I went to Bend, Oregon last week for 2012 Speleo-Ed. I highly recommend this event if you haven't been. Speleo-Ed is a weekend education/caving event for the Western Region of the NSS. Every year it is held in a different location. What a great group of cavers the Western Region has. This was my 5th year attending. In the past I have attend Speleo-Ed in Calavaras County, CA, Lava Beds, CA, Mojave Desert, CA, and Olema, CA (sea caves). They must think that I'm crazy traveling all the way from Florida to attend, but great people and cheap flights keep me coming.
The educational part of the weekend was Saturday morning, where I got to learn about Pikas (not a rodent, but the smallest in the rabbit family). These little guys like to live in Alpine type areas. And also learned bout the 5 kinds of lava tubes. They also had workshops on cave photography and cave survey.
Bend, Oregon is located in central Oregon and is home to a lot of lava tubes. I ended up going to 3, Lava River Cave (easy self-guided tourist cave, but it wasn't open to tourist yet, so it was nice), Arnold Ice Cave and Skeleton Cave. Being that the last 2 caves are located in a National Forest, caving is allowed by permit only and some of the caves, like Skeleton, are gated to protect the cave from local 'spelunkers'. Arnold Ice Cave was once completely sealed with ice, but it has melted mostly, allowing cavers to spend a good 2 hours of nothing but climbing up and down breakdown. If you think limestone breakdown is no fun, you should try it when it is all lava rocks. Hard, sharp, lava rocks. But luckily a recent loss in body weight helped me over come the breakdown and cave like a champ (in my opinion anyway). My neck did start to ache, from looking where I was stepping alot, and then trying to look up at the ceiling (which in some places was over 60' up). The temperature in the caves was @ 42ºF, which is a lot cooler than what I am used to in Florida and even in TAG.
Looking forward to seeing where next year's event will take place.