1 post tagged “lavabeds”

Had a great Thanksgiving in Nevada City with my grandfather, his wife, my aunt, her boyfriend, my brother, his wife, and my parents.  This is in spite of the fact that I had a cold.

Also in spite of that, I was heading to Lava Beds National Monument for a cave survey trip with the Cave Research Foundation (CRF).  This is about a five hour drive from Nevada City, and I wanted to not miss the crowd, so I left around 8am on Friday after Thanksgiving.

The night had been cold, and my car was encased in frost.  I loaned my ice scraper to another Bay Area woman who was up for the holiday before going to work on my windows.  (It doesn't ice over in the Bay Area, so ice scrapers are rare.)  Fortunately, my cold was waning.

But soon I was on the road, heading up the I-5-to-97 route to Lava Beds.  The day was gorgeous and clear, offering great views of Castle Crags and a towering snow-draped Mount Shasta.  Almost exactly five hours after my departure, I arrived at the CRF research center.

The research center building is a relatively new structure in the park which is used by CRF teams when they are doing cave work.  It's heated and has two bathrooms with hot showers, and a full kitchen.  In short, it's heaven compared to camping outside in freezing conditions.

And things get cold up there.  It's in northeastern California at an elevation of 1250 meters.  A few inches of patchy snow were on the ground and a consistant 15 km/h wind took the 0 C temperature down a couple more notches.  No more shorts-and-a-t-shirt.

But never fear; I had layers and layers and layers for the cave survey.

I popped in the door and called out , "Hello?"  No one was around.  There was a note that said they were at a meeting room somewhere.  Not only did I not know where the meeting room was, but I wasn't particularly keen to participate in the administrativia that plagues large projects such as this one.

Instead I got back in the car and went up to Catacombs cave to take some pictures.  Catacombs is one of my favorite caves in the park due to its many twisting little passages, all different.  Also, it has a single entrance which makes you feel like you're really back somewhere (unlike other lava tubes that have multiple collapse entrances all over.)

First stop was about five minutes inside the cave where I spent a few minutes trying to get back into shape with the camera.  I was displeased with the results, but post them here anyway.  (Click on the pictures for a bigger view, which is better!)  In these photos you can see the multiple levels, twists, and colorful walls that dominate this cave.

I also wanted to go to the complex deeper in the cave where the northern and southern arms intersect just downstream of a room called The Boxing Glove Chamber.  Three levels of tube come together at this point, with lava falls dropping onto the lower levels and passages heading off in all directions, including vertically.

A photo really can't sum it up, because the quarters are close and wide-angle just doesn't cut it.  So I spent several attempts trying to get a good shot of a lava ledge above the complex before settling on the one I liked.

As you can see, the lavadrip-covered ledge is slightly taller than I am, and I'm already standing on the middle level on the complex. The ceiling is also covered with fine examples of lavacicles.

At first I'd been wearing several layers since it was definitely cold outside.  But running around with the flash had warmed me up to the point that I was back in a t-shirt.  (Usually I set up a shot, set the timer, have 10 seconds to get into position, hear the shutter open, fire the flash, run around the corner to the next place, fire another flash, hear the shutter close, and then walk back to the camera.)

After an hour of photography, I decided to head back and see who else was there.  Turns out, no one.  But this time I only had to wait a few minutes before a couple people did show up, and then the gathering grew from there.

Total size of the group was 27 people, I think. Some slept outside, some slept in apartments at park headquarters, but most slept in the research center. (It was the floor for me, though there were many unused cots.  The cots weren't long enough. :) )

That first night, we had a big potluck feast which was delicious and stuffing. I mean, it was on top of Thanksgiving dinner the day before, right?  There was lots of food, music, and good company.  Cavers are an eclectic yet social bunch.

Gradually we fell asleep, food and wine getting the better of us.  That was ok, though, since it was a big day on the morrow.

Rising and shining, we split into five survey teams with the goal to take a big chunk out of the South Labyrinth Cave.  This cave had already been surveyed some time ago, but that survey didn't contain any vertical data, and we suspected it was also incomplete in the horizontal data as well.  So it's a big resurvey.

First thing, we joined forces with another team and made a shot through a 3" squeeze.  I passed the tape through to the other team, and then waited.  Normally I'd have more to do, but someone on the other side was getting instruction on how to read instruments and it was taking a little while.  All this time, the cave was blowing cool air past us which was starting to get a little bit chilling.  (At least it wasn't sucking frozen air in from the entrance nearby!)

So the Inventory person and I decided to run around and explore a bit to warm up.  (Inventory is recording what types of formations, floor, creatures, water, etc. are found between two survey stations.)  We crawled in two side passages that were marked as dead-ends on the original map but both led to small rooms, one through a 18 cm bellysqueeze.  My butt almost didn't fit, and the lavacicles on the ceiling threatened to pull my pants down as I forced my way through.

We returned to our team with the news, which meant we'd be surveying these side passages (which we thought connected to the other cave arm, but didn't.)  That would probably prevent us from reaching our goal of the collapse a few hundred feet down the tube.

Nothing for it but to get to work!  We found the piece of survey tape marking the last station visited from the day before, and started from there.  I was tape and lead instruments, which meant my responsibility was to select the location for the next station and also take "backsights" (altitude and azimuth data looking back to the previous station.)  Another team member took "foresights" which which is looking from the previous station to my station.  Our measurements need to match within two degrees.

And why wouldn't they, you might wonder?  How hard is it to read a precision compass graduated to half a degree, anyway?  It's not.  The problem is that all these lava rocks are iron-rich, and most of them are magnetic.  You have to move around quite a bit sometimes to get compass readings that match.  In one place, I found I could get a four-degree change just by moving the compass 10 centimeters up or down.

We mapped the passage to the 18 cm squeeze, and I set up a station on the ceiling at the top of the squeeze.  (These are "virtual" stations usually at the point of a rock of lavacicile.)  This was the hardest shot for me because I had to get all crunched in there, but we got accurate readings on the first try.  We did two more shots inside that room (which seems to be over another tube according to our maps) and went back out to the main passage.

Another side passage looped around, and we surveyed through that, connected the loop to the main passage, and stopped for lunch.  Even though we were only a few minutes from the surface, we ate lunch underground in the darkness, which was actually a first for me.  (My longest cave trips have been maybe three hours, so food wasn't really necessary.)  Some photos were taken at this time, too, and a couple groups of tourists came through as well.

No rest for the wicked, however, and we hit the other previously-known-as-a-dead-end side room.  Turns out this one is a real find!  The way the squeeze goes into collapse rubble, it looks like a dead end.  Until you stick your head in really far and look up, and then you can see another room.  Again, it was tight mapping in the squeeze, but we made it through and into the room.

The room had a breakdown floor and fantastic secondary mineral formations all over the ceiling, still wet and growing.  Some had grown into things that looked like blackberries--I'd never seen such formations in Lava Beds before.  Also a fantastic 20 cm lava stalagmite grew up off one of the pieces of breakdown, meaning that the room collapsed while it was still molten.  That would explain the interesting nature of the collapse rubble; it was all made of flat plates of stone.  Smaller lava stalagmites grew like old candles on a small ledge across the room.  Near Old Station lava stalagmites are common, but at Lava Beds I only knew of maybe two others before finding this room.

Off to the northeast, the room dropped to a 40 cm ceiling over more breakdown.  A tiny passage led to the right.  Elizabeth had suggested that it might have gone somewhere, but it was so inconveniently placed that it took me a minute just to get in position to look inside it.  With my head upside down, I saw a great chocolate (dark-colored smooth) ceiling curving maybe 15 cm over a big rock.  A small slot also led eastward around the rock.  Very tight.  I declined.

Elizabeth went back and looked, and then she also declined.

But Matt (185 cm tall, skinnier than I am)... he's gung-ho.  He put he head in, headed for the slot, and started pushing, stopping every 70 cm or so to take stock in the situation.  After a couple minutes we heard a muffled grunt, "Ugh, this sucks!"  Lavacicles were catching on everything.

A few more minutes, and his feet disappeared from view, and he was behind the rock in a small sitting-room chamber.  He described it to us while he rested.  Then after a couple moments of silence, we heard him say, "Huh."

We asked, "What?

He said, "How did I get through this?"

Chuckling, we said, "Well, you'd better figure it out, man, because none of us can fit in there to help you out."

Fortunately, Matt's got skillz, and he opted to back out the way he came in, which he made look easy.  Matt's left foot appeared, followed quickly by the rest of him.

Back out to the main passage, we were home free compared to that with huge booming passage before us.  We made three more shots at around 50 feet each, which is the max distance the mappers like to shoot.  (Yes, I know it's not metric, but we measure these caves in feet and tenths-of-feet, if you can believe it.)

With the final collapse in sight, we called it a day.  The collapse breakdown formed a crazy maze that would take some time to map out.  The final station was made on a rock on which was written "LABYRINTH" with red paint in fine 1920s scrawl.  It was historical graffiti from J. D. Howard, the man who originally found, explored, and named many of the caves in the park.

And we were late for dinner, so we surfaced, found a couple other also-late teams, and headed back.  Another large dinner awaited us and there was much relaxing and rejoicing.  And wine.  And cave photos.

Some people left at this time; there were storms forecast and no one wanted to be trapped.  I had chains, so... whatever!

The next day, our numbers were decimated.  We put together a single four-person survey team and went back to the same rock I ended on the night before.  I again took tape and shot up to the base of the collapse.

Elaine and I then tore into the collapse, trying to find if there was a passage that skirted the south part of the collapse pit.  Perhaps it might lead to more side tubes, or a lower tube.  We pushed through it on both sides, and found a decent-sized room along the tube wall, but nothing that went anywhere.  We'll have to look more some other time.

From there, I took the survey to the right, into the collapse, then vertically up near the top of the collapse rubble since there was no where else to make a good station in the rubble this direction.  (Vertical shots are neat because you don't need to measure the bearing or inclination.  The bearing is undefined since one station is directly below the other, and the inclination is +90 degrees.)

We then looped it around the main path and back to the second station we'd shot on the day.  We were hoping to get the collapse pit mapped out this trip, but it just didn't happen.  At least we set up one station outside that we can use in the future.

Time for lunch, Elaine and Fofo were leaving since they had no chains and it was starting to show.  Turns out there was only admin stuff to do after lunch and no more survey, so I decided to caravan down with them.  Counting work from all teams, about 2500 feet of passage was surveyed over the weekend.  Not bad!

Blasting through snow flurries to get out of the park, we managed to not get stuck in any appreciable snowfall, and traffic was decent, getting me back to Berkeley in about six hours of driving.