just leave the GoPro in the car. I could always use the phone.

Aside from myself, there was only a family with four young children on the tour. The tour guide was a very tall young man, who has been working at the cave for a few years – he is an experienced spelunker, and leads the tours which go through the non-civilized portions of the cave. The cave is quite large, but fully explored and recently mapped with LIDAR.

So off we went down a short trail to the entrance – a very small opening, with a cool breeze blowing out. The temperature in the cave is a constant 53 degrees, and extremely humid. It is a wet cave – there is always water dripping, and portions of it flood during the rainy season. There is also a lake, which is included in one of the other more serious tours. For us, we were limited to a small section of the cavern which has lighting (dim), railings where needed, and a somewhat paved path. That’s about all I was looking for on this trip.

So right from the gitgo, I realized a couple of things – first, I should have put my photogray glasses in my pocket for a while, before entering the cave. There are lights in passages and rooms, but the path itself is dimly lit, and I was pretty much blind until my glasses transitioned back to clear. Sun glasses are not a plus when walking in the dark. Fortunately, that was just for a minute or two. Second, I should have worn my hiking shoes – everything is damp in the cave, including the ground, which was quite slippery. Finally, carrying a heavy, very expensive camera was a dumb idea – it’s hard to get through narrow passages and long, low sections with the camera hanging from my neck. I had to protect the camera when I needed to balance myself to keep from falling in some sections. Dumb.

The tour lasted about an hour in the cave, as we wandered through very narrow, slippery passageways to larger areas where the guide pointed out the unique features on the walls and roofs. There was a little bit of climbing, with steps cut into the floor, and metal railings along the way. We were warned about grabbing on to the walls but sometimes, it was impossible to avoid doing that (for me at least). Everything was damp and dripping – it was pretty close to being a real spelunking experience (except for the trails and railings and lights). The guide was great – he described the features in each of the larger areas we stopped in, and threw in some of the history and interesting stories about the cave. 

There were too many interesting mineral deposits  and features to describe – different shaped stalactites, stalagmites, mineral flows, hollow straws – fascinating and beautiful stuff. Better to show a sampling of photos (I’ll post an album link on the main page):

Towards the end of the tour, our guide told us to put our phones away and cover our watches, then turned out the lights to give us an experience I can live without – total darkness. I’ve done this before so I knew what to expect and leaned against a solid wall. It is a frightening experience. He said you might think you can see your hand in front of your face, but it is just your imagination. After an hour, you begin to hallucinate. He lit a candle to show what it was like for early explorers. No thanks. I don’t like to even think of what it would be like to be stuck in a cave without a light source.

After that,  we made our way out through another narrow passage to exit through a different cave opening, back into daylight. I looked down at my legs, which had streaks of mud. And then looked at my camera, which also had streaks of mud. As did my phone. And my shorts. And my shirt. And my brand new walking shoes were covered in mud. This was almost like real caving. It was a blast though – I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I’ll definitely do the other two cavern tours in the next few weeks. And I’ll think about the more advanced tour at this one. That’s 3.5 hours crawling around with headlamps, and includes rafting across the lake. In the dark. Hmmm. Maybe not.

And about that skeleton photo – I think that’s there to scare the kids. There are spiders and some other creepy crawlies in the cave. And a rubber bat. No cave bears.

If you are interested in visiting this or the Black Chasm caverns, here’s the link for both of them: https://cavetouring.com/