The Traveling Widower

Tag: nature

  • Civilized Spelunking – Caving Part 2

    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/

  • A dark and damp experience – Caving Part 1

    Greetings, welcome to our camp, we all know why you’re here

    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.

    Main entrance – very dim and narrow as soon as you step in

    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. 

    Typical section of path – dim lighting, nice but wet railings
    Our guide, describing the formation..notice all the thin straws.

    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):

    Hollow tubes, with strange shaped deposits on them
    Baby budha (use your imagination)
    Another section of the path
    Sharp cieling
    These fluoresce in the dark after shining light on them
    More strange flows

    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.

    Very dark, no thank you.


    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/