The Karst Topography...of California? There are more than 1,000 wild caves in California. Here's one of them

There is something special about exploring a wild cave, the kind without admission fees, guides, trails, and railings. There are a thousand limestone caves in California (and hundreds of lava tubes), and not even a dozen of them are show caves, i.e. open for business.There are usually reasons the wild caves do not become "tour caves". They may be too short, too inaccessible, maybe even too dangerous.

The wild caves have suffered varying levels of abuse and vandalism. Few of them are protected by any kind of legal authority and are rarely patrolled. They are mostly protected by secrecy, and small groups of serious spelunkers. I've been privileged with the opportunity to explore a couple of them, and as part of my miniseries on the karst terrain of California, I'd like to share one with you.

A nearly empty New Melones Reservoir and the gray marble of the Calaveras Complex.

Karst topography, as described in the previous posts, is a landscape underlain by cavern-filled marble or limestone. Cavern roofs can collapse, forming sinkholes, blind valleys and disappearing streams. The marble, a part of a metamorphic terrane called the Calaveras Complex (late Paleozoic-early Mesozoic), can be seen as gray slopes in the photo above. Many incredible caves were drowned by the waters of the reservoir in the foreground of the picture. Others open out into sheer cliffs above. Few are easily accessible. We had to walk a steep mile to get to the caves we're exploring in the post today.

Oak woodland in the vicinity of the caves

That's what makes these caves special. They are at the end of a pretty stiff hike, but they have accessibility, and are relatively undamaged (this concept is relative; some would call them heavily damaged, but many parts are in good shape). They're not crowded. Months may pass between visits.

When we have a group of newbies who have not explored wild caves before, we do some training on safety, both for the explorers, and for the caves themselves. We stress the importance of exploring in least intrusive way possible, not touching the rocks, and not disturbing any life if possible. We crawl through a short cave with a few narrow passages in preparation for entering the much larger cave to follow.

We finish our spelunking practice at the small cave, and move on towards the larger, more challenging cave. Accessing the cave requires first descending between huge fallen boulders. The cave had grown so large that portions of the roof had collapsed to form a sinkhole. We find a spot with good footholds and climb into the darkness.

The second challenge is getting into the main cave via a narrow passageway at the base of the rockfall. One has to push upwards and twist through the tight little space. Some of the explorers describe it as being "born again".

The entrance merges into a more open room that serves as the "subway" into the largest room in the cave. This passage is where most of the speleothem damage has occurred. It's not exactly the work of vandals, as the breaking of the formations was probably for the purpose of making an easier passageway into the room beyond. This kind of thing happened to many caves discovered in olden days. I don't know anything of the discovery and original exploration of this particular cave.

This passage leads into the main room of the cave, which more than 100 feet long, and 20-30 feet high in places. We come face to face with a spectacular wall of mostly unbroken stalactites (they were protected by being out of reach).

The room is richly decorated with all kinds of dripstone and flowstone features. Some are brown from torches of the early explorers, or from mud seeping through the cracks above. Other features show evidence of recovery from the "dirty early years". The adoption of clean caving techniques in the last few decades shows as some of the cave features are covered with a thin layer of pure white calcite. Some of the caves are being cleaned by volunteers as well. In some cases, people haul gallons of water down difficult trails, set up hoses into the caves, and then spray mud off of damaged speleothems.

There are all kinds of nooks and crannies to explore. There is a false floor in the cave that offers a loop crawl. There is a small passageway called the bedroom and another called the jail room. Openings high on the walls and ceiling hint at other passageways. In a side room, one can view a sinkhole from the underside, looking up at a mass of boulders that had collapsed down into the cave, but have since been cemented together by flowstone to form the ceiling of the room.

What about cave life? We've seen spiders near the entrance, and unusual looking snails. In previous trips we have seen six inch long centipedes, and Ensatina salamanders. There have been a couple of bats. The total darkness of caverns offers little in the way of food, so the biomass quantity of the cave is very low. The creatures that do exist are highly adapted to environment of the caves.

The wilderness caverns of the Sierra Nevada are a precious and irreplaceable resource. The breaking of any speleothem destroys the result of thousands, even tens of thousands of years of slow development. They can never be replaced in any kind of human lifetime.

It is a rare privilege to be able to explore this underground wilderness, and it is a privilege for me to introduce my students to this strange new world.

A cave is such a strange and alien world for a human being, at least the deeper parts away from the light. No wonder that some of our first art was scrawled on cavern walls as sort of drug-free hallucination of alternate worlds. Caves were portals to lower worlds, or were the avenues for emergence into our current world. Sitting in the darkness, I can feel a connection to my ancestors.

You have no doubt noted that I have not provided the names of the caves we explored. If you want to get involved in cave exploration, you should contact your local grotto of the National Speleological Society. They provide instruction and training, as well as chances to clean and rehabilitate caves that have been damaged by vandals and overuse. They are great people. And don't forget, the tourist caves in the Mother Lode are wonderful. They are safe and easy to explore. Check them out!

This post is a highly altered version of a post based on our trip in 2014. If you want to see how badly I plagiarized myself, check out the original post here:  http://geotripper.blogspot.com/2014/11/to-explore-wild-cave-underground.html

To Explore a Wild Cave: The Underground Wilderness of the Sierra Nevada

There is a treasure in the Mother Lode of California's Sierra Nevada. It lies hidden beneath the surface, but it's not gold. It is a wilderness, but has no beautiful trees or distant vistas. It is dark and sometimes can be a bit creepy, but it is a place of incredible beauty as well. It is a network of caverns, hundreds of them. A half-dozen are tourist destinations, with lighting, pathways, and guided tours. The rest lie hidden, protected from vandals and abuse only by their secrecy.

I had the pleasant opportunity of introducing some of my students to the Sierra Nevada Underground today, exploring a pair of small caves in the Mother Lode on the slopes above the Stanislaus River. Many of the caves in the Sierra are dangerous, with steep drop-offs, impossibly tight passageways, and even bad air at times. Every cave, like any wilderness, can be dangerous, but the caves we were exploring were less intimidating than most. Falls were possible in these caves, but they would be on the order of six feet instead of forty feet, or a hundred. We headed for the hills above Columbia, stopping in the historical town for a few moments to enjoy the fall colors (and to use the facilities).

A nearly empty New Melones Reservoir and the gray marble of the Calaveras Complex.

We crossed the Stanislaus River and the frighteningly empty New Melones Reservior. The marble, a part of a metamorphic terrane called the Calaveras Complex (late Paleozoic-early Mesozoic), could be seen as gray slopes in the distance upstream. There are over a thousand caverns in the Sierra Nevada, and dozens of them are in the slopes above the Stanislaus River. Many incredible caves were drowned by the waters of the reservoir. Others open out into sheer cliffs above. Few are easily accessible, and many of these have been heavily damaged by vandals and ignorant visitors.

Oak woodland in the vicinity of the caves

That's what makes these caves special. They are at the end of a pretty stiff hike, but they have accessibility, and are relatively undamaged (this concept is relative; some would call them heavily damaged, but many parts are in good shape). One of them is relatively small, but has some good places to practice crawling, and has enough passageways to give a sense of exploring.

Signing the cave register

Most of the caves in the Sierra are monitored by the local speleological society, and they contain a register so visitation levels can be estimated. A party had been in these caves a week previous, but it had been several months since any earlier visits.

The features and "decorations" of caves are called speleothems. The familiar stalactites, stalagmites, and columns are called dripstone speleothems. As the name suggests, these form when calcium carbonate rich water drips from fractures in the ceiling of the cave. A little bit of calcite precipitates out as the water evaporates.

Other speleothems are called flowstone features. These are cave decorations that develop as water flows out the walls of a cavern. These might include draperies, shields, or rimstone pools.

We finished our spelunking practice at the small cave, and moved on towards the larger, more challenging cave. Accessing the cave required first descending between huge fallen boulders. The cave had grown so large that portions of the roof had collapsed to form sinkholes. We found a spot with good footholds and climbed into the darkness.

The second challenge was getting into the main cave via a narrow passageway at the base of the rockfall. One has to push upwards and twist through the tight little space. Some of the students described it as being "born again". Not everyone gets through, but we had a stubborn crew, and they all successfully negotiated the passage.

The entrance merges into a more open room that serves as the "subway" into the largest room in the cave. This passage is where most of the cavern damage has occurred. It's not clear whether this is the work of vandals, or more likely, the breaking of the formations to forge an easier passage into the room beyond. This kind of thing happened to many caves discovered in older days (I don't know the history of these particular caverns though).

I was still helping students get through the entrance when I heard the others exclaiming in delight at the first view of the big room. There is a rather stunning collection of stalactites hanging from the ceiling, the majority of which are unbroken.

The big room is almost 100 feet long and 30-40 feet wide. It is richly decorated with all kinds of dripstone and flowstone features. Some are brown from torches of the early explorers, or from mud seeping through the cracks above. Other features show evidence of recovery from the "dirty early years". The adoption of clean caving techniques in the last few decades shows as some of the cave features are covered with a thin layer of pure white calcite. Some of the caves are being cleaned by volunteers as well. In some cases, people haul gallons of water down difficult trails, set up hoses into the caves, and then spray mud off of damaged speleothems.

There are all kinds of nooks and crannies to explore. There is a false floor in the cave that offers a loop crawl. There is a small passageway called the bedroom and another called the jail room. Openings high on the walls and ceiling hint at other passageways.

What about cave life? We saw spiders near the entrance, and an unusual looking snail. In previous trips we have seen six inch long centipedes, and Ensatina salamanders. There have been a couple of bats. The total darkness of caverns offers little in the way of food, so the biomass quantity of the cave is very low. The creatures that do exist are highly adapted to environment of the caves.

An Ensatina Salamander from a trip to the cave in 2003.

The wilderness caverns of the Sierra Nevada are a precious and irreplaceable resource. The breaking of any speleothem destroys the result of thousands, even tens of thousands of years of slow development. They can never be replaced in any kind of human lifetime. A major part of our preparation for this trip was instruction in the ways of clean caving, conducting ourselves in such a way as to protect the cave to the greatest extent possible (the simple act of exploring has effects).

It was a rare privilege to be able to explore this underground wilderness, and it was a privilege for me to introduce my students to this strange new world. We finished up and started to climb back into the entrance chamber.

I lingered for a few minutes after the others had left. I wanted to hear the silence and just feel the pulse of the cave. A cave is such a strange and alien world for a human being, at least the deeper parts away from the light. No wonder that some of our first art was scrawled on cavern walls as sort of drug-free hallucination of alternate worlds. Caves were portals to lower worlds, or were the avenues for emergence into our current world. Sitting in the darkness, I felt a connection to my ancestors.

And then I looked up, over my head. Oh crap, I'm in a dark cave alone with gigantic spikes just waiting for an earthquake to drop them on me! I quietly excused myself and caught up with the rest of the crew (of course, given the number of earthquakes here over the course of geologic time, the likelihood of these things falling is nil).

We climbed out of the cave and headed back up the long hill. It had been a great day in the Sierra Underground. You have no doubt noted that I have not provided the names of the caves we explored. If you want to get involved in cave exploration, you should contact your local grotto of the National Speleological Society. They provide instruction and training, as well as chances to clean and rehabilitate caves that have been damaged by vandals and overuse. They are great people. And don't forget, the tourist caves in the Mother Lode are wonderful. They are safe and easy to explore. Check them out!

Where are the Ten Most Incredible Places You've Ever Stood? My Number 4: What is it like to be the first person ever to see a cavern?

Can you imagine flashing a light in a dark corner of a cavern, knowing that you are the first human being ever to lay eyes on the formations? I haven't had that privilege in my life, but I have found two or three places where I can imagine what the experience was like. Most of the caverns that are accessible to amateur spelunkers like myself have been long known and rather completely explored. Unfortunately, most of them have been severely vandalized, and the early use of torches for light left soot deposits on the formations. It is a rare treasure to see a cave where damage has not yet happened. Such caves in my experience include California Caverns near San Andreas, California,  Black Chasm Cavern near Jackson, California, and the subject of today's post, Kartchner Caverns near Benson, Arizona.

Many of the speleothems are still active; there are water droplets on many of the soda straws

The "Ten Most Incredible Places I've Ever Stood" series has been a series of hard choices. This one made the list because of the shock and the awe, the way the cavern made my jaw drop as I stepped in. It is an experience unlike any other that I've had while underground. There is a difference between even a well-protected cave, and one in which whole areas have never been touched by a human being. The floor of one of the large rooms was covered with mud, and it was clear from the trackway above that only one trail through it was ever made, in order to put in a light source. The rest of the room remains as it was discovered.

How incredible is it that some of the soda straws that fell are still standing in the mud?

The discovery and visitation of any cave causes irreversible changes. Kartchner Caverns were discovered on private lands in 1974 and the people who found them were concerned about preserving the original cave environment. The cave was at nearly 100% humidity, and opening it to the desert environment would have dried it out. Such changes in humidity can adversely affect life in the cave and stunt the growth and development of speleothems (cave decorations like stalactites and stalagmites). And yet the caves were spectacular. Was there some way of preserving the caves while making them accessible to the public?

The discoverers hit on an audacious solution. Through a series of delicate and secret negotiations, the owners of the land agreed to sell the lands containing the cave to the state of Arizona to be developed as a show cave, but to be developed in such a way as to preserve both the features and the climate inside the cave (many of the legislators didn't know what or where the park was when they voted for it). They preserved the humidity of the cave using a series of unique airlocks. Pathways were constructed with a minimum of disruptions to the original configuration of the cave. It took 25 years from the time of discovery to the opening of the park to the public in 1999.

There was one catch. Nothing goes into the cave with the visitors. No food, no water, no backpacks...and no cameras. As you might expect, I live for photography and this for me was a hard restriction. In 2005, though, I got the opportunity of a lifetime: as part of a fund-raiser for the park's foundation, they had a photography day, and the National Association of Geoscience Teachers made arrangements for us to take part. I was going to be given access to the cavern to photograph to my heart's content. To be sure, I had to sign a waiver of commercial rights, and the images that you see in this post today are protected and cannot be sold or used in any way.

Perhaps the most incredible stalagmite/column I've ever seen

What a wonder it was to step into a cave that appeared the same as it was on the day of discovery! The airlock closed behind me and although the temperature was only 78 degrees, it felt much hotter because of the intense humidity. The passageways were dimly lit and it took some time to develop my night vision. But moment by moment the cavern came into focus. It was simply stunning.

I wandered from passage to passage lost in the moment. It was nice not having a guide (staff were stationed throughout the cave to answer questions and keep an eye on things), but it was also nice to be exploring a pristine cave knowing I wasn't doing major damage just by being there. Exploring a newly discovered cave means leaving muddy footprints and accidentally destroying delicate formations underfoot, or leaving trails in the mud. I remember thinking that the experience was something like being in a museum, but I thought that in a good way: the resource was being protected, and yet hundreds of thousands of people could see and enjoy it. 

Some marvelous "helictites", otherwise known as stalactites on LSD.

Although I can't be mistaken for a professional photographer, I learned long ago that photography in a cave is always tricky. There is no "natural" look to a cave except total darkness, but a camera flash steals perspective and washes out delicate differences in color and shading. I used the ambient lighting to maintain some depth to the photos. That meant standing very still for longer than usual exposure times (tripods weren't allowed at the time). 

Flowstone refers to speleothems that result from water seeping out of cracks in the walls of a cavern. Over time gigantic mounds build up that resemble ice cream sundaes. Kartchner is full of spectacular examples.

I'm not sure what to make of the features below. There are some nice soda straws, which are so delicate that they are the first to be broken off in unprotected caves. The spiky things are the beginnings of helictites, which tend to ignore gravity, growing instead under the influence of water pressure from the interior of the "confused" stalagmites.

Below, one can see a spectacular column in the foreground, and some marvelous draperies in the upper left background. None of the features were broken off, and none were vandalized. I can barely describe what it is like being in such a place. Every minute in the cave was precious. I know there is an argument about worrying over technology in situations like this, and that one needs to live in the moment, reveling in the experience of being, but I actually find caves disorienting. Despite all my orienteering skills on the Earth's surface (and people tell me they are formidable) I get lost in caves. I can't remember one room or one decoration from another. Photographs keep me centered, and keep the memories of the moment alive. And I can share them!

I passed a stunning wall of draperies. Time was beginning to run short and I would be needing to leave this fantastical world for the surface before long. I was sweating, dehydrated, hungry and tired. It wasn't difficult getting around, but the humidity gets to you eventually, draining your energy. I started to head for the exit chamber and the airlock to the outer world.

There was one last close-up of a moist, almost glowing surface of some flowstone, and then I was out the door to the world of light and fresh air. The contrast was shocking. Caverns are incredible places, but they aren't really a human environment. I can understand how the first explorations of caverns could awaken our ancestors to the ideas of shadow-worlds with their demons and nightmares. Hell was presented as an underworld of fiery pits and eternal torment. But in a different context, caverns have been a place where dreams come alive. I think of the spiritual awakening of an initiate in a deep cave thousands of years ago encountering the drawn images of animals and people on a cavern wall seeming to run and play in the flickering light of a burning torch. Wandering through a pristine cave in the present day brings us face to face with a fascinating world that is not completely apart from us. The deep hidden parts of caves may not be a human environment, but much of our early spiritual and cultural development derived from living and exploring the outer edges of the underground environment. Caves are places where magic seems possible.

The Sierra Underground: Wild Caves, a precious and easily damaged environment

I spent the day in the Sierra Nevada foothills checking out a couple of wild caves with a few students. The Sierra is justly famous for spectacular alpine scenery; the underground scenery is a tad less well-known. Just the same, the region has some spectacular caves, including a half dozen that are open for commercial tourism. Others are hidden away in the brushy hillsides and are a great deal harder to reach and explore, and that is the way it should be.

Wild caves are a precious resource, and are easily damaged. The damage is permanent. Accessible caves have been completely stripped of their speleothems (cave decorations like stalactites and stalagmites) and filled with garbage and graffiti.

I was in the inner sanctum of a particularly beautiful cavern, and thankfully many of the stalactites remained unbroken. I've been in this cave several times, so instead of exploring the far corners, I sat and tried different approaches to capturing images of the thickest accumulation of stalactites near the entrance. It's a tricky process, especially for a novice like myself. Flash pictures don't cut it because there are few shadows to provide depth. I caught three images I was happy with by opening the shutter for 20 seconds and having my fellow explorers move their light sources over the target speleothems.

The exploring of wild caves is not for everyone. You have to get used to crawling through tight spaces, and getting covered in mud. It can be exhausting work. Caves can be unsafe, with unstable rocks, steep dropoffs and bad air. Hurt yourself in a cave and it is difficult to get you to medical help. Go in without sufficient light sources, a knowledgeable guide, and improper equipment, and you could end up lost in the dark. Caves do not generally offer landmarks for finding your way out.

Our cave today required squeezing upwards through narrow opening with a projecting rock that meant one had to push up and turn sideways at the same time.

This was after negotiating the collapsed rocks that provided entrance to the bottom of the sinkhole that contained the cave entrance...

Yeah, Geotripper was tired afterwards...then there was the mile long hike up the mountain to the vehicles. It was a good day.