Lava Beds

We're well into September already, but for me, it still feels like Summer. The sky is a vivid blue, with a forecast high of 75 degrees today. I should be back working nights this week, but I ended up taking the week off due to a couple of musical events I wanted to attend. I really only required the first two nights of the week off, but by taking the whole week off (with pay), I enabled one of my coworkers to get some extra work.

The trip up to Lava Beds National Monument went off without a hitch. The Lava Beds lie in the seldom-visited northeastern corner of the state, right on the border with Oregon. It's high desert and chaparral up there, and the parched desolation speaks to me in some deep way. I'm not a fan of heat, but I've always enjoyed desolate landscapes, and Lava Beds allows me to spend time in the desolation and escape the heat by spelunking through ancient lava tube caves. Truly the best of both worlds. I even got slapped in the face by a Townsend's Big Eared Bat, which was kind of exciting. This happened somewhere inside Juniper Cave, after we'd left the ranger-led tour through Hercules Leg cave. Inside Hercules Leg, the ranger pointed out a Pack Rat midden made entirely out of rat droppings. A veritable mansion of crap.

My companions for this particular trip were my friend/coworker Jellyfish and his girlfriend, Lucia. We camped next to the campsite from my last visit in 2011 with Jeanine, Willow, and Eva. As always, given the distance and isolation of the spot, the Milky Way was smeared across the night sky, and I even finally saw the Andromeda galaxy - a faint smudge best seen out of the corner of the eye. We saw more bats than I remember from last time, plus a Jackrabbit who was fearless enough to wander right into the campsite. There were more Ravens than I remember too, and their local dialect resembled yelling children. There were no unusual animal sightings though - no antelope, Solpugids, or Kangaroo Rats like last time. We did explore a few caves I hadn't visited before though, and we climbed to the top of Schonchin Butte, something that the girls would have balked at last time, if we'd even bothered to suggest it. We hung out on the deck of the fire lookout building for awhile. The view was spectacular, and would have been even more so if it weren't for the haze.

The sky was hazy with the smoke of fires burning elsewhere in the state, making the sunsets fun. Temperatures were mostly in the eighties, although it seemed much hotter when we journeyed out to Petroglyph Point.

Learning from my last visit, I made sure I brought a camp stove this time, so we could have warm meals and I could have coffee. It made a big difference.

Near the end of our time there, we went on an evening walk and discovered some "undeveloped" caves. The main caves at the park have their entrances blasted open and have either ladders or stone steps for easy access. There are a great number of other caves out in the back country though, and on our short walk, we managed to find four or five of them. It was growing dark though, so we left them for another time.

Still on my to-do list is to make it to the back of Catacombs cave, which apparently involves spending around four hours underground. We didn't have the time or gear to make a go of it this time out.

Despite having been back for a couple of weeks, I haven't yet finished uploading all of the photos I took. I blame our inexplicably slow internet at home. Jellyfish, who dragged a tripod through all of the caves, will eventually getting around to posting his photos too. I look forward to seeing them, because I'm sure they'll be much better than mine.