I knew little about Lava Beds National Monument before visiting. I knew there were plenty of lava tube caves some replete with fern covered entrances and ice formations deep inside. I did not appreciate the variety of passages, their unique features, or the broader history of the area including the "Modoc War" and the "Tule Lake Relocation Center". Though our visit was less than 24 hours I felt like I saw and learned a lot with the time we had and was glad we opted to detour through here on our way back home.
From Crater Lake we drove on through Klamath Falls and then crossed back into California. We arrived at Lava Beds National Monument with just enough time to visit the visitor center before it closed and snag a campsite at the surprisingly nice Indian Well Campground. We were getting sick of camping in the wind though! I dried our neglected boat gear from the John Day and then after dinner we took the very short drive to check out a couple caves near the visitor center. We first visited Mushpot Cave, likely the first cave for most visitors; it was the only cave with a concrete path and lights strewn throughout. After that we strolled across the way to Indian Well Cave, which had a spacious boulder strewn passage and a small crawl through exit allowing us to make a loop.
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| Mushpot Cave |
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| Indian Well Cave (and below) |
The next day we started by checking out Skull Cave which had the largest passage dimensions that we would see, really quite impressive for a lava tube. A stairway at the back led to a frigid lower level where we could spot portions of the ice floor (I imagine previously a pristine blue instead of mud-covered).
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| Skull Cave (and below) |
We drove on to check out the short loop hike around Captain Jack's Stronghold which Claire needed to visit to complete her junior ranger badge. This was a particularly chaotic area of collapse pits, blisters, and expansion ridges that a group of Modoc were able to use as a natural fortress to hold off a US army garrison that numbered ten times their forces. It was also eye-opening to realize that at the time the former extent of Tule Lake extended right up to the base of this flow.
We drove around the Cave Loop Road, David and I having a quick look at Sunshine Cave. We all hoped to walk through Sentinel Cave being the longest comfortable throughtrip, but it was annoyingly closed due to maintenance. We rounded out our cave tour with a jaunt into Catacombs Cave, easily the longest mapped tube system with over a mile of anastomosing passages. This cave most impressed me for the great features including lava stalactites, drippy walls, rafted blocks, multi-level tubes, golden bacteria dew drops, and great floor flow textures. We went a little less than halfway into the cave (where we would have needed to belly crawl) and then looped back to the entrance by another route. I certainly would have been happy to see more caves but this brought us to a little after noon and seemed like a good opportunity to make progress on our drive.
Weighing our options (and noticing the near freezing temperatures expected near Bridgeport), we rallied to drive on all the way to Horton Creek Campground west of Bishop which would place us in easy driving distance the following day. Particular highlights on this drive was seeing the roadside West Walker River run at "above recommended" flows (essentially a 10 mile long non-stop Class III+ rapid) and some great lenticular clouds at sunset over Mono Lake. Another final windy night camping, a stop at Schat's Bakery in Bishop, and then the home stretch drive across the Mojave. All were happy to make it home and be out of the car. Heather and I both wished Mt Lassen snow would have cooperated to allow a visit but otherwise I thought we did well with the stops we managed on our drive back.
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