ADAM HAYDOCK

Justin Pugh and Scott Swaney in Cave Valley Cave, Nevada

The last day we headed over to cave valley cave for a tourist and photo trip into the cave. Cave valley cave is a Nevada classic which has over 1200ft of horizontal passage and gets pretty muddy as you start heading back into the cave. We headed into the cave and noticed that this cave must have been mined in the past.  Looking back into the history of this cave, miners did work on this cave to extract minerals and ore from the walls. This is one of the more popular caves in this region due to the mining industry in Ely and surrounding area. The first 500 feet appear to be dry and heavily stomped on which also included beer cans and graffiti on the walls.  Once we got past the register the cave passage became a bit more pheratic in nature and and started to turn quite muddy.  The passages consisted of a few large room connected by stoop and crawling passage in super thick mud.  We got covered in mud towards the back of the cave. 

Scott Swaney and Justin Pugh in Cave Valley cave, Nevada

The cave reminded me a lot of the caves in Indiana which was a nice flashback. There were some interesting color strata on the walls and on the ceiling.  This cave is worth checking out if you are in the area and have a couple of hours to spare.

After Agama Cave we headed over to Hidden Lake cave which is a nice cave for this area as it is decorated and has a natural filter where the entrance is over 1000ft from the basin.

Scott, Justin, and I hiked up into the cave entrance and there were several other entrances that appeared to no go very far but seemed to be interesting for a future visit.

We head into the cave and start on a dusty crawl into this room with gray and red colored walls and muddy formations.

Adam Haydock at the entrance of Hidden lake cave

  It was pretty warm and moist in this room which might have helped the formations and helped with the make up of the cave itself.

I followed a side passage that kept going up but ended with a large rock blocking further passage.

Justin at hidden lake cave photo by Scott swaney

Justin at hidden lake cave photo by Scott swaney

There were some interesting red and blue clay colors in this cave as well as some gypsum crystals that appeared to have peeled off of the walls.

We continue into the back of the lake section, which was dry, and passed by some table top formations and columns.  this led to a popcorn room and some really interesting formations in a room.

Photo by Scott Swaney

 There was also a flowstone that appeared to continue but I did not go up the passage so I could avoid ruining anything.  We also went into another formation room which had flowstone walls and interesting colum formations.

This is a really nice cave for this area and I want to make sure we keep this cave protected from damage to as much as possible.

Waterholes canyon is a famous tributary in the North Arizona region near the city of Page.

The drainage created some beautiful narrows and commiting 600ft drop over a cliff that continues to drop to the colorado river. 

You must get permits from the Navajo Nation recreational center in page to visit both upper and lower waterholes canyon.

Upper waterholes canyon requires a separate permit and is a non technical hike through some really nice narrows and beautiful desert.

Lower waterholes canyon requires a team of canyoneers to be competent for a 4BIII canyon and in addition, bring a pack raft to float down the Colorado to Lee's ferry, which is where you want to leave a car.

This is your shuttle car ( don't leave the keys at the top car or you will have to hitch hike....Chris :) )

I drove up the night before and parked my car at the trail heads top to wait for the remaining members to show up for the trip down waterholes.

Daniel peeled into the trailhead and soon after we started our descent into water holes canyon.

The canyon was a nice wavy fluted sandstone with some interesting swirls and fascinating strata layers.

We started to drop through the first few raps and made it over to the first series of down climbs.

After a few more drops the canyon started to get deeper and the walls started to tower.

The water is indeed pretty retched but we all jumped into the green slime decaying matter and swam across the pool until we got to the start of the real technical portion.

At the top we could see the canyons washed out bottom which included over 700ft of descent to get to but the following drops are what make this canyon, waterholes canyon.

The first rap is 90feet to a table top where the large segment is located.

Now the three drops to follow include the famous "edge of the earth" drop which is right at 310ft. We had a 330ft rope and rigged from the bitch perch at the edge of the earth and we had between 5 and 10ft of rope on the bottom.

The three segments are as follows:

The crack passage can fit two comfortable and can be made to fit three people.

The next drop is right around 15-20ft that takes you down the first piece of the drop but gives you better access to the "edge of the Earth" rap anchors. 

All you need to do is to clip in to the bolts and change over to the next rap station.

The 310ft drop is a fantastic smooth ride down the red sandstone and an excellent place to pull the rope with out too much trouble. Just make sure you do not get the rope into the final segment of the crack

once we were all down we worked our way down a few more raps and a final 90ft rap to a inferno of heat and a mile hike out to the Colorado river.

My feet went from burning hot to freezing cold pretty quickly. I could only stay in the water a few minutes before the cold temps chilled the body.

We had a four mile pack raft down the Colorado river which was a highlight for us.

I recommend bringing a water filter so you can drink right out of the river as you are taken down with the current to lees ferry.

The shoreline looked like it could be traversed if the occasion is deemed necessary due to a deflating pack raft or any other incident of that nature.

After about an hour we made it to lees ferry and portaged our rafts for the wait to get the shuttle car.

What a fantastic canyon this was and one that I highly recommend for any canyoneer. 

Eagle Sink is a nice sink hole on BLM land in the state of Utah.

The pit itself is a limestone sink hole collapse that is around 80ft from the low side and about 160ft from the high side.

At the bottom of the sinkhole is a depression with a large amount of breakdown that had no going passages.

Their was also a rock cairn that someone must have built on a previous visit.

The rock is very brittle and can be dangerous if you get too close to the edge.

This was a rather beautiful place with the birds flying in and out of the sink and with the clouds passing by.

My group was not able to make it as they had a lot of mideeded actions happen to them along the way so I enjoyed this place with the birds flying through the sink.

Once I got out of the pit, I walked around a bit to see if I could spot some more pits in the area.

I am looking forward to coming back in the near future to relax and enjoy the mini Mexico style sinkhole of the desert.