The Bone Cave: The bone cave is named for the Native American remains that may still be found inside.   Ancient Human remains are fairly common in major caves in this area.   Caves were taboo to the ancient inhabitants of this area and made handy places to get rid of enemies, sacrifice victims, as well as captured male and elderly  prisoners.   The caves flood periodically which has resulted in remains being carried to some of the deepest parts of the cave by the occasionally  raging waters. Even knowing the gruesome fate that befell these unfortunates, none of us were particularly squeamish about entering this cave, though I had  some reservations about taking pictures of remains. That is until I opened a recent issue of National Geographic and was struck by the fact the 3 out of 7  articles featured pictures of archeological digs and remains. We decided that  the proper air of reverence and respect was paramount and pictures weren’t going  to do any harm as long as we didn’t do anything disrespectful or stupid.

The entrance to Bone Cave is on the side of rocky hillside that eluded us for a bit.  Jim hadn’t been  here in 8 years and the vegetation had grown considerably in that time.  We  fanned out in a search pattern and in short order heard Jim yelling.  We all ran  to the sound of his voice and found that he’d made a dual discovery: he’d found  the cave and in so doing, had found the expedition’s first rattlesnake of the  season. The snake was moving off downhill out of sight when I got there, but it  was still rattling for all it was worth. If you’ve never heard a buzztail before, it sounds something like a high pressure air hose blowout with a hint of a rattling sound

Jim was on the uphill  side of the cave opening clinging to a poison oak bush that he’d levitated to only seconds before. (Rattlesnakes have this supernatural ability to levitate people to spots several feet away in the blink of an eye!)   The snake was minding its own business and probably lying in wait for an outgoing bat when Jim  nearly stepped on it. I tried to find the snake so I could take a picture of it but it had slithered off into some heavy cover rattling like crazy even then. Rattlesnakes have made me levitate on occasion as well but I don’t worry too  much when they are advertising their presence so obviously. Still, I wasn’t  going to try to locate a poisonous reptile in heavy leaves just for a picture without a long stick....we returned our attention to the cave opening.

The opening to Bone  Cave heads down into the earth at a 45 degree angle. A rope isn’t really needed  but it makes things 100% easier and we tied one off anyway and used proper “man off” and “man on rope” procedures as much for practice as to familiarize ourselves with each others capabilities. (This being our very first cave expedition as a group).  We all rappelled down the rope to a room with some nice  formations.   Halfway down the  opening, the main part of the tunnel heads off at an improbable angle to a crack in the side of the fault that forms the cave.  It took nearly 25 minutes to get us all safely down the rope which left me plenty of time to swat mosquitos and look for the snake.. eventually I got a chance to head down as  well.

Halfway down the rope  I took this shot of Tom peering up from a tiny ledge below.  You can see  stalactites at the top of the picture here, all of which are all broken.   Every cave in this area has varying degrees of vandalism and damage like this.  Most of these caves have been known for a century; it is easy to feel anger when seeing a formation that took 1000 years to form broken off to grace somebody’s rock collection,  especially when a broken cave formation looks pretty much like a plain rock when removed from its environment.    Still, I have to temper  my anger by remembering that it wasn’t until the last few decades that the idea  of conservation for future generations became prevalent. In this area that has  made its living on mining and logging, the mindset of “this land was put here by  God for me to harvest” was neither uncommon or evil, it was simply the way  people thought at the time. (modern day formation wreckers however,  should have a stalactite shoved up their ass!!!)

The first major room in every major cave contains the “guestbook”  The local caving club maintains the guestbooks and uses them to gauge traffic to the caves.  Researchers  studying bats occasionally ask visitors to note any observed bats as an aide to their studies.  The guestbook in the bone cave was about 1/4 eaten by rodents as the plastic snack container it was stored in had cracked but we dutifully signed in anyway on a couple of the intact pages. The tour didn’t go much further than  this unfortunately:

The crack immediately  behind Jim is the crevice  that leads to the rest of the cavern. Getting to the lower parts of the cavern involved some contortions that put even Jim, who  admitted to being a bit rusty at this kind of thing, in a bit of a bind.  John  took a look at the 14” opening and asked “Don’t you have anything in a Plus-Sized cave?”  This being something of a shakedown cruise,  none of  us felt like pushing things too much at this point.  We voted to do a little  more exploring in the area and put Bone Cave on our  “Located & To be  Properly Explored Later” list.

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