An unexpected byproduct of caving in Belize was meeting other southern California cavers that had an interest in exploring and mapping mud caves including the less known area of the Carrizo Badlands north of Domelands close to the CA/Mexico border. Carol rallied the troops to get us to commit to a weekend before things got too hot out in the low desert. The two of us carpooled out to Arroyo Tapiado to tackle a few small outstanding projects Carol had, admiring the surprisingly low snow levels on the flank of Palomar Mountain and the grand wildflower displays throughout the drive including purple carpets of Desert Sand Verbana in Anza Borrego. We drove up the wash network to Arroyo Tapiado, which was rather busy with 4WD vehicles and mud cave explorers. We stopped in the shade beneath a wash wall and came up with a plan. First we located and poked into Dipslope Cave, a future survey target. Then we located and GPS'd the wash level entrance to Booby Trap Cave (it looked tight!). After this we packed our daypacks to hike up a very steep chute to the wash's rim for our more lengthy goals. We scouted around some of the blind valleys west of Concretion Canyon, poking in several holes and daring not to enter some of the exposed 20ft+ deep pit entrances. We climbed down a dusty entrance to a point that Carol could confirm was Lost Cave and then GPS'd the entrance so that it remains found!
We then hiked over to the upper entrance to Hidden Cave and had a quick snack in the modest but cool entrance chamber there while we discussed the geology before tackling our survey lead. Down the passage we went until reaching the rope drop in the cave. From here we surveyed tie-in shots back upstream to the small tributary passage that entered on the true right. This is a passage that Carol had traversed to an entrance decades previously and wanted to tie off with a survey. Thankfully we left our bags at the entrance but boy did we suffer in this rediculously narrow serpentine passage. It was so sinuous and tight that we had several survey shots averaging 2 ft as we went around the bends and overall we surveyed about 150ft having only traveled 50ft in a straight line! My helmet barely fit through the tight passage and every movement kicked up a cloud of dust and contributed to our head to toe coating. It was certainly some of the most unpleasant and challenging surveying I have done before. Probably less than half of the way down this passage we hit a more recently active mudflow area filling the passage such that it was too tight to continue. It was a bummer to not emerge at an entrance and to have to backtrack down the passage but our survey ended up bring the total cave length to 1443ft, making it the longest surveyed cave in Arroyo Tapiado, if not longest mud cave in California!
We rounded out the evening by eating dinner at a campsite at the Vallecito Campground. We strategically waited until 7:30p when we found our way into the warm main pool at Agua Caliente Campground nearby (after showering the dust off!). We sat in the hot pool for a solid hour which was a much deserved break after the dusty surveying we did earlier. It was windy all night but I managed to sleep well.
With a 9:00am meeting time we had a leisurely morning and drive to the Domelands turnoff. Once Fredrik and Kyle arrived we drove out to the trailhead, decided on a route, and set off hiking. Flowers continued to be numerous as we strolled down the ever shifting landscape of Andrade Canyon. The mud badland wash shifted into the craggy metamorphic canyon that gains vertical conglomerate cliffs above after a while. At the exposed 15ft downclimb we had a new surprise: a recent rockfall covered the sloping top of the climb in ball-bearing sand and gravel making the climb particularly sketchy. I acted as a meat anchor for the others and then when my time came to free climb it I got scared. I instead made a not great anchor and left the rope in place for our return. Once down the climb and a few minor downclimbs beyond we strolled on down the canyon. In its mud badland middle section we scoped out a few cave entrances and then continued on down through the shadows of the vertical-walled conglomerate corridor. Once more downclimb and hallway brought us out into the bright sun of the vast badlands proper.
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| Looking down the Andrade Canyon downclimb |
I led the way up a nearby tributary and a steep mud ridge to the fossiliferous sandstone slickrock. Here we dropped packs in the shade and scrambled up the cool narrows of Sand Dollar Slot, which was as good as I remembered it. I think everyone appreciated the detour but the day was getting on and we should probably think about trying to survey something.
After a lunch break we continued on down the wash, arriving at the dryfall created by a resistant oyster bed. I showed everyone the way we skirted it last time on the steep crumbly slopes. Immediately below was the sloping pavement of fossil shells leading into the dramatic upper entrance of Jenga Cave. We dropped packs and gave everyone a chance to walk through and explore before we broke into two survey teams. The others were thoroughly impressed and excited to survey it which I was glad for. There are almost certainly longer caves in this largely unexplored region of the badlands, but unlikely to be larger passages as this seems to be the only trunk wash that had a section that went subterranean and passage size seems to scale with catchment size.
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| Upper entrance to Jenga Cave |
I gave the cave the name Jenga Cave the previous trip after the precarious pile of boulders clogging the downstream entrance; I was happy to the pile was there precarious as ever and so the name held. After some frantic photo snapping we got to work surveying. Thankfully Carol sketched so my brain was free to ponder the geology of the caves rather than be bogged down by the mental burden of sketching. It was so rewarding to work our way through this spacious cave with 20-30ft survey shots after our 2ft shots the previous day. It turned out there were several discrete oyster bed layers visible in the cave. Generally they seemed to form the sloping roof of passages. Carol and I surveyed our way to the downstream entrance and even had time to survey an interesting higher level overflow tube that formed a loop.
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| Precarious pile at the lower entrance of Jenga Cave |
After we all wrapped up our survey we packed up and headed out the downstream entrance back into the bright badlands. On the way looping back to Andrade Canyon we stopped at several mud cave outlets. I was thrilled and surprised to see that virtually every entrance that was sloughed over with a mud crust on my last trip here 2.5 years ago had been blown out by a more recent flood event and several were now very enticing leads for a future trip. Every one had cool air emerging suggesting a connection to an upper entrance. This blowout state seemed to be a regional phenomenon, meaning the caves are currently in a great condition to explore as compared to 2 years previous. We detoured to walk/crouch through Golden Skylight Cave that I found on a previous trip. We made our way up Andrade and the dryfall climb without incident. It was fairly late by the time we arrived back at the trailhead and said our goodbyes. It was a great little hike where we managed to spend most of the day in pleasant shade. We were very productive in completing the survey of a regionally important cave (411ft surveyed length) and the area proved to be even more promising for mud cave exploration than I suspected from my previous trip. We did not see a single other person on our hike (and I found one mylar balloon). Coyote Mountains remain one of the great explorative treasures of southern California. Thanks to Carol and Fredrik for the push to further explore.
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