Vacation Day 2 – Caves and Mt. Sneffels

Today we wanted to hit up one of the local attractions and then spend the rest of the day at the national park. Things didn't go according to plan, but it ending up being a great day none the less.

We started out day at 8am in the café at the RV park. Our free breakfast was two huge pancakes plus two eggs and coffee. After breakfast we hit the road in the Hummer with the plan to head down to the Shoshone Ice Cave and then come back to Craters of the Moon.

As we passed by Craters of the Moon, we decided to stop at the scenic outlook just to the south of the main entrance. We had a great overlook of a huge lava field. We walked down to the edge of the lava and did some scrambling in the lava itself. It was great fun until we were walking back to the truck and realized that Stacie no longer had her Oakley sunglasses. We attempted to retrace her steps for about 20 minutes before I finally spotted them on the ground in the shadow of a rock. With a big sigh of relief we were able to hit the road again.

Our next stop was a few more miles down the road where we saw “Goodale’s Cutoff”, a marker for a large group of pioneers who were bypassing the Oregon Trail and ended up passing through Craters of the Moon instead. Behind the sign was a pretty little lake in the lava.

As we continued down highway 26, the scenery was mostly barren prairie broken with volcanic uplifts. Eventually we rolled in to Carey, ID, population 500. At first we thought that the high school had its own rodeo arena/grandstand, but then we realized that the high school and the county fairground were actually the same place. We were so amused and distracted that we unknowingly missed the turnoff to highway 26 and instead kept heading south.

After driving through a lot more nothing we eventually came in to the town of Shoshone and realized that we were way off track. After looking at the map we realized where we had missed the turn and figured out that we could head straight north on highway 75 to get to the ice cave.

Half way to the ice cave we saw a beat up sign and a few broken down trailers advertising "Cave." We knew it wasn’t the ice cave, but we had seen a sign several miles back advertising “Mammoth Cave.” And figured this must be it. It looked a little questionable, but we decided to try it out anyway so I turned down the driveway, which was two narrow dirt tire tracks winding off into the distance. After a bumpy, curvy mile and a half we pulled in to “Idaho’s Mammoth Cave and Shoshone Bird Museum.” A friendly local gave us two Coleman lanterns and pointed us toward the entrance to the cave.

Like all of the caves in this area Mammoth Cave was a large lava tube twisting around underground. The owners of the cave had brought in fill dirt and built a path by hand to walk on through the aa lava rocks that were left in the cave. One other group of three was ahead of us, but they quickly vanished into the darkness. After the first hundred feet we were alone in the cave with no light other than our lanterns. It was an incredible experience, being along in the silence and the darkness but surrounded by the natural beauty of the cave. The cave was just large enough that our light barely made it to each wall and the ceiling, which eliminated the claustrophobia of the darkness and transformed it into mystery and discovery. Despite knowing that this was a lava tube cave, we both grew up with knowledge of limestone caves carved by water, with stalactites and other formations also caused by water, so we had some preconceptions about what a cave looked like. This cave was completely different. It was a large hollow tube, like walking inside an enormous stone pipe filled with boulders. The lava tube varied from 30 to 50 feet in diameter, so it was very spacious inside. It started just below ground level and ended 100 feet down about a quarter of a mile later. At the end we could see that the cave kept going but the owners had blocked it off because they had not finished the path. The walk back was just as fun as going down, and by then we had the cave entirely to ourselves.

After leaving the cave, we walked through the ad-hoc natural history museum the owners had built on the site. It was crammed full of three generations of the family collecting Indian artifacts, hunting trophies, fossils, and everything else you could imagine that could be classified as natural history or archeology. It was an amazing collection that contained specimens from nearly every continent, all collected by members of the family. All in all it was an amazing experience.

Eventually we left Mammoth Cave and headed up the highway a few more miles to Shoshone Ice Cave, our original destination. This was an even kitschier tourist trap, with a giant green dinosaur being ridden by a cave man and a 20 foot high Indian chief flanking the parking lot. After eating lunch at one of their outdoor picnic tables, we caught up with the tour group and headed down to the cave.

Like all caves are seemingly discovered, this one was found by a goatherd looking for a missing goat. He did not get the goat, but found a deep hole with a pillar of ice growing out of it. This was an interesting enough find that the federal government took over the land to manage. They proceeded to dynamite open the cave, which changed the airflow enough that the ice level dropped. Eventually they decided the other end of the cave also, which opened up the cave to the warm easterly winds and completely melted all of the ice in the cave. The cave then sat unused until a private citizen acquired a lease to the cave from the government, rebuilt the natural walls enclosing the cave and spent 7 years mapping the air currents and experimenting until he was able to get the ice to grow in the cave but still have enough open space for visitors to walk through the cave.

Shoshone Ice Cave is another lava tube cave. Water seeps in on end of the cave, chilled to just above freezing during its passage through the rock. When it emerges in the cave, the air current evaporates part of it, causing the remainder to drop in temperature and freeze to the rock. The ice is up to 28 feet thick in the cave. Only the top half of the lava tube is open; the rest is solid ice. The temperature in the cave is a steady 26 – 29 degrees year round. The three degree increase during the summer months is primarily due to the number of visitors and tours coming through the cave.

The cave is lit with electric lights, and the path is a series of wooden walkways suspended above the ice. The guide explains the history of the cave and points out the highlights. At one point in the cave there are the bones of a female bear and cubs. They have been carbon dated to 12,000 years old. They believe that the bear brought her cubs into the cave and then slid down the ice deep into the cave. She and her cubs were unable to get back out and died there and were frozen into the ice, perfectly preserved. Unfortunately when the cave was blasted open and the ice melted their bodies were able to decompose and now only bones remain.

After touring the cave we quickly perused the gift shop and then finally headed back to Craters of the Moon. We had originally thought that we would get there by early afternoon, but it was 4pm by the time we entered the park. As soon as we entered we found out that the Tree Molds, Inferno Cone, and Devil’s orchard were all closed due to road construction. We were hugely disappointed, since that was 2/3 of the park that we could not visit. We continued on anyway and started off at North Crater Flow Trail, which is a very short trail that introduces you to the various types of lava and volcanic activity you can observe throughout the park. It was a nice little trail, but we wanted some real hiking so we moved on to the Spatter Cones area. Here you can walk up to the cones of three small volcanoes. One of the craters, appropriately called Snow Cone, is deep enough that it has snow in it year round.

We then took the North Crater trail, which was a steep climb up to the lip of a large cinder cone complex, containing several huge craters and many smaller ones. It wasn't really Mt. Sneffels, but it was a real volcano and a very unique hike. We were finally out of the tourist areas and had the entire trail to ourselves. Walking along the lip of the volcano was incredible. There were incredible views both down into the crater and out over the park and the lava flows. We walked along the lip of two very large craters and nearby several smaller ones before dropping down into the remnants of North Crater. From there we could see back to the North Crater Flow trail, where we had started, and could pick out the pieces of the North Crater rim that had broken off and been carried away by the lava.

On the way back, the sky was clouding up and we were caught in the gust front of an approaching storm. On the narrow trail along the lip of the largest crater my Kestrel recorded sustained winds of 30mph with gusts up to almost 40, blowing across the trail. We had to slow down and fight the wind and watch our footing to stay on the trail and not get blown over the side of the volcano.

Eventually we made it down safely to the Hummer. As we were getting back into the car we remembered that we had left the windows of the camper wide open, to keep it cool inside. It was already 7pm anyway, so we hightailed it out of the park and sped back to Arco, arriving at the same time as the rain and barely getting the camper closed up in time. We decided to eat dinner in the café at the RV park again, and then headed back to the camper to relax and let Stacie study for a few hours.

More pictures…