Exploring Pluto's Cave
Aug. 7th, 2024 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerTwo weekends ago we explored Pluto's Cave on the north flank of Mt. Shasta in California. This was part of the weekend trip spent evading smoke from a huge wildfire. ...Wait, did I say a wildfire? There was more than one! Smoke from other fires choked us out of our Sunday plans to hike in the Trinity Alps even though we were fine there just a day earlier when we hiked to East Boulder Lake. We weren't just going to go home, though, with no hiking on Sunday. We picked two shorter hikes in areas not badly impacted by smoke. The first of these was Pluto's Cave.
Pluto's Cave is lava tube. It's collapsed in several places. Some of the cave-ins form entrances you can get down into (and back up & out!) with just a bit of scrambling. The entries are about 1/2 mile across volcanic desert from a trailhead that's about 1/2 mile in from a paved road on a dirt 4x4 route. We explored 4 parts of the cave. I edited together this video of our adventure:
One small note.... In the video I mention that some of the graffiti underground is historical graffiti. Although it's more than 100 years old it's still considered graffiti, not history. Even though it's dated 1917. If it were 11 years older it'd be protected as history by the Antiquities Act of 1906.
Pluto's Cave is lava tube. It's collapsed in several places. Some of the cave-ins form entrances you can get down into (and back up & out!) with just a bit of scrambling. The entries are about 1/2 mile across volcanic desert from a trailhead that's about 1/2 mile in from a paved road on a dirt 4x4 route. We explored 4 parts of the cave. I edited together this video of our adventure:
One small note.... In the video I mention that some of the graffiti underground is historical graffiti. Although it's more than 100 years old it's still considered graffiti, not history. Even though it's dated 1917. If it were 11 years older it'd be protected as history by the Antiquities Act of 1906.
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Date: 2024-08-08 05:39 pm (UTC)Very cool! Do always love those beams of sunlight coming down or peeking out in the distance.
Re historical graffiti - last spring we went to Mammoth Caves in Kentucky, which is the longest connected cave system in the entire world at 400 miles and they're still finding more of it. We had one tour (tours only) with an area of cool rock formations, and then the main tour was the historical one. Around 1800 or so, they started mining it for guano, refining potassium nitrate for saltpeter, for gunpowder (and maybe agricultural uses too?). For decades this was a major activity, with 24/7 work, so there are enormous tunnels, minecart rails, smoke stains on the ceiling, and so on - not cool rock formations, but both cave + history for sure. There's lots of graffiti as well, which is what made me think of this. Eventually they transitioned from mining to tourism. (They used to have boat tours through the caves, but that was eventually deemed too destructive to the caves and dangerous for people.)
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/saltpetre-mining.htm
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