The Traveling Widower

Tag: photography

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  • 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/

  • Small trips for a while – a local gold mine

    Empire Mine….looking down the main shaft

    I was planning on at least one more major trip before the end of August, possibly to Iceland (or some other distant land). Unfortunately, I need to be close to home for the next few months for medical issues, so I will be going off on 1, 2 or 3 day trips, all within a reasonable drive radius from home. Much like my recent San Francisco/Alcatraz trip. I live in California, not too far from Nevada, close to the Sierra, the coast, heck, even Oregon is not that far away by car. So instead of looking at National Geographic, Road Scholars or World Wildlife Federation brochures, now I’m looking at California State Park brochures, and just doing Google searches on topics that are of interest to me. 

    I live in the Sacramento area, a short stroll from the American River, and close to the center of the California Gold Rush from the 1800’s (John Sutter’s fort is in Sacramento). So there’s a gob of historical places of interest all around. The area around where I live was heavily mined for gold by dredging where large barges scoop up material from stream and river beds, run it through a series of sieve to filter out the gold, and then deposited the waste rock and gravel in huge piles. You never need to buy river rock where I live – I just walk around the trails and pick what I need from the big piles along the trails. Digging holes in the yard can be a challenge though. Other areas in the foothills were mined via hydraulic methods, which blasted away the slopes around streams and rivers with high pressure water – it was horribly destructive, causing flooding and impacting water quality as far downstream as San Francisco.  And then there was traditional hard-rock mining, which is what this post is all about.

    The Empire Mine, in Grass Valley, is a California historical state park, and a real gem for anyone interested in the mining history of the state. It offers a unique view of both the complexities of hard-rock gold mining, and of the families that developed and profited from the mines in this area. The Empire Mine started out as individual claims worked by individuals with pick-axes and shovels, until a wealthy merchant from San Francisco decided to get into mining and bought the property. The tour guide gave a lengthy and interesting talk about the family, how they developed the mine into the gold standard (pun intended) for large mine operations, and a lot of interesting side stories of the other ventures they were involved in. I won’t repeat any of that (Google it if you want). 

    OK, enough about history. The park is nicely split up, once you enter the visitor center, into the mine workings, and the owner’s mini-mansion and grounds. The visitor center is excellent, small but packed with mine history. What is really unique is the “Secret Room” – starting in the 1930’s, the mine engineers maintained a wire model of the entire mine and maintained that until operations ended. Once you figure out the structure of the model (a recording helps you along), you realize how incredibly enormous this mine was. Each wire represents either a shaft or a horizontal drift, and the stepped ramps are the angled shafts which were used for entry and pulling ore out. There are miles and miles of drifts and shafts. Apparently, almost everywhere you stand in that area has mine shafts underneath to a depth of over 8000’. That’s a really big mine.

    The map model – every wire is a part of the mine. I believe the lowest point is 8000’.

    This mine was the largest in the area and in California, although one did go deeper. I won’t bore you with all the details of the mine – you can Google it if you want. 

    The center also had a bunch of old photo’s, and videos of the mine operation. All interesting. And, a nice geology display of minerals and gold. Interesting to me at least.

    That’s my ghostly reflection…

     
    The mine was operational until the price of gold was too low for the mine to be profitable. Once it closed, it was sold off to the state and once they shut off the pumps, the entire mine flooded – most of it is below the water table so Mother Nature takes over. Maybe they should open it for mine diving. Frightening.

    So what can you see in the park? It’s basically two separate parks. One tour takes you through the grounds and the owner’s “cottage”. The original owner had this thing for British gardens, so the grounds look like something off of Downton Abbey. Worth wandering around if you like old mansions. (I don’t…been there, done that in England). 

    It does have some nice gardens, and a pretty reflecting pool. This is a mini-version of Filoli Gardens in Woodside, which the owners’ family built. One other interesting fact from this part of the tour – there is another small building associated with this family. The mansion currently owned by the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena was also built by a member of this family. Unlimited wealth opens up a lot of doors. And installs quite few as well.

    The other half of the park includes all the remaining buildings – workshops and offices, examples of equipment, and the ruins of the main processing building where the ore was crushed and the gold extracted. The process used large quantities of mercury, and cyanide. I would not recommend chewing on dirt or rocks in the park.

    Each of the blocks was the base for a crusher – these real 24X7, and were extremely LOUD.

    While the flooded mine is closed, you can enter a short distance into the main shaft, and look down the 45 degree rail line that the miners rode into the mine. You sit on the big wooden sled, and the guide run’s a little routine that turns off the lights and vibrates the sled, to simulate what the miners experienced as the sled ran down the shaft to the working drifts. Fun for the kids.

    I spent a couple of hours in the park, wandering through the visitors center and mine yard, going with the tour through the owners house, and then checking out the gardens. I’ve been to a lot of mines before in my geology days, so I did not have much interest in seeing any more of the mine ruins and display. (I once got a tour of a potash mine in New Mexico, and got to ride around underground in one of the tractors, to visit the drilling sites). I beat a hasty retreat back to the car. It was getting uncomfortably warm anyway.

    There are a couple of other mining sites in the area which offer tours – I’ll pass on those. These are all run by private operators, and are more ‘touristy’ oriented with gold panning for the kids. I’ll pass on those. There are tourist mines in other parts of the state and in other states as well, that take you into the mine. Not worth the drive for me. The only other site I’d like to see is another state historic park, which was a center for hydraulic mining in the 1800’s. It’s close to home, and sounds interesting. 

    My next local trip will be something I have not done since graduate school. Spelunking. Well, initially just a tour of a cavern. If I enjoy that, they offer introductory cave exploration. That might be interesting….worthy of another post.

    A nice flower from the English gardens

    More information on the Empire Mine can be found on the CA State Park Website: https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=499