It was over ten years since I last visited Millerton Cave so I was excited to take some friends there. My last visit even pre-dates this blog! This is easily one of California's best caves and to my knowledge one of the best talus caves in the world. It also contains hands down the best water-sculpted bedrock features I have seen anywhere. It is a really special place.
We all got an early start to attend Jameson's 6 am hot yoga class. What an experience! I can't remember the last time I sweated so much. At least it made the smoothie I got after that much better. The drive was straightforward enough. The parking area had changed a little but I managed to navigate the trails to the cave's catchment easily enough despite ten years for memories to fade. I was thankful there was less posion oak around than I remembered. We had limited time so after a quick poke into the lowest cave entrance we boulder hopped our way up to the Pit Entrance into the middle section of the cave. This I found easily enough and rigged for us to all go down.
Once into the stream I quickly remembered how sporty this cave was and got excited. Lots of deep potholes to try to climb around or swim through. The obstacles were so dense that it could take hours to go hundreds of feet. In fact in the two hours we explored the cave we only saw 400ft of passage, a small portion of the larger cave system!
Everyone appreciated that the water in the cave was considerably warmer than the previous day's canyon, which allowed us to explore in comfort. We saw all sorts of creatures that probably preferred not to be in the cave (snake, alligator lizard) and a few that seemed to be at home (frogs, fish).We worked our way up the pothole canyon, past a few obstacles aided by fixed handlines, continuing to where the passage dissolved into a breakdown maze.
We then returned the way we came, past the Pit Entrance, and continued downstream to where a circuitous climbing route doubled over on itself twice to allow us to gain a crawl out entrance. Thankfully the route was less exposed and scary than the one I recall doing previously.
Unfortunately due to time constraints that is about all we had time to check out (a few hundred feet of the multi-thousand foot cave system) but it whetted my appetite for a much longer visit sometime soon. Thanks to Jameson for the yoga class and everyone for a fun little trip.
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