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Calaveras County is crawling with caves
Oakland Tribune, Jul 10, 2006 by Jay Solmonson, STAFF WRITER
Three decades ago, while camping in Calaveras County, I came across something next to my sleeping bag that has occupied my thoughts ever since. It was a little dispenser of honey-do lists that would become my wife. And we were on our first big date.
Until recently, we hadn't returned for a stay in the county made famous by the Gold Rush and Mark Twain's story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Maybe it was because memories of our flea-infested sleeping bags, lousy campfire cooking and cheap wine were still fresh in our minds. So it wasn't haute cuisine, comfortable lodgings or vintage wine that drew us back, although, as we would see, it could have been.
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It was the caves.
Calaveras County is crawling with caves. And we spent a weekend crawling through a few of them.
It was a 2 1/2 hour drive from Oakland to our base camp in the Gold Rush town of Murphys. But this base camp was more than basic as we rented a charming and cozy little cottage, one block from Main Street, called the Little Yellow Cottage.
After a wood-fired spinach, caramelized onion and roasted garlic pizza at Firewood on Main Street, we drove south to Moaning Cavern, near the tiny town of Vallecito. The drive was short, but long enough for us to note that Murphys was growing soft around the underbelly, a little like us. Comfortable lodgings, good food and winery tasting rooms lining Main Street were all new to us.
We arrived at the cavern to find out it got its name from early explorers who noticed a distant moaning sound originating from the cave. As we reached the cave's entrance, a 5-by-5-foot hole in the ground, we heard moaning, too. Most likely, they were moans of exhaustion coming from fellow tourists who were climbing up the last of the 234 steps of the cavern's circular metal staircase.
Of course, the moans could have come from the ghosts of the human remains littering the rocky cavern floor. When gold miners discovered the cavern in the mid-1800s, they stumbled across roughly 100 skeletons. The oldest bones are thought to be up to 13,000 years old.
The innocent-looking entrance has done a sinister job of luring its victims to a 165-foot drop to the bottom of the largest known single-chamber cavern in California. It is so large, the Statue of Liberty would comfortably fit inside it.
Today's tourists can safely descend the staircase with a guide for a 45-minute tour. The tour winds through a well lighted, marble passage to the spot where the prehistoric people fell to their deaths. Or where they were thrown to their deaths.
We weren't taking any chances, so we followed behind our tour, which gave us more time to marvel at the rock formations, stalactites dangling from high above, flowstone pouring off the walls and stalagmites shooting up from below.
As neophyte spelunkers, we were stupefied. But unlike Alice jumping down the rabbit hole, we were safely guided by Underground Adventures, which operates tours to several caves in the area. Thinking of what early explorers must have faced, we felt like a couple of sarsaparilla-sipping sissies.
Not so the troop of Boy Scouts from Fremont who choose to rappel to the bottom of the chamber on a rope. While no experience is necessary to do this feat, a little courage helps. Instructions, along with gloves, hard-hats and all the necessary equipment are available for daredevil cavers.
Real cave-lovers can take the three-hour tour that begins with the optional rappel. Cavers then hike and crawl through undeveloped areas where there are no lights, stairs or walkways. Areas with names such as Godzilla's Nostril, the Pancake Squeeze and the Meat Grinder.
The tour ends 300 feet below the surface and is available by reservation for ages 12 and older. Folks we saw returning from the depths -- their borrowed overalls covered with mud from squirming their way through the Earth like a pack of worms on night patrol -- were headed to the showers.
By the time we hiked out, we were ready for a more horizontal cave experience so we took the 45-minute drive from Moaning Cavern to California Caverns, located near an old mining camp called Cave City.
The cavern first opened to visitors shortly after its discovery by a miner in 1850. Between 1859 and 1875, Cave City's residents used the cavern for dances, town meetings and weddings. They even set up a bar on one end and a church on the other.
Underground Adventures offers several tours into the cavern's subterranean rooms. We took the family tour, a 60-minute meander over fairly level, lighted passages and walkways. But if your inner Hobbit is crying to come out, you can take the five-hour Middle Earth Expedition where you get to crawl, wiggle and squirm through claustrophobic passages that connect one chamber to another.
Included in the tour is a stroll through knee-deep mud and a 70- foot rafting trip across a mini lake. Bring along a change of clothes and plenty of stamina.
As we had neither, we left the naturally air-conditioned cave for our cottage in Murphys.
