Cave Crazies: Must vandals destroy everything in their path?

[Wayne Harrison]

Written by Jim Anderson
Wednesday, 31 October 2007

Back in 1951, when I rolled into Bend on my old ‘49 Harley I had no idea there was such thing as “pahoehoe,” or “’a’a” and “Newberry” was a faint memory from my high school American history studies. However, all that changed when I met Phil Brogan and started prowling around in lava caves with Phil Coyner.


Brogan was my mentor, and Coyner was my caving buddy; both of whom introduced me to the beauty and wonder of the lava tubes that one can find throughout Central Oregon.

Coyner and I mapped and photographed many of the lava caves: Skeleton, Boyd, Wind, and Arnold Ice Cave. We went up into the foothills of the Cascades and had a wonderful time mapping and photographing Cleveland Ice Cave, named for an early Bend forester.

We never found trash in any of the caves we went in. We, and others who visited the caves, believed in the philosophy of the National Speleological Society, “Leave nothing behind but footprints and take nothing out but photographs.”

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