First Caving with Kids Adventure

Thanks to some great friends, caving is finally a family activity. With the encouragement of my good friend @DesertSurvivor I was ready to take my kids caving. Our group included 3 families and six children, ages 2 through 8. We met up in Baker Nevada and caravaned in our trucks toward toward the cave. The cave was located a short hike from a partially washed out road on BLM lands. The area was recently burned by a wildfire and much of the soil was no longer protected from eroision.

Our group, adults and kids

 The cave is low in elevation and not far above stream level. The entrance is a short drop onto some boulders that is difficult to manage with shorter arm and legs. We ended up just lowing the kids down with one dad at top and one at the bottom.

Once inside it was time to keep up with everybody's gear.

 This was a slow moving trip as the kids needed help naviagting the uneven terrain. We decided to move to a low mazw area and have the kids crawl around and explore on their own.

Kids exiting the maze area.

 We continued deeper into the cave to a lower passage that terminated at a small pool. With harnesses made out of webbing, the older children climbed to an upper passage and explored while the little ones carefully ate snacks.

The all exited with big smiles.

 We climbed back out of the cave and were ready to hike back to the cars for lunch.

View of the landscape 1 year after the wildfire.

Still Time for duck, duck, goose.

Caving with kids is a great time and the experience opens up their world to a different type of exploration . Our caving groups is a mixture of scientists (geologist, ecologist, wildlife biologist, and archaeologist) each adding a different perspective during our trips. 

Kids Caving Gear:

-Bike helmet

-headlamp (use duct tape to attach)

-gloves

-tough pants

-long sleeve top or jacket

Daytime Preschool Gymnastics Wednesday 1:00 pm-2:00 pm

Where: 606 29th st, Spearfish, SD

When: Wednesday @ 1:00 pm-2:00 pm

Cost: $5 per kid

I am on a mission, with another mom, to find daytime activities for our preschool children. Our latest find is Open Gym at Spearfish Gymnastics Academy. This open gym is for just preschool and younger children, perfect for at home parents. There are multiple trampolines,  a tumble track, parallel bars and a toddler area.

Rope Climbing

Rings

Balance beam and foam pits

Arduous Hiking to Explore the Underground

This is a Nevada cave that I managed to miss almost every offered trip. Secretly I was dreading the hike to its entrance. Finally in April 2015,I joined a trip of BLM wilderness managers on one of their annual trips. The hike is less than 2 miles but the elevation gain is over 1000 ft, that is very steep. The cave also has a drop at the entrance that requires rapelling gear and ascending gear, adding extra weight to our packs. We arrived the night before and camped at the trailhead. Please excuse the quality of my photos, I am just begining to learn cave photography. On this trip I brought an old iphone 4 as a camera and it did not do well in low light situations but it was lightweight.

We woke early the next morning to begin our hike.

We stopped at the top for an early lunch before moving downhill toward the cave.

We found some great sponge fossils in the Devonian limestone,

More sponge fossils and some bivalves.

 We set up our rope and anchor and took turns rapelling into the large opening.

Once everyone was inside we ventured down a mountain of talus and breakdown that terminated into a wall will a tall passage that went straight up to some cupolas.

We fould v-shaped crtystalline layers of calcite in the cave wall.

We climbed back up the talus into the entrance room.

We followed this room to a constricted area that opened up into more rooms and passages. We encountered some weathered mammalaries.

The next room had abundant corralloind.

The cave became wetter as we moved further in and we found some pools with shelfstone deposits and subaqueous corralloids.

There are many columns, stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, and flowstone in tis room.

The next room was much drier and had small cupolas covering the ceiling.

A smaller passage lead to some colorful boxwork and gypsum crusts.

Time was running out and we crawled back to the entrance room and ascended out of the cave. We found more fossils, maybe stromataporoid.

Then we slowly hiked back to the trucks ready to travel home.

Small Caves Full of Wonder

Small Caves Full of Wonder

Being new to Wyoming caving limits the number the number of trip invites I receive. I am still working on contacts and building relationships with those who have been caving here for years. I was very excited to get my first invite on a trip with the Forest Service. The purpose of our trip,lead by wildlife biologists, was to look for bats and just check these caves out.  

The entrance to the first cave required a squeeze on your belly through a dusty passage and a sharp turn.

We found what we were looking for, a couple of Townsend's Big-eared bats plus a few more.

There was this dogtooth calcite spar in a few locations that had a dark stain (maybe iron oxides).

This cave included a small room and some very low and small side chambers. We encountered a curious packrat who hid when it was time for his picture. We left the bats and squeezed back out into the sunlight.

The next cave was a little larger and was completely covered in calcite crystals. Here is a closeup  of some near the entrance.

Here is the entrance which was also covered in crystals with some of the thickness exposed.

Though it is not needed, there is an old ladder to aid visitors with this short entrance drop to a slope.

Here is a view from the lower level where you can see light from the entrance.

We found this cricket and some flies but no bats. We did notice some moth and butterfly wings, evidence of bats, in the lower level.

This is a closeup of some boxwork we encountered where some of the bedrock has weathered away to leave the more resistant veins.

 

 This is just a nice view of some really large crystals around 2 inches long.

 Some of the crystals had subaerial coralloids covering them.

We also found a great number of old bones on both levels but were not able to identify them without someone versed in vertebrate paleontology.

The lower passage had low ceilings and a floor covered in debris, packrat feces, broken crystals and some breakdown.

Upon exiting this cave we noticed a small passage above the entrance and decided to explore it. Many of the crystals were dusted with algae and a gray mineral possibly a manganese oxide.

Algae covered crystals in the upper passage make a colorful spot.

Bighorn Mountains, Medicine Wheel and Connors Battlefield

The Bighorn Mountains lie centered in the northern part of Wyoming and include public lands managed by the Bighorn National Forest. The goal of our trip was to camp and to visit Medicine Wheel, a National Historical Landmark.

We choose Connors Battlefield State Historic Site as our campsite because of its location, on the east side of the Bighorns, and its lower elevation. This campsite is located in the town of Ranchester just a few blocks off of Hwy 14. The historic site has 20 campsites at $6 a night that are either adjacent to the Tongue River or under large cottonwoods. 

Connors Battlefield campsite with fire pit and picnic table.

Tongue River adjacent to campsite

The campground also includes a bouldering buffalo with climbing holds for kids located in the playground

Medicine wheel is a 55 mile drive from our campsite so we included a scenic stop at Prune Creek Campground on National Forest Lands. The campground is around 35 miles west of Ranchester and is actually located on the South Tongue River, tucked under ponderosa pines.

Tongue River view from campsites at Prune Creek Campground

Throwing rocks is a great way to entertain ourselves.

Wyoming State Preservation office describes the Medicine Wheel as "The 75-foot diameter Medicine Wheel is a roughly circular alignment of rocks and associated cairns enclosing 28 radial rows of rock extending out from a central cairn. This feature is part of a much larger complex of interrelated archeological sites and traditional use areas that express 7000 years of Native American adaptation to and use of the alpine landscape that surrounds Medicine Mountain. Numerous contemporary American Indian traditional use areas and features, including ceremonial staging areas, medicinal and ceremonial plant gathering areas, sweat lodge sites, altars, offering locales and fasting (vision quest) enclosures, can be found nearby. Ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and archeological evidence demonstrates that the Medicine Wheel and the surrounding landscape constitute one of the most important and well preserved ancient Native American sacred site complexes in North America. The Bighorn Medicine Wheel is considered the type site for medicine wheels in North America. Between 70 and 150 wheels have been identified in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan."

From Hwy 14 turn right onto Forest Road 12 and follow until you reach a parking area. There is a vault toilet and often an interpreter located at the trail head. From here you hike along a road to the Medicine Wheel for 1.2 miles. This was a nice, easy hike for kids and adults but the elevation is above 9,000 ft so lack of oxygen or frigid temperatures might slow you down. 

 

Hiking along the road toward the Medicine Wheel. The wind was really cold and we took turns walking backwards.

Here we are walking the path around the wheel. People come and leave offerings tied or tucked into the fence.

3/4 the way there with a view looking back at the road/trail.The observatory is also in the background. I am just taking a little yoga break.