Beautiful Caves

Red Baron

After a 2 hour hike of mostly scrambling, access to this cleft is gained by a short rappel off a 200' cliff.

The entry was excavated by the two original explorers in 1972 and is quite tight.

The entry passage is gated to protect the cave's formations.

Spee and Zimmie on "The Scenic Loop".

Helectites are plentiful!

Calcified roots in "Upper Walking Passage".

Brandon Kowallis and Zimmie in the "Lower Walking Passage".

A giant coat hanger of a Helectite in the "Lower Walking Passage".

Bright Green glowing formations in the "Upper Walking Passage".

Calcified Roots in "Slip n' Slide Passage".

What a beautiful cave!

Tabernacle Hill Lava Tubes

There are several of these large tubes which are mostly collapsed.

The big tube with skylights.

People camping inside one of the tubes.

Entrance to one of the Lava Tubes.

The landscape of Tabernacle Hill.

This cave is a very small but interesting one that parallels a large river. The water can be seen flowing into the cave not far upstream and again exiting through a submerged passage downstream from the entrance.

Since this cave is located at the base of a fairly large cliff, the best route down to it is through this hole in the bottom of a sink above the cliff face. After descending the small sink and squeezing through the hole at the bottom, it spits you out at almost river level and leads you right to the cave entrance.

Shane crouching into the cave.

The arm leading downstream from the entrance was the most well defined and was well formed from rushing water during flood season.

The journey ended for us at a partially flooded passage only 20 or 30 feet in. From here we could see another 20 ft or so before the passage became completely submerged.

There are a few off-chutes, but not very promising.

The passage that lead upstream was dry and sandy, but dropped into water near the back.

North Fork Cave - 150' long

North Fork Cave does not have any natural formations or anything truly interesting to see, it is simply a pocket about 150' long and about 40 ft. tall at the entrance.

Matka Vrelo – New Record

Last week the international team lead by Gigi Casati broke the record in Matka Vrelo cave, and reached a depth of -212m underwater! The team consisted of macedonians, belgians, greeks, and italians.You can find more information, and diary of the expedition on their site.

Crazy Column Cave

This cave is located in a hidden bowl between a maze of towering cliffs above Springville. After a rock was removed from the entrance, my brother and I were the first to fully explore this cave. It extends down at a 50-60 degree angle until it becomes too tight to continue on.

A very rugged canyon!

The entrance is nearly invisible unless you are directly above it.

Just inside the entrance.

There are a lot of delicate formations in every crack and crevice we could see.

Surveying the "hopeless end". This is the bottom of the North tube.

We named the cave after this prominent feature.

"Redenbacher Room" (to the right) drops off quite steeply and is accessed from a cross passage farther down the left tunnel. We gave it its name because of the large ammount of popcorn formations.

This is the "Delicate End", the bottom of the South passage. It is very sharp and too delicate to continue at the bottom.

Yellowstone Cave

This small cave is really more closely related to a grotto, since it never achieves complete blackness and is not more than 50 ft. long. It really only goes back 15 ft. or so and is covered in guano and rat droppings and nests. This has to be one of the filthiest caves I have ever been into.