Pisgah lava tubes

[dima]

This past weekend Sondra and I headed to the Mojave, to spend some time in the desert before it gets too hot. First on the agenda was to check out the Pisgah lava tubes. I've known of these for a while, and would make a mental note to visit every time I'd race past the lava field on I-40. We finally made it a point to come here, and as it turns out, it's quite cool. And well worth the trip.

The lava field and the crater are clearly visible S of I-40 between Barstow and Ludlow. The cinder cone itself is an active mining site, and thus off-limits to the public. There IS a road that goes up there, but we didn't take it, and I don't know where the gate is. Most of the lava field is public, however, and the lava tubes are on public land E of the cinder cone. So we parked on the old hwy 66 nearest to the area E of the cinder cone, and started walking there. There isn't any signage or fence or trail, or anything human.

There is a lot of lava, mostly of the pahoehoe variety:



At first there are plants trying to colonize the place:



But pretty quickly it becomes a desolate moonscape:



It's pretty cool. After about a mile the texture changes, and the lava becomes more irregular and broken. Here are lots and lots of lava tubes, or various shapes and sizes. I found a map of the way-too-many features on the internet, and made a short list of specific things to visit. All the interesting stuff is in a small area E of the cinder cone, so once you arrive, you can see most of the things one after another. The longest tube is the "SPJ cave", and is the feature nearest to the road. We circled around looking for it, and found the "Hammer" cave first:



This was big-enough to squeeze into, but before we decided to do that, we found the skylight leading into SPJ:



This has a sizeable drop down, but some helpful humans piled some rocks below the hole, to make it possible to climb down without ropes



This place is cool! Everything is dry, but sometime long ago, liquids (molten rock?) dripped from the ceiling:



This tube is looong. We walked for a while. Had to duck through some smaller openings, but didn't have to actually crawl anywhere



Eventually we decided to turn around, and to check out other stuff. There're lots of various hollow spaces around









Here's the "suicide bridge", named this for obvious reasons:







Below was evidence of somebody trying to kick one habit while embracing another.



We kept walking



And found more caves





Recommended!

[Sean]

Thanks! Looks like you efficiently flowed through this trip.

Get it, because you planned the things to see in the lava field?

I crawled through lava tubes in Maui once. They called it spelunking. But apparently that's only if you do it as a hobby. I bet it has a truly goofy name if you do it professionally.

[Girl Hiker]

What a cool place to visit. Nice pics. I would love to go there some day.

[Uncle Rico]

Super cool dima.

[Tom Kenney]

Very cool! I'm slightly claustrophobic, so it's an extra kick. I didn't know about these, may now visit.

The other really good ones I've been to are Lava Beds NM in Modoc (other corner of the state), and Lava River Cave in Oregon. In the latter, you were (~1980) issued Coleman kerosene lanterns for the journey. My brother and I were not versed in their use. After reaching the terminus and turned back, our lantern was losing pressure. Tense several minutes in the dark until we could 'piggyback' on another party to get out to more crowds.

EDIT: The 'stalactites' dripping from the ceiling. That's lava splashed on the ceiling, then drip-dried. It's in a desert area, so will take long-to-never to form limestone stalactites/stalagmites. The Lava River Cave had some new limestone formation, since it's under temperate rainforest.