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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jan 3, 2010 - 12:43pm PT
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Lava tubes are long cave-like channels or conduits where relatively low viscosity "pahoehoe" lava flows and forms a crust that insulates subsequent flows. I visited Ape Cave this past summer and took the following photos. Ape cave is located in Gifford Pinchot National Forest on the south flank of Mount St. Helens in Washington. At ~13,000 feet in length, it's the longest continuous lava tube in the continental US.
Lava tubes are a like being in a sensory deprivation chamber.
Not for the claustrophobic...
One of the cool things about Ape Cave is that it has numerous debris piles on the way that you need to negotiate...including a couple of easy boulder problems.
Make sure you bring a headlamp with extra batteries.
Check out this rock sample...any thoughts on it's origin? The rocks is a little over 1 meter long.
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Rock!...oopsie.
Trad climber
the pitch above you
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Tons in Oregon. Outside Bend they were having problems with folks bouldering in them, since chalk is there to stay in a dry cave environment.
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Willoughby
Social climber
Truckee, CA
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A bunch up around Shasta, too, to the north. Kinda tricky to find sometimes - small openings appearing out of nowhere in an otherwise flat landscape. Underground bouldering definitely has some novelty.
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Phil_B
Social climber
Hercules, CA
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Went to the Big Island of Hawaii in July. Did one cool hike through a tube where you had to walk through some brush and then drop through a hole in the ground. Not well marked at all.
Tried a little bouldering in there, but the rock was really brittle. Had too many handholds break off to feel comfortable pulling on anything.
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Minerals
Social climber
The Deli
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Neat stuff, Tradster! I have been in a lava tube just outside of Flagstaff, near the San Francisco Peaks. Yeah, claustrophobic, if you try to wiggle through the last tight section at the end of the tube… don’t get stuck!
The texture/pattern in your last photo is interesting – looks like the surface of a flow that was exposed to air, but I would have to give it some more thought. That stuff cools way too quickly for me to relate to! :)
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nita
Social climber
chica from chico, I don't claim to be a daisy
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A fun park to visit- especially with kids *Lava Beds National Monument. Fun place, and nice campground too.
http://www.nps.gov/labe/index.htm
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Eric Beck
Sport climber
Bishop, California
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A long time ago, was in one of the abovementioned tubes north of Mt Shasta. The ceiling very gradually lowered and became too claustrophobic. My specific recollection was that it would have been good to have a hard hat. The opportunities for gashing one's head on the jagged ceiling were many.
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mrtropy
Trad climber
Nor Cal
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Nita we took our young kids there planning to spend one night ended up staying three. The kids loved them and we had a great campsite. Caught the last bit of wildflowers. Great spot for families.
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Fletcher
Trad climber
The beckoning silence
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I visited quite a few (very easy access, even for tube nooks like me!) at Lava Beds National Park. A very fun outing!
Eric
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 3, 2010 - 01:51pm PT
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Yes a helmet is a good idea. I have to get up to Lava Beds National Park.
Phil_B: cool photos...is that ice? The ganglia-like features are interesting...sort of like stalactites.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Yeah TT I have been in those very tubes. A surreal experience to be sure. That formation you asked about looks like a magmagasm.
Funny story Naitch.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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There is a famous lava tube near the tropical eastern edge of the Kilauea crater and caldera, called Thurston Lava Tube. As it is huge, it is set up for tourists and is worth visiting. Lorrin Thurston discovered it in 1913; he was a local publisher of a newspaper. Originally the tube had tons of stalactites but most of these were soon gone, taken by tourists. The Tube is several hundred years old.
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bajaandy
climber
Escondido, CA
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Been to the lava tubes south of Bend in the Deschutes wilderness. This was years ago, but there was one called Arnold Ice Cave... the thing had filled up with a sort of underground glacier. Used to be a tourist attraction. Had a stairway built to go down into it. Problem was that the ice continued to build until it was over the top of the handrail. We tied a rope off to the top of the stair and rappelled down into the cave and then climbed the (very low angle) ice back out again. Hiked around in a couple of other lava tubes in the area. I agree with the OP that those tubes are kinda like a sensory deprivation chamber. Weird to go in in broad daylight and be plunged into complete blackness. Thanks for the post and bringing back memories of good times.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nice shots Peter. Been in Thurston a few times and it's worth experiencing.
There's a special vibe (or lack of vibe) when you are deep in the earth.
Peace
Karl
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scottpedition
climber
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Took the kids and their cousins in a lava tube outside Flagstaff a few years back. Perhaps the same one Minerals mentioned. It's about 3/4 mile long. For some reason, I thought it was open on both ends and didn't realize until the end that we needed to turn around and hoof it back out through the tube. Great time. The kids were absolute troopers.
We also did the classic "turn out all the lights half a mile underground". Turns out one of the kids had a glow in the dark flashlight!
Scott
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Minerals
Social climber
The Deli
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Yup, that’s the one, Scott! Thanks for posting the photo of the USFS plaque!
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Seamstress
Trad climber
Yacolt, WA
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The formation is interesting. The lava flows downhill, and the exterior cools faster than the interior. So the middle keeps flowing after the outer layer cools down too much. At Ape Cave, repeated lava flows went down the same path leaving a tube in a tube. Many of the breakdown sections occur when the ceiling of on the the tubes caves in. At St. Helens, there are hundreds of caves, but just one "sacrificial" cave on the map for tourists to romp in. Area spelunkers are very protective of the caves and don't share info. Some caves are gated to keep tourists out.
The Ape Cave continues well beyond the end of the oft visited tourist attraction. It is suspected to go down to the dam on the North Fork of the Lewis River. Seepage through the cave caused a catastrophic failure of a dam a few years ago which released 800 million gallons of water on a Sunday morning. Fortunately no one was in the path. The road was repaired very quickly, before the fall hunting season showing what kind of pull the hunters have!!
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 3, 2010 - 07:06pm PT
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Awesome photos everyone.
Thanks for that hilarious story Naitch...typical of a Geo professor's field trip prank.
Thanks Seamstress for that info. I was surprised they allow just about anyone in Ape Cave to explore around. If, for any reason, you ended up without a light source down there, you'd be screwed. It would be challenging to "feel" your way out of that thing.
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Greg Barnes
climber
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Yeehaw! Lava tubes!
We used to go into the Bend ones as kids - loads of caves around there, many not on any maps (even the USGS or USFS fire ones). Some of those were sketchy loose (think giant talus blocks, but underground with no weathering, so they were very loose with tippy large blocks). Now most are locked off, or at least the nearby roads are closed. Been to Lava Beds a few times too, but those caves are small compared to the big ones near Bend.
And a few years ago I found some small ones near Bishop (also not on maps), some with tiny entrances (not the ones on the cone on the west side of the road near Big Pine).
Also climbed a tiny bit on the 'easiest' routes in the Hidden Forest cave near Bend before it was closed down - we got to watch a couple of the hard-core nearly redpoint a 80-foot-long horizontal roof one time (Franklin, Cronin).
I guess it's kind of good that some of those caves are closed off - one time as teenagers we stumbled into a chamber that was full of breeding clusters with baby bats (I'm sure there is a better term - any bat biologists out there?), and hordes of adults flying circles around us. That was not so cool for the bats, I'm sure, even though we left pretty quickly.
Also ran into some baby snakes in a shallow cave near Bend once, while crawling on sand on our stomachs. Not so cool at the time, but if we had a video of us low-tailing it out of the cave, backing up and spraying sand in our mouths, it would be pretty fun to watch right now!
Another time searching for caves near Bend, we walked right up to a porcupine from behind, despite the dry pine needles and branches cracking away as we "snuck" up on it. Those are pretty darn dumb animals, but I guess a good defense is all they needed in the past.
And on that same trip, we scrambled down a 40' jumble/hole into a small tube that was chock full of deer bones. When I saw the first bones, I was in front and there was no easy way to turn around. Thankfully the mountain lion wasn't home!
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