2011 Huge Cave in Maple Canyon

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Jasonbx

Another gift of nice weather in late October, and thus another quickly planned trip to get out of the house. And a chance to wear stylishly garish colors during the deer hunt. This time I was more interested in just getting out and hiking, and wasn’t even necessarily looking for a cave trip. I was searching for some hikes that have been on the back burner, and stumbled back across another Utah website. (They stole my brilliant idea to list and describe all the interesting places in Utah, but they had a headstart before I thought of it. So they can keep it.) I had browsed through their site in the past looking at their descriptions of places I had been and others I wanted to visit, and seeing their site again triggered my memory of a trip I had been meaning to make.

Maple Canyon is an interesting little spot tucked away in conglomerate rock cliffs. Southeast of Nephi, it is a relatively quick hop from the Wasatch front to spend a day or a weekend. I had heard it is renowned as a  rock climbers paradise, and after visiting it I can see why. I have done some climbing, but never seriously pursued it. Walking around in Maple Canyon I kept finding myself thinking how fun it would be to climb that spire, or that crevice, or even that big wall over there…

Hidden among the big cliffs and spires, there is a spot I have only seen referred to as Huge Cave. Rumors abound that it is a single room the size of a football field. I am well used to overly exagerated descriptions of caves, but it still seemed intriguing enough to go and see what was there.

Travel Directions: To get to Maple Canyon from the Wasatch Front, head south along I-15 until Nephi. From Nephi head east through the mountains until Fountain Green, stay on the west side of the valley and head south to Freedom. At the first road in Freedom you will head west and follow the road a short distance back northwest into the canyon itself. The pavement stops shortly inside the canyon, but it is a well maintained road up to the campground. (We encountered actual signs pointing out the turns from Fountain Green on. And a Google search of Maple Canyon Campground should get you there as well.) 

Once you reach the campground, there are some choices of where to stop. There is a couple dollar day use fee for the campground area. Signs are everywhere, but the obvious place to pay is right when you reach the campground by the first kiosks you encounter. Rock climbers can go anywhere and find something to do, there are better climbing websites to explain their climbing options. If you are headed for the cave, you want to follow the road along and go to very far end of the campground. About 100 feet before you leave the campground there is a small pullout on the left. There is a kiosk back in the trees 30′ or so that describe the hiking trail system. You are looking for the Right Fork Trail, and headed most of the way up toward the “Viewpoint” labeled on the maps.

Kiosk at the trailhead

The hike itself isn’t too long. Less than a mile one way. There are several small side trails that take off to the various climbing routes. Only one side trail stuck out as potentially big enough to be confusing, and you stay left when you hit it. The trail immediately starts to climb steeper than it has been to that point. It isn’t horrible, but I was happy to stop and catch my breath a few times.  You are headed to the “Pipedream” climbing area, we encountered a sign tied up on a tree with some rope. This is the more heavily trafficked trail, and you can’t miss the cave or the climbing routes as you get close.

Huge Cave itself is eye catching right from the start. About 20 feet up the wall, and a big black hole. We free climbed up into it with heavy hiking boots without any trouble, but both of us are well over 6 feet tall and have done a fair bit of scrambling in the past. A rope and someone confident enough to lead climb and belay would probably be a safer plan. Also be aware there are several pigeons that appear to live in the cave, that can be surprising as they fly out the entrance. There are plenty of big hand and footholds in the cobbles, but it is high enough that a slip and fall would be very bad.

The entrance of the cave has a three foot wall that you actually climb up and over, stepping down into the cave. The “entrance” is obviously an area that simply eroded open as the cliff has eroded back, happening after the main void had formed. It certainly isn’t the size of a football field, but it is impressively large none the less. 

The uphill end narrows down to a small crack. The downhill end has a large dirt pile, and had some minor water flow on the dirt that had come from the continuation of the crack system recently. The whole interior is fairly dusty, and pictures with a flash will look like a snowstorm if you have walked around much at all. It is interesting to walk around and try to hypothesize how the void formed, but there isn’t much more to look at than the big open space and ubiquitous conglomerate rocks. (There are a couple bolts we noticed inside, so somebody has done some interesting climbing.)

After the cave, we decided to continue hiking the loop over the viewpoint, and back down the Middle Fork trail. It is fairly steep heading up, and the trail was obviously less used and even partially washed out in a couple places. We decided we had to be on the right route when we found some extensive trail work creating stairs and erosion control. We followed our way up to the top, and followed the trail along the top of the cliffs. Despite the overcast and cloudy day, we still had some beautiful views looking down over Maple Canyon and out into the valley beyond.

The Middle Fork trail appeared to be more heavily used most of the way along. There was also a very impressive arch just a few hundred yards off the main trail, and one of the more impressive things to not miss if you are in the area.

On our way back out of the area, we noticed an interesting looking slot canyon. We decided it couldn’t go very far up, and decided to check it out as sunset rapidly approached. It was a very fun little spot, that was a fairly impressive slot canyon that was generally about 20 feet wide. After scrambling through some large boulder piles we found ourselves at a 30′ waterfall with a rope hanging down. We decided that was a good time to turn around in the semidarkness and cold, and found our way back out to end our day. (After doing some research later, the Box Canyon is private property that the landowners have allowed the public to continue to visit. Please be responsible and leave no trace if you visit so future access isn’t restricted.)

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2011 Last chance to get out of the house?

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Jasonbx

Late October in Utah, and the weather starts to heavily impact my inspiration to be out and about. The forecast for the weekend looked absolutely beautiful, and there was no way I could stay inside all weekend long, no matter how many projects were waiting.

I checked with a few of my regular troublemakers, and was absolutely striking out. Lee came to my rescue by being available on Saturday, and willing to just randomly wander around Logan Canyon for a while. I had a potential lead that snow had been keeping me from checking off completely in the past, so a destination was set. I shuffled my weekend projects and goals around a little, and a loosely concocted plan jumbled its way into existence.

Saturday morning was a slow start, even by my own low standards. I had been out to a show the night before with friends, and had warned Lee it would be best to make sure I was out of bed before he started driving to meet me. My eyes had been open at least two full minutes before I received a text message asking if I was up. I dragged myself into the shower, knowing I had an hour to work with.  After showering I very slowly strung together some basic hiking gear. For a trip intending to walk around and maybe take pictures, this should take 5 minutes or less. After 15-20 minutes, I decided I may not be as awake and energetic as I would like to be. Luckily Lee had his own delays getting to the house, and since we didn’t have much of an itinerary, I puttered along until I had everything loaded up and ready.

On the drive from Salt Lake up to Logan, the wonders of modern technology might have intervened to save my life. Lee had a desire to try a breakfast sandwich from a fast food chain that was being advertised. His GPS not only gave us a location along our route, but also a phone number to confirm they were still serving said sandwiches at 10:30. (Like I said, slow start.) At the time I didn’t realize those sandwiches were the most real food I was going to eat for the next eight or nine hours. We anticipated actually walking for maybe 4 hours–eventually I will learn this is never going to be true.

By noon we had stopped and borrowed some forgotten orange items from relatives, covered the drive, and located our parking spot on the side of the road. (The opening day of the deer hunt seemed like a reasonable time to at least consider safety.) Lee wasn’t impressed by the overly steep start to get up along a ridge. I reassured him Steph had done this part of the journey before, and we weren’t in a big hurry. We slowly meandered up the hill, enjoying the perfect temperatures and beautiful fall day. There were still some pockets of spectacular colorful leaves on the trees, and we contemplated some of the various types of bedrock as we sat on outcrops for photo/breathing  opportunities.

Fall colors high in Logan Canyon

About the time we reached the high point of our planned trip, we made the mistake of looking at the cliffs above us. There were wet spots on the rock, and it seemed that someone should investigate this new development. Two summers of pattern searching have instilled a bad habit in me of making sure to check things while I’m close, so I don’t have to return if it isn’t warranted. Mostly this is a bad habit because sometimes I really don’t want to climb another couple hundred feet up the hill. But of course we went ahead and climbed up to investigate.

Along the way we discovered a small spring and several seeps being forced out of the hill by a non-porous bedrock layer. There were several small solution features, but nothing big enough to consider calling it a cave. We continued to check along the cliff band until an obvious stopping spot. Along the way we spotted some very obvious holes in the cliff areas we were headed to originally. Not only were the holes exciting and inspiring, more importantly they were all downhill from our current location!

Downhill turned out to be almost as exciting as working along the cliff band. It was steep terrain covered by leaves, and occasionally damp and muddy from seeps. We were both glad for gloves and hats partially protecting us as we zigged and zagged down the hillside. Along the way we stumbled across several more solution features, and found the dark spot I had seen a year or two prior that had started this whole event. It turned out to be a large fracture system with piled boulders that created a perfect shadowed entrance to a five foot long overhang. It was dissapointing it didn’t do more, but nice to finally take it off the list of back burner items to visit someday.

Original hope, up close

Further down a gully between the cliffs was another feature I had seen in April that I wanted to check out. It had looked like a small cave entrance with dirt and vegetation that could be dug out of the way. I headed to the left side wall to hit my lead, and Lee kept working the right side. I found my feature and was momentarily ecstatic. There were deposits of spar over an inch thick visible. Further investigation proved my “dirt” was actually solid bedrock. And the spar deposits seemed to originate from a hole smaller than my fist. Wonderful feature, but definitely not a cave I would be getting into.

Spar in a feature

About this time Lee was yelling something to me about whether I wanted to check out any of the holes near him.  I hadn’t looked back his way for a few minutes while I was checking on my hole. I asked him where they were, since there wasn’t anything obvious from my spot sitting by the spar. I stood up and took a couple steps back his way to get a different view through the trees, and it became apparent which holes he was asking about.

Black and "cavey" looking

Glorious black round hole! My crashing adrenaline rush from the spar moments before went through the roof. Four to six feet wide for certain. Absolutely looks like it is going directly into the bedrock. And I need to get some of the crazy people rounded up before I come back to try and visit it. I suppose I will consider having a lead that intersting looking a good problem to have.

At this point we had to decide our exit strategy for the day. As fun as it would be to keep checking the cliffs, we were going to run out of daylight soon. Back up over the ridge would require some time to get up the hill with reasonable rest breaks. Downhill to the river would take far fewer rest breaks. But down to the river could be an issue if we were trapped between the water and the cliffs. We knew we could wade the river this time of year, but the two of us have a long history of going out of our way to keep our feet dry. It would be a shame to have to wander down the road back to the vehicle in dripping jeans!

We decided to chance going downhill, and work along by the river. As we stumbled through the scree piles below the cliff, Lee was even dissapointed we were missing sections of the cliff that could be checked with more time. He’s not even the one who necessarily cares about finding caves, he was just along for the excuse to get out for the day! He had observed during the day that looking for something greatly reduces the number of miles you have to cover to fill a day, and there was some satisfaction in knowing you had seen everything there was to see in an area before moving along. We occasionally looked back over our shoulder as we worked our way along the river, and found we definitely had another excuse to putter around some when we came back for the high lead. The twilight made it tough to tell if the hole went back very far, but it certainly looks promising for now.

The hole can’t be seen very well from the road, but I think the ledge system below it is visible. So hopefully I can check it with binoculars and see if it can be traversed. If necessary to get there from above, the rappel would be even more exciting than the round high lead we found earlier. Maybe more exciting than I want to deal with myself.

We lucked out, and could get back over some low cliffs without getting our feet wet in the river. We had just enough daylight left to drive up the canyon and try to spot everywhere we had been during the day, and then enjoy the fall leaves on the way down the canyon. I was mulling over what we could call our discovery if it panned out into a nameable cave. “Get out of the house” cave seemed too long to be functional. Lee asked if “OutHouse Cave” was an available name. I haven’t heard of another one offhand, so that may end up sticking. We’ll have to prove it is a cave worthy of such an elaborate namesake first of course… :-)

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2011 Opening up BBCC

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Jasonbx

We have some serious interest in trips to BBCC later this year. So I decided it would be good to make sure we can get through the log jam at the entrance, and other known obstacles. Lee and Jeremiah agreed to accompany me on a recon trip. We got off to a slow start, which wasn’t helped by endless roadwork on the way.  We found ourselves a camping spot in the twilight. Conveniently the nearly full moon didn’t come up over the ridge until after we had everything set up. We enjoyed a quick meal, and watched for meteors from the Perseid shower. After a couple big  fireballs we called it a night and tried to ignore the full moon. Woke up in a prettier than average campsite for somewhere we found in the dark.

We discovered that the road to drive closer to the cave had been closed and gate locked, probably for roadwork. So we had the opportunity to add a couple miles of hiking onto our trip as well.  That was irritating to discover, but better to discover on a recon trip than a full on expedition level trip.

We found the cave in short order, and introduced Lee into some of the highlights of the entrance area.

The real goal of this recon trip was to ensure we could get through the logjam high up in the cave, and to the passages that lead deeper into the cave. We found that someone had been working on the logjam with a saw, and keeping in mind that everything is relative, we made our way through fairly easily.

We played around in the cave for a while. We discovered that one of the main passages was blocked, and had to find ourselves a bypass. Luckily we were able to find an alternate route to continue on, that didn’t even require us to crawl down the 3′ high passage with 6 inches of water. Unfortunately it required more crawling than I had originally planned for. And in the process we ran into a couple locals that had come today to clear out a lower blocked passage for their own later trips. We helped move a few logs around, and zipped to the end of the “easy” part of the cave to make sure we could get that far on a later trip.

 

A good time was had by all, and we can now come back later in the fall. Preferably after we figure out the road access better, because a longer day in the cave is not going to be compatible with having to hike a couple miles out afterward…especially if my boots are wet. :-)

 

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2011 Jewel Cave, South Dakota

Posted on May 14, 2011 by Jasonbx

This was part of a larger driving vacation well outside of Utah, but the second longest known cave in the world is not to be passed up when it is conveniently along your route. Over 150 miles of documented passage have been mapped in Jewel Cave as of the time of this post. The fine folks mapping out the cave are still adding miles per year, and are primarily limited now simply because of the lack of easy access points to the far reaches of the cave. Mapping and exploration trips now often require several days of camping in the cave, simply because it takes most of a day to get out to the known edges to explore. (A great caving description of Jewel Cave from a few years ago by someone who is now a Utah based caver.)

Another fun fact is that this cave has been outfitted with the tallest elevator in South Dakota at 234 feet, which beats my normal access route into caves.  The ½ mile loop that we toured is hard to even find in the sprawling maps you look at on the wall in the visitor center. There is only one known natural entrance, and now an elevator entrance about a mile away. It is incredible to think that something this large has only been proven to connect to the surface in one place.

Having experienced the convenience, I now believe most caves should be outfitted with elevators, and aluminum walkways before I visit. It would greatly stimulate the economy with job creation, and make travel through the caves much easier and safer. I am fairly certain if more Utah caves had elevators and walkways, our local caves would become considerably larger as well.

Overall the tour was great. We had signed up for the “scenic tour” and lucked out by being before the main tourist season. Even on a Saturday only really had about 15 people in the whole tour group.  So we had a little time to look around and ask questions between major stopping points.  I resisted the urge to go look around corners, knowing that I could spend days wandering around and never see it all.

The items I found fascinating as a caver used to wild caves:

  1. The elevator — After spending many hours of my life climbing thousands of feet to get to cave entrances, I have long argued caves should come with a parking lot and elevator. The fact that they had decided to install these 30-40 years ago is incredible. Most of us that ridgewalk can only dream of finding a cave worthy of tours, let alone elevators.
  2. Aluminum walkways — The sheer amount of aluminum used to make the walkways, stairs, and railings along the tour route was breathtaking in places. When you start out in the target room, you are standing on a massive platform that will easily hold entire tour groups. Comparable to a good sized set of aluminum bleachers in area. As you look over the railings while listening to the initial spiel, you realize there are small stairways and pathways down in the darkness below you. And you proceed to take a tour along aluminum walkways and stairs that even left my wife commenting on how much time and effort it would have taken to build. Then you factor in the concrete…
  3. Formations — The walls are absolutely coated in spar. As you are walking, you eventually notice that the small broken chunks of rock they lined the concrete path with are actually chunks of spar encrusted bedrock. There isn’t anywhere I remember on the tour that you aren’t able to stop and look around and see some sort of formation.  Beautiful soda straws, stalactites and stalagmites are the other things you will see. Some boxwork can be seen on the tour, as well as some small rimstone dams, and even flowstone draperies.

Overall the cave is well worth visiting if you are in the area. Anyone with even a remote interest in caves would enjoy themselves. It is a spacious tour, with only a handful of places you need to duck and watch your head. Most of the time you are on pathways in large rooms and passageways. I hope to come back and spend some time on wild tours or other projects in the future. At the very least plan to bring your own little light with you and you will see many more of the hidden corners and details. And recognize how big the rooms are, most cameras don’t have enough of a flash to light up a room.


 
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2011 Easter Hike

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Jasonbx

Easter was being hosted near Logan this year. I have a dozen cave related things up there I have been meaning to do for quite a while now, and it seemed like I should check something off the list finally. Most of the items I have in wait are not compatible with anytime earlier than about July, but I thought of one that might work.

A couple years ago on my way home from another trip, I had stopped and wandered off the road a ways looking at cliffs and canyons for future trips. In the deep shade of some trees there was a darker patch than even the regular shadows. With a 10x zoom it was still just a darker spot. But the nearby cliffs had “cavey” looking signs on them. So I made a mental note that it should be checked out on a later day. Easter was now looking like my potential day!

The approach to my target was up a south facing slope and along a ridgeline for a ways to bypass the worst of the cliffs. It is still early enough in the season that there is plenty of snow on the north slopes, but the southern exposures seemed likely to be clear. I convinced Steph that she was interested in getting out in the sun for a few hours, and we headed out on the condition that we be back for dinner with everyone on time.

Once up the canyon I explained our goal to Steph in highly technical terms, from the best vantage point we could find along the roads. “We’re going to start walking from wherever we can park along the road back down there, and end up somewhere over there, by the cliffs and trees.”  Steph chose to roll with the vague description and wild pointing in the interest of simplicity. For those who haven’t been in Logan Canyon, I could have randomly spun in a circle and pointed, and hit something that could be described as “cliffs and trees” almost anywhere the length of the canyon.

We started out from the car with a lung numbing ascent up a steep hillside. For some reason most of my trips start out this way. I would take advantage of frequent “photo breaks” to try and pick out interesting items in the cliffs across the canyon with my camera fully zoomed. After we had successfully survived the trip and were driving home later, Steph pointed out that starting hikes like that has made her realize how close the words hill and hell really are to each other. Luckily I was able to bait her along by pointing out that once we hit the ridgeline it was relatively level the rest of the way. She doesn’t really believe comments like that anymore, but she humors me by continuing to grind up the hill anyway.

We did eventually reach the ridgeline, after a few more Gatorade stops. And were even rewarded with some spectacular views off the cliffs as we worked our way around. Unfortunately, there was considerable snow still drifted on the northern slopes around us. My potential lead was down in a steep ravine on a north slope, so I was fairly certain we weren’t going to get in it. But with all the hard work of the climb behind us, it seemed worthwhile to walk over and at least see if we could check off whether we would ever need to return up that hill again.

We started working our way along the “level” ridgeline toward the ravine in question. I use the term level loosely. Overall we were going to end up at the same elevation, but there were several short climbs and descents as we tried to pick our way around occasional snow fields. Eventually we hit a snowfield that was conveniently on a flat section, but 100′ across with no bypass. It looked mostly melted and shallow, and wouldn’t be a showstopper. But we knew it wouldn’t take much more than that to end our journey. We headed across the snow, and found it was crusty under the top half inch of slush. Unfortunately just crusty enough that you would walk a few steps, get confident, and the next step plunge through ankle or calf deep. Luckily it was a short patch, and we could see the clear ground ahead of us again.

On our clear patch it was smooth sailing until we were within a few hundred feet of the edge of our target ravine. Suddenly we were confronted with a new snow patch caused by drifting in a depression area and some trees. This was no longer ankle deep, it was knee deep and occasionally more. Steph surprised me by being the one to point out our socks were already cold and wet from the last stretch, and we were so close it wouldn’t make sense to back out now. (I had already spent considerable time muttering to myself about the extra 30 seconds it would have taken to grab the gators from the house and carry them along, as I should this early in the season.) Since Steph was game, we postholed our way across to where we could see down into the ravine. This was deeper snow, and Steph found herself knee deep and beyond a few times. Its hard to convince your wife that you care deeply about her cold pants and wet feet when you can’t wipe the grin off your face as she staggers in front of you.  Video evidence of snow on the hike was her suggestion, and she even edited it into a short clip for your viewing pleasure. It was a great view back down toward the canyon across the cliffs, and we took a break along with some pictures.

The moment of truth had arrived! We wandered around a bit on the short cliff above the ravine, and determined there was no way we could get into it. Drifts as much as 6-10 feet high on the edges, and not enough manuvering room to see the exact spot I wanted. So no definite confirm or deny on the trip. However, from our different vantage point on the edge of the ravine, we could see the far side of the ravine that was hidden from further away. There was one very obvious suspect hole at the base of cliff. Only 5 or 6 feet high, with a lot of rocks and dirt in the entrance, but it looked very likely that it went at least a short distance. Above it in the cliff was another hole that looked very suspect, but not quite enough room to get out and see it without an ability to hover.

We called it a day at that point, and had a relatively uneventful journey back down the mountainside. Steph would have to occasionally ask me why I was wandering the wrong way, and I would point the small rock outcrop that should be checked out since we were there, had time, and weren’t certain when we would be back. As I put it, “Because I’m defective like that.” We found a few treasures of interest, including what appeared to be an old deer skull.

To sum up our findings: The cliff bottom hole looks interesting enough on its own to come back at a later date and poke around a little. The ravine would be trivially easy to enter from above without the snow, and a few hours with a couple people would check off most of the area around it to determine if I had really seen a larger entrance. We could hear flowing water below us somewhere in the ravine, but it wasn’t clear if it was simply runoff splashing off a cliff or something more. It isn’t the highest priority on my follow-up list, but certainly worth climbing that hill at least once more on a cool autumn day. I again encounter the active explorer’s curse: so many projects, so little time.

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