The Black Chasm Cave is another registered National Natural Landmark, located near the town of Volcano (not a real volcano) in Amador County, about 50 miles door-to-hole in the ground from my house. It’s also in the gold mining districts of the Sierra foothills (and also in a wine growing area..woo hoo). This cave is quite a bit different than the California Cavern I visited a week ago – this one is mostly vertical, and much smaller overall. And, it is much more civilized – no mud, no narrow passageways, only one minor head smashing spot to avoid. And, you walk on very nice, but steep stairs or wooden boardwalks the entire way.
Getting there is a bit of a chore – using GPS/Google Maps helps, since you are out in the back country of the county, and eventually wind up on a gravel road to get to the visitor center. Really nice center, laid back like the other one – and excellent guides as well.
A side note here before describing the tour – there is a very strange display in the visitor center – a big cutout of Keanu Reeves and a large styrofoam stalactite. Apparently the directors for the second Matrix movie wanted to use the cave for one of the scenes, but were unable to make it work. So they simulated a cave made of styrofoam on a set, and did all the filming with a phony cave. But they gave some of the styrofoam pieces to the visitor center for the fun of it.
Now for the tour – as I mentioned before, this is a vertical cave, unlike the other one which had levels of passageways and rooms across a large area. This one has much large rooms, and just has two levels – there is no public access for the lower level. You have to rappel down and use climbing devices to get back up. No lights down there either.
There was a strange warning sign posted on the way out to the cave. Apparently, some kids actually lick some of the features named after food.
So, you walk down to the entry from the visitor center on the first of many staircases – a preview for the entire tour.
Most of the features you see are fairly common to all caves – mineral flows, strange shapes of white calcite flows and stalactites, thin sheets of the same (“cave bacon”) – most of which are back-lit which makes for nice photography. There are landings along the way where our guide described the feature, and gave us plenty of time to ask questions and take photos (bonus round for me). There’s a couple of spots where you can peer down to the lower levels, but there is not much to see – the lake is supposed to be beautiful.
At one point heading down, the guide stopped to do what is a standard display in most cave tours – shining a UV light on a calcite flow. This results in some really cool fluorescence. That excites the kids, and cause adults to say “wow” over and over again.
We continued to walk down a ways until we came to the last of the open areas, where there are some nice features to photograph, and a lot of the unique features for this cave – Helectites. These are very thin, hair like threads of calcite which grow in different directions and shapes. These are rarely seen in most caves and are extremely delicate. No touching. The guide talked for a while about these features (another ex-geologist), and I got to ask a question most people don’t really want to know: “Is there backup power for the lights in the cave – What happens in a power failure?”
Answer: “It gets very dark”
I may carry a small flashlight for my next cave adventure. The expectation is that blackouts will be short, and everyone has a phone. This cave would be easy….you could just crawl along the boardwalks and stairs till you can see the entryway. That other cave would be very, very scary without lights other than phones.
So the problem with going down is that you have to go back up to get out. This was not too bad though -it was like climbing up the staircase in a 5 story building.
So here are a bunch of photos from the tour:
One (maybe two) more caves to go. The next one is a 3 hour drive north of here, and includes a boat ride across Lake Shasta to get to the cave. Probably also very touristy, but what the heck, I’ve got nothing better to do. I’ll stay overnight in Redding. Something I’ve always wanted to do (not). I’ve also just found yet another cavern in the area, the Moaning Cavern, near Angels Camp. This one sounds interesting, with a standard tour which goes down a 10 story spiral staircase that was built from parts of a WWI battleship. What fun! They also have an adventure tour, which goes into non-lit areas of the cave. I may try that one.
Funny, my wife and I always thought the Sacramento area is REALLY boring, unless you like county fairs, very hot weather and events like the Annual Asparagus Festival, where they sell asparagus ice cream and tons of deep-fat fried asparagus. I’m not making it up. It’s awful. We saw some guy with a big sausage in one hand, and a beer in the other. The sausage fell out of the bun on to the ground. My wife and I looked at each other and both thought – no, he could not possibly put that back in the bun and eat it. We watched as he carefully put his beer on the ground, then grabbed the sausage, and located it back in the bun. That was enough for us. We headed for the exit and gave our remaining coupons to a young couple with a bunch of kids. We should have warned them about the ice cream (don’t do it!).
At any rate, now that I’m on my own and willing to go just about anywhere (except the Asparagus Festival) to alleviate extreme boredom, I’m finding there are quite few interesting/amusing places to visit. My list keeps expanding. That’s a good thing.
If you are interested in visiting either the Black Chasm or California caverns, here’s a link for both of them: https://cavetouring.com/
The Traveling Widower 