ADAM HAYDOCK

Entrance to Manticore cave, Nevada. Photo by Trent.

Den of the Manticore cave is another new Nevada cave that has a very large entrance and some interesting features..

Another crawl passage. Photo by Trent

inside the cave looking out with more passage beyond. Photo By trent.

Once you get beyond the entrance passage the cave tightens up and you encounter some crawling. 

Inside manticore's den. photo by Irina

Once you get through the crawling passage, the cave opens back up into a formation room with one lonely column. 

a column formation inside Manticore's den photo by Irina.

There is some interesting geology going on with the walls and ceiling as the colors change. 

Formations in Manticore's Den. photo by Irina

In another passage you encounter small selenite needles that are quite unique and rare to find. 

Trent looking out the entrance to Manticores Den. Photo by Irina.

This is a very interesting cave and I think that there are more caves around in this area. 

Entrance to Manticore's Den. Photo By Irina.

We are not born to be idle..

I believe that everything we know in the universe is just bits of information. Process of thinking is asking yourself the right questions, questions come from your belief. 

information is meaningless until we compare it to our college. Once we find a college match, we can understand what a story means. 

Experience of learning.  Change the meaning if you do not like how you feel. What is an empowering way to look at this? 

The meaning you associate gets assigned to something which determines how you feel and what you do in life. Our meaning is our interruption of our perception. 

There is a difference between what a story means to us and the physical experience we have in our bodies. 

People resonate with their circumstances as you travel through life you lock in and stay in. 

What is coloring your perception. Why don’t we start asking ourselves more empowering questions? 

I find all this of a valid perspective when going into the world of caving and tapping into curiosity as to what could be just around the corner. 

Curiosity is a big factor in my drive to find and explore caves

This drive has helped me find new caves along the journey through the desert. 

One of which is a new cave that I call Morning Star cave. 

The circular objects on the walls appear to be mammillaries and ceiling have aragonite and popcorn coating the surface of them . 

This is a significant aspect of what hypogenic caves look like and what hydrothermal activity might have existed millions of years ago. 

Some of these spheres have a blue tint to them which are in an area of the cave that I call the Blue Ball Crawl. 

This selenite chandelier is quite unique to the southwest desert and further protection measures have been taken into account. 

Mr. Pink was a promoter in Las Vegas that had a foothold on the pulse of the nightclub scene. 

This cave was a crack in the rock at the base of a mountain which went down into the ground. 

the cave continued on into a decorated room and soon after ended. 

Jumbos Clown room is actually an iconic bar in LA where they had some pretty culture and wild freaking times at! 

This cave was a bit wild to get into and had a great crowd to visit this newly discovered decorated Nevada cave. 

It became a 5.3-5.4 climb to get into the final approach into the cave itself. The cave was decorated with lots of flow stone and formations on the ceiling and walls. 

 Once we got to sling of David we found around 80 feet of passage but the cave ended and there was no extension into eye of Goliath. We continued to rap down the wall and angle ourselves into Eye of Goliath.  

We returned on a later date and continued the push into eye of goliath. Yes we could have initially aid climbed from the bottom or rapped from the top but from the information we gathered, an alternate route rather than direct would have been the best way so we selected to come around the mountain from the back and rig a traverse line and a series of re-anchors to access sling of David and eye of Goliath. 

This routes proved to be good to access sling of David cave but unfortunately we were not able to access eye of Goliath from sling of David. 

We worked our way around and down each time finding that we did not have enough light in the day to make it work. This proved to not be the most feasible

Route and the decision was made to ascend up into eye of Goliath from the bottom. 

This approach proved to be cumbersome and although there is a single pitch mixed sport and trad route established here, it is not the ideal way to enter the cave. 

 The Best and tried and true way to enter this cave is from the top down, direct. 

 We were able to finally gain access from the top. 

We were surprised to see that the top was already rigged and ropes were even attached. 

We rapped down 300 feet to the entrance of the cave. We had to swing into the cave in order to access the entrance. 

Once the rigging was established, the team continued to descend into the cave to gain access inside. 

The cave turned out to be one large room with a potential high lead. 

flowstone and formations were on the walls and ceiling of this cave. 

Below the cave we found a mixed sport/trad route going up. 

The group continued to rap down to the ground and hike out of the lower trail to the cave. 

There is nothing easy about access this cave and it was quite fun to finally gain access into Eye of Goliath.