"Spring" Arrives in California's Great Valley

Now that I've got your attention, let's get to the post (explanation below)

In the great Central Valley of California there are only two seasons -- spring and summer. The spring begins with the first rainstorm, which usually falls in November. In a few months the wonderful flowery vegetation is in full bloom, and by the end of May it is dead and dry and crisp, as if every plant had been roasted in an oven.

John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

It's true, really. Winter doesn't exactly happen in the Great Valley (called by some the lowly Central Valley). While much of the country lies buried beneath snowdrifts, and people wait longingly for the first signs of spring somewhere around March, we watch the grass growing. Sure, we have some deciduous trees that turn bright colors and drop their leaves (still waiting for that to happen, by the way), but many of our oaks are evergreens. As Muir noted, the spring begins with the first rainstorm. He mentioned November, but our storms came a few weeks early. And like magic the parched valley is already turning green again.

For various reasons, it's been about two weeks since I've walked our nice little river trail where the Tuolumne River leaves the Sierra Nevada and flows into the Great Valley. The last time I was there, the landscape was parched. It had been nearly six months since any rain had fallen in the area, and it showed. There were weeds and dry grass everywhere, and every step raised a puff of dust. Then "the storm" happened, a record-setting late October storm that dropped two inches of rain in two days. A few days later, the green grass was sprouting everywhere. There is an entirely different feel to the Parkway Trail now.

I lived in an area that had winter seasons once, spending two years in Reno, Nevada, at 4,500 feet. I recall driving from Reno into the Central Valley at Christmas, struggling through a snowstorm on Donner Summit. When we reached the valley floor, it was warm (!), and I could smell the chlorophyll in the air. The greenery was stunning after what had been a month or more of snow storms. And that's what central California is like for most of the winter. It's the reason that Arctic birds like the Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese like to spend the winter on the valley floor. They have access to food throughout the winter.

The storms of course had a huge effect on the river flows in the Sierra Nevada. Last weekend, we saw the effects of the rain in Yosemite Valley. The runoff of the Merced River resembled flows in early spring (at least for a few days). The Tuolumne River was less changed. The flow of the river is controlled by the turbines of Don Pedro Reservoir, a huge dam about 20 miles upstream. The river flows through a number of pools, and the reflections of the sky were beautiful. This was the spot where I saw some River Otters a few weeks ago (you can be sure that I'm always watching for them).

The water was so calm and peaceful. Occasionally a Hyacinth floated by, which explains the picture at the top of the post (turn the picture upside down and it will make more sense). The Hyacinth is actually a scourge throughout the rivers of the Great Valley. It is an introduced species that grows rapidly and chokes river channels. It causes oxygen levels in the river to plummet and many animal and plant species can't compete with the weed. The drought exacerbated the problem, as the rivers were not able to flush out the channels of the weed. Luckily, this year there was a bit of extra water, allowing higher surge flows that seemed to clear some of the channels. There is certainly less hyacinth along my stretch of the river.

It was nice to be home for a few days! We'll enjoy our "spring" for a while. When spring arrives for most other people, we'll be sliding into the dry summer season, and then I'll be jealous of you...

Oo'-tin (Bower Cave) in the Sierra Nevada: Caverns, Lost Pictures, Dances, and the Origin Place of Humans (maybe)

The middle parts of the Sierra Nevada are kind of the great unknown of the Sierra Nevada (at least to me, but I suspect many others, too). It's not that the region between the mostly alpine national parks and the highly touristy Mother Lode is a wilderness. It's quite the opposite, with an intense history of logging, mining, dam-building, and ranching. Oh, and the elimination of the First Nations people who used to live there, so other people could build their summer cabins and the like. It's just that region one passes through while rushing to Yosemite or Lake Tahoe.

It turns out that a great many interesting places in the middle reaches of the Sierra Nevada are worthy of investigation. Deep river canyons, waterfalls, fragrant rich forests, and caverns. Hundreds of caverns!

California is not famous for its caves, but it has some world-class examples, including Lilburn Cave in Kings Canyon National Park. Lilburn has just over 20 miles of passageways, making it the 28th longest in the United States (there are more than 1,100 caves in the U.S. over a mile in length).

There is an interesting cave uphill from the Mother Lode in the vicinity of Coulterville and Greeley Hill just west of Yosemite National Park, interesting not in the sense that it's fun to explore because one cannot explore it. Well, you could, but you would have to participate in one of the most dangerous sports possible, cavern scuba diving. That's a pursuit with few margins for error. The entire cave beyond the entrance is submerged in water. It's called Bower Cave.

The interest of the cave is biological, historical, geological, and spiritual. That's a heavy load for any feature to live up to, but bear with me. The cavern opening is a large circular grotto about 100 feet (30 meters) wide, and about 35 to 62 feet deep (11-23 meters). The lake portal to the submerged caverns occupies about a quarter of the grotto floor. The overhanging walls cover about a third of the cavern floor. The cave provides a cool shelter and secure source of water during the hot dry part of the year. Animals, especially birds like swallows and owls live in the various folds of the rock. The water itself contains a few endemic arthropod species found nowhere else in the world. Fish were introduced at one time, but they didn't thrive and are gone now. Several large maple trees grow on the grotto floor. Their crowns provide the "bower" of the cave's name.

Source: http://www.karstportal.org/FileStorage/Caves_and_Karst/1969-v011-n003.pdf 

The cave was discovered early on during the Gold Rush, and when Yosemite Valley was discovered shortly after, one of the first access roads passed only a few yards from the grotto. It quickly grew popular as a cool rest stop during the long stage ride to Yosemite. John Muir paid a visit, and wrote admiringly of the cave:

Before noon we passed Bower Cave, a delightful marble palace, not dark and dripping, but filled with sunshine, which pours into it through its wide-open mouth facing the south. It has a fine, deep, clear little lake with mossy banks embowered with broad-leaved maples, all under ground, wholly unlike anything I have seen in the cave line even in Kentucky, where a large part of the State is honeycombed with caves. This curious specimen of  subterranean scenery is located on a belt of marble that is said to extend from the north end of the Range to the extreme south. Many other caves occur on the belt, but none like this, as far as I have learned, combining as it does sunny outdoor brightness and vegetation with the crystalline beauty of the underworld.

For a time a small hotel was operated nearby. The owners discovered the acoustics of the cave were excellent, so they constructed a bandstand and dance floor in the grotto. A windlass provided access at first, but a wood stairway was soon built. The party times continued into the 20th century. The property changed hands a number of times, eventually ending up in the Art Linkletter family (bonus points if you are old enough to remember him!). Someone was killed in a fall in the 1950s, so access to the cave ended over liability concerns.

Part of the bandstand still clings to the walls

A land exchange in 1991 brought the property under the administration of Stanislaus National Forest. Eventually access was restored through a permit system (one had to go to the closest forest service office for the combination to the lock on the gateway to the property). There were still worries about liability and danger from falls, so a newer gate has been constructing blocking access to the inner cave, but allowing views from the rim into the interior. Permits are no longer needed.

The cavern, as is true with most caves has developed in limestone, or more properly in this instance, marble. It is probably part of the Calaveras Complex, coral reefs and carbonate shelf deposits that were accreted to the western edge of the North American continent in late Mesozoic time (the age of the dinosaurs). Rocks within the Calaveras are late Paleozoic to early Mesozoic in age. The caverns formed when slightly acidic groundwater dissolved away the rock. The lake represents the level of groundwater in the region. In the long term, the lake will disappear as the nearby North Fork of the Merced River carves a deeper canyon and lowers the regional groundwater table. The grotto itself formed when the roof of the cave collapsed.

The cavern is unique enough that it was apparently part of the Miwok mythology. I say "apparently" because the sources date to anthropology studies in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and I haven't found any confirmation from current Miwok cultural sites on the web. I would love to hear if these stories are part of the Miwok tradition or not.

In any case, the story states that

A long time ago Too'-le the Evening Star lived at Oo'-tin [Bower Cave, on the Coulterville road to Yosemite]. He-le'-jah the Mountain Lion lived with him. They were chiefs and partners and had a room on the north side of the cave. There were other people here also To-lo'-mah the Wild Cat, Yu'-wel the Gray Fox, Kah'-kool the Raven, and many more.

The story continues with a legend of how the Raven and the early people learned to hunt deer. Some of the sources refer to the hole as a passageway by which humans entered the world. 

In any case, the cave is labeled on the AAA maps of the region, a few miles east of Greeley Hill. The trail is short, and the sights interesting. My sole visit was during the fall, and the trees were showing some nice colors.

The reference to "lost pictures" in the title of today's blog refers to the need to back up every picture file on multiple computers and external hard drives (no-brainer, right?). I took the pictures most of a decade ago, and replaced my laptop shortly afterward. I transferred all my files, but in the process, the pictures of Bower Cave disappeared somewhere. I've been through another three or four computers since then, and I've scoured the files on each of them, searching in vain for pictures I knew I had taken. That went on for years, but this week I tried one more time, and found them on a desktop that had fried her components, but I somehow managed to boot up, and there they were. And here they are. Enjoy, and if you get the chance, pay a visit to the cave on your way to Yosemite. And backup your files!

If you are interested in some of the research done at Bower Cave, check these sources:

http://www.karstportal.org/FileStorage/Caves_and_Karst/1969-v011-n003.pdf  Detailed study of the cave, part 1
http://www.karstportal.org/FileStorage/Caves_and_Karst/1969-v011-n004.pdf  Part 2, the vegetation
http://www.karstportal.org/FileStorage/Caves_and_Karst/1969-v011-n005.pdf  Part 3, the animals of the cave

What is it like to be the first person to step into a newly discovered cavern?

Actually, I don't know. I am not a hardcore caver who spends weekends crawling through poison oak and snake-infested outcrops looking for fist-sized openings in the limestone that might lead to undiscovered treasures beneath the surface of the earth (although I would love doing such a thing!).

But I do know that I am continually frustrated to wander through a cavern that has been overused and abused, frustrated that I can never see the various rooms in their pristine state, as they existed before human discovery. Tourist caves in the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode were mostly discovered in the middle and late 1800s. The early explorers carried smoking torches, and thought nothing of destroying delicate speleothems if it served their purposes (liking making underground dance halls and the like). Visitors regularly broke off stalactites to take home as souvenirs.

The outer reaches of California Caverns suffered this fate, as I described in my previous post.

It turns out that the miners and early visitors never noticed the debris blocking an extremely narrow passageway in the rear wall of the Bridal Chamber in the most remote section of California Cavern. A few decades ago, explorers worked their way through the claustrophobic tunnel and emerged in a large space that came to be called the Jungle Room. It was full of the most delicate cave decorations imaginable.

In the ensuing years, the passage was widened, and a trail constructed so the Jungle Room could be added to the public tour. Entering the Jungle Room is to see a pristine cave, one that is mostly untouched by the abuses that have marred many other caverns. Soda straws and helictites are two extremely delicate features that are invariably broken off by cave vandals. They are here in profusion.

Soda straws are pretty much like their namesakes, thin stalactites with hollow interiors. Some that I could see were feet, rather than inches long. Helictites are essentially soda straws or stalactites on drugs; they have forgotten that they are supposed to be influenced by gravity. They develop in random directions, probably due to water seeping out under pressure through different openings, causing precipitation of calcite in odd directions. An example can be seen coming off the stalactite in the center of the picture below.

Every corner of the Jungle Room is a revelation...I could almost feel the joy that John Muir felt when he visited the caves before they had been so badly defaced:

Here we lingered and reveled, rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much splendor in darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains, buildings ever in process of construction, yet never finished, developing from perfection to perfection, profusion without overabundance; every particle visible or invisible in glorious motion, marching to the music of the spheres in a region regarded as the abode of eternal stillness and death.

The cave is still active and many of the formations are dripping and streaming with water.

One of the stalagmites particularly stood out (below). Without the dirt of a century of misuse, the formations are pearly white in texture and appearance, and are simply stunning. The Jungle Room is a wonderful chance to feel, for a few moments, like you are the first person who has ever laid eyes on these treasures. It is well worth a visit.

The discovery of the Jungle Room was just the beginning. More passageways led off from the depths of the new section of cave, and the total measured length of the cavern system now exceeds a mile. The company offers extended tours of the newer passageways, but I haven't yet had the privilege (it's a bit more expensive...).