Caving

The Caving Trip will be a beginners tour of Bowden Cave, an excellent "Beginner" cave that is used to introduce people to caving. The cave is about 30 min from the campground, and expedition will leave from the campground on both Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Mike , our caving organizer, will lead the caving trips. He says this cave is well suited for the young and old (4 yrs to 84 yrs) and it is one that he is intimately familiar with. Everyone will need to bring their own equipment .

He will also offer an intermediate trip of more difficulty later in the weekend if folks are interested.

The specifics here are from last year's trip. There are lots of miles of cave available, so we can see a different section from last year for repeat cavers.

Description of beginner trip:

Bowden Cave has a large road and ground level entrence on the side of the mountain. Upon entering the cave, and within natural light distance of the entrance, the cave floor rises 10 feet up a slippery mud hill that you will have to crawl up. At the top you will crawl on hands and knees about 30' back and pass through the remains of an old gateway. This is the narrowest  part of this trip, for the gate entrance is only 3' by 3'.

Once through the old gate entrence, you will be in a large room about 50' wide and 15' tall. An underground stream flows into the room from one end and disappears near the entrance into the mountain. You will follow the stream up into the mountain in a passage about 15' wide with about 10' to 15' of ceiling height. Your path upstream will cross this stream several times, and will lead you deep into the mountain. This old stream bed is very rocky but you can easily keep your feet dry for the whole trip. About 1000' into the cave, you will find the source of the stream rushing out of a hallway size passage from the right wall. ( This is the entrance to the "stream passage" portion of the intermediate level trip 2 ).

About 200 feet past this stream entrance, you will intercept a  large passage 10' wide and 15" tall in a fault line of the rock perpindicular to the large hall passage you are in. To the right this passage quickly deadends among massive breakdown boulders. This is a good area to investigate and see how you like tight areas while investigating the small crevices among the bolders. To the left, again the passage quickly dead ends among a much smaller rock breakdown. At the corner of this passage to the left a 3 step wooden ladder is bolted to the wall. This leads into another rock vein passage about the size of a linen closet back to the right about 20' into the "Shower Room." This room is about 12' in diameter with a 60' ceiling. Depending on how wet the month has been, water will be dripping from the ceiling from a sprinkle to a good shower spray.

This is the destination of trip one for beginners. Time in the cave will vary with the size and experience of the group but should be about 2 hours.

Entrance to Bowden cave .

Large for 20 feet, then small climb and short hands and knees crawl to large walking passage with small stream in bottom for trip 1, beginners cave trip. 99% of trip one is in passage much larger than entrance.

Stream Passage Mike's daughter in stream passage of trip 2 area. Beautifully carved walls smooth as glass highlight this area. Width and height in picture are typical of this 300' long section with stream running in the bottom. Some very short sections are lower and/or narrower in this passage, but for the most part it is all a walk in the stream. Well worth the visit if you do well with the beginners trip.  This is beginning area of trip 2.

Trip 2 and More Pictures / Caving Equipment

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