Speleo-Ed 2007 Lava Beds National Monument, CA
The Adventure begins……..
I leave my home in G’ville, FL and head for the Orlando Airport to begin my journey to CA. After a short layover in Salt Lake City, UT, I land on Thursday night in Medford, OR, find a cheap hotel and crash for the night.
I get up in the morning and go to Klamath Falls, OR, a nearby small town. I locate the local Wal-mart Super center in K. Falls after getting directions from a woman (who only spoke Spanish) walking down the sidewalk. I got to Wal-mart and bought me some food, drinks, Styrofoam coolers, and ice. My next stop was an outdoors store called The Ledge. This is where I picked up my fuel canister for my Jetboil. This store was cool and I highly recommend it. The owner was super nice and even hooked me up with a book on the plant life in the Klamath Basin. Also picked up some webbing for my pelican boxes that I had my photography stuff in. The store owner recommend a place to stop for lunch on my way to Lava Beds. So off I headed to Merrill, OR and lunch at Pappy Gander’s. It’s a nice little local mom and pop kinda restaurant with sandwiches and such. Ended up stopping by here again at the end of my trip. More than half the plate they give you is French fries that they cut themselves and I believe the taters were grown local as well. From Merrill it was just a short 40 mins or so to Lava Beds. I never knew when I crossed the state line into California, as there was not a sign on the little farm roads I was traveling on.
So on Friday a little after noon I arrived a Lava Beds, CA. It was really cool. They have these huge lava fields, mountains, desert kinda plants like sage brush and tumbleweeds, and pretty little flowers. I think this is considered a high desert area. As I drove to the visitor’s center and then the campground, I passed deer, all sorts of marmots, and ground squirrels. Lot’s of birds there too. I pretty much had my mouth hanging open in awe at the landscape, and it was at that point when my mind was bubbling over with questions that I decided to go on the geology field trip on Saturday afternoon.
Devil's Homestead Lava Flow
I arrived to Loop A in the campground, and saw the many bat stickers on cars and knew I was in the right place. I ended up camping with members of the Oregon High Desert Grotto, a couple of folks that I knew from cavechat and myspace. After I set up my camp, I got dressed to go caving and the guys took me to Hercules Leg Cave, which connects to Juniper Cave. There were some low crawls in this cave, so I felt at home, but the floor of the lava tubes are like concrete. Remember this was my first lava tube experience. After exiting thru another entrance (sky light maybe) I just stood in the roadway, the landscape was very nice. The sun was setting, it was very pretty. We made it back to the campground in time to jump in line for registration. I am still dressed in my caving clothes, when I over hear someone saw that I was dressed like a TAG caver. I thought that was pretty funny. The rest of the evening was full of home brewed beer, more local micro brews, and saying hi to everyone that I had met last year. They have a small ‘amphitheater’ near the campground, and Dave Bunnell showed a DVD on lava tubes. That answered a lot of questions I had bugged my caving buddies with earlier.
Saturday morning the events activities started about 9am. Speleo-Ed had 2 ‘tracks’. The Speleo-Ed track which is seminars on stuff like paleoclimatology, etc and they also had a photography workshop. The other ‘track’ was the OCR course. Since I had already taken OCR I decided on doing the photo workshop. We discussed our cameras and the instructor made sure we all knew how to work our cameras, then we headed to Valentine Cave. After lunch there was more classes, I went on the Geology fieldtrip to Sentinel Cave (one spot in it was close to 38ºF, and I was told the lower sections can be below freezing).
Upper entrance to Sentinel Cave
Other afternoon trips were a sketching trip and a radio cave location trip.
After all the field trips was the meet and greet with 2 home made brews and a keg of Lemurian Ale. Then was the fundraising dinner to benefit the CRF (Cave Research Foundation). They have a building at Lava Beds and that is where we were holding the workshops and the dinner. A nice yummy enchilada dinner. After dinner was the Western Regions business meeting, but since I was not interested in that, I went to a slideshow presentation in Mushpot Cave that Dave Bunnell was showing. Mushpot is set up as an education cave with information signs about formations and a few benches with a screen for showing movies. That was kinda cool. They also had red runner lights in the cave, which gave it that nice lava tube atmosphere.
Sunday at 9am I joined the photography workshop folks again in Golden Dome and Hopkins Chocolate Cave. These caves have a hydrophobic bacteria layer on the walls that makes the walls look golden, that was cool. I didn’t actually take any pics in the caves during the workshop like everyone else, I was more interested in watching and learning from what everyone else was doing.
When I got back to camp a little after noon, everyone was pretty much gone, the Speleo-Ed weekend was ending, but I was staying an extra night. I decided to head to the closest town, Tulelake, which was VERY small. Grabbed a burger and some fries and then headed back towards Lava Beds, but took the route that would take me past Petroglyph Point.
Also ended up rescuing a snake (possibly a gophersnake or bull snake) from the roadway. When I got back to the main part of Lava Beds, I went over to Sunshine Cave and took a decent picture of myself.
This cave was pretty short with a couple of skylights. Hard running from in front of the camera to the back of the camera. I like photo trips with at least one or two more folks. Makes it easier that way. Sunday night I went to the CRF building and drank a couple beers and hung out with the folks that were staying the week to do research in the park.
Monday morning I said my goodbyes, packed up my campsite, managed to get every thing back in my luggage and started to exit the park, but not without going to one more cave. I went by Skull Cave and oh boy was I glad I did. This was a huge lava tube, 60’ across and 80’ high for 300’, it was like borehole lava tube. Then it dropped to different levels til it ended in a room with a floor of ice. The park service fixed it so you can’t get on the ice, its gated off, to protect it and try and keep it clean and clear. This was by far the best way to end my trip to Lava Beds. This was the most amazing cave ever.
So now I had left Lava Beds, but I didn’t fly out til 6:30am Tuesday morning, so with my extra time I headed up to Crater Lake in Oregon, only to find, SNOW. And a lot of it. I took some nice pictures there. It was really pretty, I’m glad I stopped by there.
And the highway between there and Medford was nice. Reminded me of that movie Harry and the Hendersons. I stopped and checked out the Rouge River Gorge. Saw some more deer and even a coyote. I saw more snakes, lizards, and wildlife on this trip in 4 days than I see in a month here in Florida. I got back to Medford on Monday night and crashed again for a few hours til my flight at O’dark:30.
So I went to 9 caves during my trip. Learned a few new things like:
You can’t ride a horse on the sidewalk in Klamath Falls (they had a sign saying you can’t)
There is such a thing as Fry Sauce, although I am still not sure what it is.
The 2 types of lava are A’A’ and Pahoehoe.
Still unclear on what a Lemurian is. Something about spaceships and Mt. Shasta I think.
In Oregon someone at the gas station pumps the gas for you, that kinda weirded me out.
I had a good time and I glad that I made the long trip out there again for Speleo-Ed.