Lava Beds National Monument: Fun with Volcanoes Continued!

Travel dates: June 29-30, 2017

Not many people make it to the remote northeastern corner of California to see Lava Beds National Monument, but the ones who do are rewarded with low crowds and a bunch of really cool caves to explore. And maybe with one of their favorite photos from their whole summer trip:

That photo is actually Abe being a little freaked by the cave. His brothers and cousins were going farther into it, but he wanted to turn back, so I grabbed that picture right before he headed back up the ladder and out.

The main attractions at Lava Beds is a huge assortment of lava tube caves: caves left behind when lava flow from area volcanoes cooled and left cavities. There are dozens of them in the park, and you’re free to explore any of them on your own. They range from easy strolls through developed, lighted caves to the crawling on your belly, easy to get lost in variety. We had one afternoon here and, while I’m sure the kids wouldn’t have minded another day of caving, we had time to sample a pretty decent variety of caves.

First stop is the visitor center, where you can talk to the rangers and make a plan, and check out flashlights if you need them (free of charge; they just hold on to your license until you bring them back). They sell bump hats, too, but we did without these since we weren’t doing any particularly harrowing caves. They’ll also want to do know if you–or, more precisely, any of your stuff–has been in another cave. This is because of White Nose Syndrome, a fungus that kills bats and can be spread on clothes and other gear. If you have visited other caves (we’ve visited lots); they’ll decontaminate anything you have with you or on you that might have been in the caves with you. This is not a big deal at all; we had to walk on some decontaminate soaked padding stuff, and they wiped down my camera.

Our first stop was Mushpot Cave, a short cave right by the visitor center that is, I believe, the only one with lighting. It’s an easy one for small kids and will give you a good taste of what the lava tubes are like.

A lot of the caves are along the cave loop road; our strategy was pretty much just driving this road and stopping at places that sounded interesting and not too terrifying. Golden Dome was our first cave after Mushpot, and it turned out to be probably the most challenging one we tried.

First you have to get down into the cave via a ladder, being careful to avoid “headache rock” as you go through the narrow opening. There’s not much in the way of tight squeezes in Golden Dome, but there some twists and turns where you have to be careful not to get lost, and, of course, it’s completely dark aside from whatever light source you’ve brought down. Golden Dome was a great introduction to the sharp contrast between Lava Beds and most of the NPS cave sites we’ve visited. In other caves, there might be a spooky moment on your guided tour through the lighted cave where the ranger turns off all the lights to let you feel what the cave was like back in its undeveloped days. At Lava Beds, almost all the caves are still undeveloped and you’re always just a push of a flashlight button (or a dead battery) away from that complete darkness. The remote location means there aren’t many visitors, as well, so you often have a cave completely to yourself.

This was the cave that made Abe nervous, so he and I turned back pretty early while the rest of the group explored.

After Golden Dome we checked out Skull Cave. Given that Lava Beds is a big collection of caves formed by lava flow, it’s surprising how much variety there is. Golden Dome is narrow and labyrinthine; Skull Cave is a huge, open tunnel.

You’ll have some daylight with you for quite awhile in Skull Cave, but eventually you’ll get to the need stairs at the end and head down to see the ice floor. I have to say, the ice floor was not as spectacular as we had hoped; there was…a little ice. Behind some iron bars. So Skull Cave itself: super impressive; ice floor: a bit of a letdown. The whole cave is quite short, though (580 feet long), so very easy to check out quickly and one of the good ones for younger kids.

Finally, we headed to Upper Sentinel. This is the longest “easy” cave in the park, and the upper and lower entrances connect up. Word is the whole thing is less than a mile, but we didn’t know this when we were in there and wound up turning around after what felt like a very long time, afraid we’d end up hiking 6 miles or something underground otherwise. So we probably ended up walking farther than we would have had we kept going. There’s a lot of unlevel terrain and scrambling over rocks in Sentinel, but it was a good fit for our group of kids (all of whom except Abe wanted to keep going when we turned around).

Practical Information:

*Lava Beds is really in the middle of nowhere. There’s no food other than a few snacks in the gift shop sold on site, and the closest restaurants are 25 miles away, so plan accordingly.

*There’s a no reservation, no hookup campground for tents and RVs under 30 feet in the park; all other lodging is outside the park. We stayed at Hawk’s Nest Tionesta, a perfectly serviceable–if not especially fancy–campground about 15 minutes away, which suited our needs well in that it had both RV spots and cabins for Amy and Craig.

The cabins are really cute former railroad camp cabins:

…though the ceilings are on the low side:

We had a nice, spacious pull-through right next to Amy and Craig’s cabin, and we had a nice evening hanging out after our day of caving:

There’s not a whole lot going on here other than campsites and cabins, but it’s a clean and pleasant place to stay, with a great location close to Lava Beds.

*There’s a lot to do above ground at Lava Beds, too, including some interesting sounding hiking trails to see things like petroglyphs and wildflowers. You could certainly spend a long weekend here and not run out of things to do.

*The Tule Lake Segregation Center, a former Japanese internment camp and another NPS run site, is also close by. It wasn’t open the day we were in the area (and we wouldn’t have had time anyway), but we’d like to make it back and see it and more of the area someday soon.

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