Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Pluto’s Cave


Siskiyou County has quite a few unique volcanic formations. This time my friend Alyssa and I explored a 180,000 year old Lava tube.

We started at 11am heading towards a cave called Pluto’s Cave (not to be confused with Plato's Cave) located off of highway 97 about 12 miles outside of Weed, CA. It was a little rough getting there despite having good directions because most all of the roads are cinder, and not labeled well, also having a slick wheeled 4 cylinder Toyota Corolla does not do well off roading. Never-the-less we arrived.

The first cave smelled strongly of urine, we were hoping that the smell was due to animals rather than humans, this was confirmed when we found a healthy scattering of fresh looking bat guano over a decent portion of the rocks. Neither of us had ever seen bat guano in person before, however the fall pattern, the fact that we were in a cave, and seeing a bat were all pretty good indicators. (I also compared the image below with other images on the internet and they were the same)

Lava tubes such as this one are formed when the outer edges of the lava flow cool, crusting over yet then providing insulation to the inner lava so that it can continue to flow to the eruption, or dissipation point. Although undoubtedly discovered hundreds of years earlier, the cave is named by Nelson Cash Who in 1863 stumbled upon it while tending to his cattle. Cash fittingly named it after the Roman God of the underworld: Pluto.

The Cave continues for about a quarter mile. There are three breaks in the ceiling, two of which occurred many years ago and now provide some welcomed greenery (as seen in the first two images) in the otherwise arid climate. The other collapse is more recent and without any new growth.

 The cave was a fun outing, although not as extensive as the Lava Bed National Monument, nor as nerve racking as Hell Hole in Santa Cruz, it is still a worthy destination. It is always interesting to descend into the cool darkness of the underworld.

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