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.