LAVENDER CAVE, NEVADA
April 24, 2020
Nevada has had many cave secrets locked away for some time now. A number of caves were lost in archives and documentation was vague on the whereabouts of a number of caves until last year.
I was able to re locate Charley’s folly cave which led to number of new discoveries within that particular region.
Cine shaft, old glory hole, hiko sink, lava dreams pit, lucky nugget pit, twin pits, angel lake pit, cirque cave, lost hope cave, and more where discovered. Lavender cave has been one of the more elusive caves that has been somewhat difficult to locate, and many attempts were made to relocate the most sought after 200 ft cave.
I am happy to announce that the highly decorated lavender cave has now
been located.
Rachael Jamie and I headed up to an area where I have been suspecting lavender cave would be located.
We start up a wash and encounter some interesting leads that unfortunately do not go anywhere.
We continue up a moderate slope and I notice another lead that did not go anywhere.
We start up a wash and encounter some interesting leads that unfortunately do not go anywhere.
We continue up a moderate slope and I notice another lead that did not go anywhere.
Before we continued upward, I wanted to check a side canyon that was a bit steep but appeared to have an interesting feature from the bottom. Once I was able to scramble my way up, I walked up to the bottom of a dry fall with numerous flowstone features, popcorn, and a dark hole with columns that led deeper into a cave. It was at this point I realized I found lavender cave.
I called up Jamie and Rachael and we confirmed
that this was indeed a cave and went inside.
The varnishing on the entrance walls was a beautiful array of color, almost like a painters palette.
The first section was crawling and delicately maneuvering around for formations.
The next section were small rimstone pools of water with popcorn, formations all around them.
The gours were actively flowing and the continuing room was actively dripping!
Flowstone walls and formations draped the wall with a fine cut three dimensional geometry and fascinating design. I was very impressed by how the walls looked and how the cave was formed.
This cave appears to be right under a Canyon that takes in water from Time to time. Furthermore the entrance is at the bottom of a dry fall and resembles a beautiful flower like shape with excellent color, including lavender.
The limestone also appeared to change into more of a solid state limestone that gave way to the formation of caves among the region, I bet that there are more of these caves out there.
A higher lead ended to the left but a lead down to the right takes the cave into a muddy restrictive and wet passage that is slippery and moist.
This leads to a hands and knees crawl back towards digging leads. From the vague description
Of the cave 45 years ago, all of the indicators match up and describe lavender cave as we see it today.
I surveyed the cave to 202 feet with a potential lead in the back which was described in a former trip report dated back to the early 1970s.
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