THE DISCOVERY AND SAGA OF KING SOLOMON'S CAVE, NEVADA
December 27, 2019
I wiggle myself into a hole, just big enough for a single body to fit into. I immediately find a room opening up into a triangular passage. The years of work and research all came to an exhilarating discovery and the reality that discovering new caves and exploration is still within the forefront of modern day times. Helmet on, eyes wide open, and walking down a passage headed into the earth, I continue to step forward into what has become, one of the most unique cave discoveries in the United States and quite potentially, the world. 
Carefully I step down and I stop to look left
and right. I notice one stalagmite in the middle of this leveled out room and I thought to myself, ” awe that’s cute” one lonely stalagmite in the middle of this room.
Afterwards, I looked to the right and noticed an amber like blob. It looked like dirty molasses but a closer look revealed a more appealing matter, crystals. Questions started flowing into my mind and soon become apparent “ oh formations fell off the ceiling “....Than another question came up “ hmmm looks like dogtooth spar but why are they so long”? Than upon a closer look they were octogen in nature six inches to over a couple feet in length with a translucent character to them, “ these look like large selenite crystals “!
Blood starts pumping a bit more, perceptional narrowing becomes fixated as I feel somewhat lighter as my surroundings become more in harmony to my presence. My excitement is no longer in a realm of control of a typical cave discovery, it is at that point I remember saying to myself," here is more to this cave than appears".
It was at this point, I looked right and a wooden stick was hanging on a downward angle from the wall. The stick was was burned at the end and small bits of charcoal covered the ground below “ this must be a torch”! I look around me, with the temptation to lose perception as I began to realize
that I am not the first visitor into this cave.
I look forward and immediately I see this opaque crystal like figurine that had a smooth curvature to the side. I get close to it and the crystal is bigger than me.
It might be twice as long as I am. The crystal appeared to be one solid state crystal and appeared to be Selenite. Furthermore this torch was nearly above this crystal and the crystal had a rounded off feature that would allow someone to sit pretty
comfortably on this crystal like a throne. I began to imagine whoever brought this pottery and torch into this cave must have been sitting in this crystal. Such random features in this room!
Behind this crystal were additional crystals that appeared to be fused and "melted" together. One long crystal was laid down and appears to be over 6 feet in length.
I could not believe what I was looking at. Mesmerized, excited, and slightly nervous as to what this could all mean and what will become of all of this, I headed further down into the cave. Heartrate elevated, and a slight dose or adrenal cortisol flowing through my blood, the heavy and eerie realization that this cave is going to become something more than what the members of my future team could handle or what other organizations and agencies could properly manage. Continuing down into the next room, I came upon what made me realize that I haven’t even seen "the cave" yet.
“what the hell is this!!!” My first reaction was confusion as my eyes glanced over a slight bigger and downward
trending room full of hollowed out tube-like formations on platforms.
Beyond the room the colors of yellow and brown started to appear and the passage continued. I was frozen in my own pursuit. My primary light swept over a room full of a new formation, that to this day has not been properly identified. A overwhelming sense of energy embodied me and I quickly left the cave.
Every step I took to ascend out of the cave felt like my life was slightly transforming. Once I left the cave and the sun glared into my eye, present reality and the rest of mankind was a lot closer and the feeling that this cave must have been known., but it has not been since its early explorers of the Puebloan era. Nothing of any nature was ever recorded or documented about massive crystals in a cave like this except for a few caves like Naica. I headed back and prepared for a return trip with camera gear and more supplies so this cave could get surveyed and documented quickly before organizations and agencies would move upon the eminent political intervention that would encapsulate continuing scientific research.
Developing a team became my priority and a team of people that appeared to be trustworthy,
anchored in honor and integrity, professional, and experienced in specific cave related skillsets like cartography and cave science. Unfortunately, history would yet again repeat itself and the political landscaping would cut down the very essence of trust, partnership, and evolution. At first, I made a few return trips with Laura and David. We started the survey and started taking photos of the cave. We worked our way down past the crystals and worked our way down into the hollowed out crystals we now call "scabbards", as of this writing.
These hollowed out crystals were octagon in shape and must have harnessed selenite crystals according to scientist.
Given the size of some of these castings, the selenite crystals must have been two feet in length, some appeared to be three feet in length and a few might have been four or more feet in length. We have named this room, the "Organ Room" for the organ pipe looking formations that we now call Scabbards. These Scabbards stick out of the ground and appear to pointing all directions. I have never seen the castings of selenite crystals in any cave, ever!!! This might be the first of its kind anywhere not only in the United States but potentially in the world. We make our way down and around the Organ room and get to a
platform where the floor changes from gravel like rocky bottom into a brown amber-ish hardened glob like floor. Gravel is found in pockets further down on this platform but a drop off is now encountered. This is not no ordinary drop off, below the smooth rounded edge was a shimmering wall of opaque blue like crystal. This crystal had white crystals growing out of its dragon scale like veins.
Below is were similar views. It was than that it occurred to us that we were standing on a passage which was one solid crystal. The temperature was hot, hotter than lechuguilla as I remember. At the time
This crystal appeared to be forty feet to fifty feet in length to fifteen feet in height. Could this potentially be the biggest crystal in the world? No blunt this cave has turned from a cool walking passage cave with archeo to a world class anomaly with crystals that potentially might redefine how we think of crystal formation and even break a world record for the biggest crystal in the world. A way down was found to the left of the crystal passage and we were able to down climb on the crystal
to get back onto rock and
pass a few formation's as the cave changed once again to borehole. Sweat dripping off my chin as if I was exerting myself and not much work at all has been done we look right and the cave opened up to a large room with borehole going down.
We continued past the large crystal and there were other smaller yet large crystal glacier features which quickly ended and breakdown was encountered.
Formations from columns to stalactites and helictites could be found on the sides of the passage. A few leads heading into the mountain were encountered as we continued down the borehole.
Another large breakdown room with borehole was encountered including a host of bats!
Over thirty bats with mounds of
guano was encountered towards the bottom of the second room in the borehole. We made it to the obvious end of the cave but leads remain, three of them for that matter and they appear to go down!
We head back up to start the survey and photography and we noticed a nice gallery room to the left of us. Columns and formations with colors of red and yellow illuminating out.
We left all of this for chance and to make sure we had a lot to look forward to and indeed survey. We head back out and kept hiking up an obvious route to a room with guano on the floor. “ Wait this doesn’t look familiar at all” turns out we went up the wrong way and headed up more borehole that we have not been I To yet.
The following weeks survey commended when we had the time and an additional room was found up in the crystal highway.
Jason and Tamara Ballensky joined us along with other cavers from Nevada including Randy Paylor and David Harris from Utah. The crystal highway continued back into a location where the passage narrowed and turned into a series of small tight passages. I continued down into another room where the cave took on a whole new form. We call this section :" The Tanzanite Terrace".
On our way down to the terrace, we were able to look back up onto the crystal highways inner workings of crystal matrix. I was able to illuminate the passage from above to create this mystery, as it even lies in todays times. I was able to find a way into the crystal highway which we have called " Under the Boardwalk".
Solid state crystal and tubular passage, large enough to crawl and sit upright in!. I have always wondered what it would be like to actually be inside of a crystal and now that dream is a reality. Honestly, the dream was more enlightening than the Uptonian state I attempted to create by being energized by living in a crystal but it was still one of the most unique places I have ever been to on the planet.
Continuing down into the Tanzanite terrace, a shelf of solid crystal dissipates to a paleo dry pool with black oxide crystals on the ceiling, calcite rafts piled in the corners of the room, and than there were the chandeliers.
We were able to downclimb to the dry paleo pond and creates a very narrow path so we would minimize
the impact to the chamber.
The solid state crystal was fluted which resembled a shoreline of sorts. Under the "crystal dock"were crystal chandeliers, some were lengths of 3 feet!
Even more pronounced was one particular chandelier that looks like a miniature version of the chandeliers found in Lechuguilla cave.
The survey continued as we mapped the Tanzenite terrace and all of the side passages along the way. Back in the main borehole, the survey continued and we worked our way down to the bottom of the cave.
One team went over to the formation room at the bottom that we call the "Red-light District"
Another team checked leads and surveyed as we went down into the depth of the cave. Every Section that we went to ended in a calcite raft chock.
I continued into the red light district and the passage appeared to get even more humid and warmer. To accompany this, the passage was a mix of mud and clay. This continued to a chock and ended in a terminal room.
The red light district had the most traditional looking cave formations but the rest of the cave was rather unique to world class to a new type of formation.
Continuing on to check the remaining leads, we found calcite rafts where the passages chocked leaving next to no room for further exploration. A good friend and string caver, David Harris pushed deep into the corners of passages and reported very little optimism for continuing passage. David is known for pushing caves beyond their end and uncovering more passage, this time David wasn't finding anything that continued except for one location.
David comments on a bit of his experience coming to King Solomon's cave. It is hard to know where to start about King Solomon cave. I vividly remember the phone call from Adam when he told me the cave he discovered contained huge crystals larger then cars and unique hollow sword looking speleothems among other pretty incredible things. Well to make a long story short I was every bit as impressed as he was of the significant cave discovery of King Solomon Cave. I appreciate the opportunity I had along with many other cavers to document, survey and explore King Solomon Cave. It truly is a unique and special cave that I got to experience with great friends and a memory I will cherish. As our survey came to an end and photography encompassed a full-bodied narrative of the cave, immediate protection efforts became our primary scope of work. Indeed we had over 10 people in the know about KS cave and the probability of someone finding out about the cave was and has always been a concern. The efforts came together with countless hours of work, documenting, discussions, and even tiered levels of trust within the need to know arenas of individuals. There were concerns of who to trust and unfortunately, that was a reality that we all had to suffer from.
Our resolve and project phase rollout consisted of hours of document preparation on procuring the resources to gate the cave and build a cave management plan. Open discussion, time, and integrity became our alliance as we prepared to develop a presentation to the BLM for inclusion and relationship fortifying as we break into a new era with organized caving organizations and government agencies interested in cave protection. Our plan was solid and sound. We were all contributing to a proper presentation when I was contacted by a criminal investigator on King Solomon's cave. A meeting with this investigator was insisted upon and a phone meeting soon followed to bring light to a the realization of the cave by an informant within our group.
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