Spelunking and Caves within Caves - Going Deeper 📷

My last post I showed the photos heading into this awesome cave I love in the mountains near where I live. Its called Canyon Creek Ice Cave, here is part 1 photos.

Note: Click images for a large view

So, this is looking back at the huge entrance. Its hard to tell the massive size of this cave but it is about 8m wide and probably 5m high through most of the main cavern. Its already pitch black at this point to the eyes, but with the camera on a tripod and 30second exposure, it is still able to capture lots of bounce light and I used a small headlamp for some backlight pointing away, but it still gave a lot of bounch light for the long exposure shot.

Here is one of the icicles, hanging down from the cave roof, its actually about 3m high in total and way above your head, can't read it. I was up on a boulder to capture the shot, again longer exposure to see more of the light, near the entrance still though so enough light coming in.

Deeper into the cave, its pitch black and looking back, the entrance is just a tiny little lightsource, but this shadow (which are from my legs) show up even though you can't see anything at all without a light on. Its about 100m back inside the cave at this point.

Near that same spot, I took a photo back towards the entrance with us walking in with headlamps towards the camera, again on a really long exposure shot.

Similar long exposure show, again captures the light coming in to the huge cavern, which I'm up on the boulder. Time to get WAY deeper now well beyond any light.

There is typically always some large icicles hanging from the ceiling and this one had broken off and falled to the cave floor. I thought a good red kryptonite scene would be good, so I used my red headlamp to illuminate the ice, and it cast its red glow to the whole area with long exposure capture again from the tripod. These needed about 10 second exposures to capture the light. Its absolutely pitch black here without the light on.

Just for scale, you can see how big these ice chunks are that fall from the cave ceiling. My helmet is off here only for putting my headlamp behind the iceicle block. Otherwise, its protecting my noggin.

Near the end of the large open cavern, there is a HUGE ice plug that is there all year round, blocking one of the cave tunnels (I've never explored it as the ice has been there every year I've visited). It is mapped behind this, but from years ago when the ice was clear one year.

With a white light on the ice, you can see how interesting the ice wall / plug is with its many layers, and rock behind. You can't see it in the photo well, but up close with the eye, you can see some of the rock behind the ice as well, its so clear. But it is meters thick and extends back into a ice plugged passageway.

I thought this showed the ice plug nicely, with my light shining back into the ice.

OK, going deeper yet. I've explore this cave to the very end of its tunnels, and this picture shows a bit of the passage way, the rest I just could get photos of as it was way too tight to bring my camera. To get to the end of this cavern takes about 45minutes of crawling and squeezing in a 30cm wide sloped passageway that you can barely squeeze through, with ice and water below you in a few spots. once you reach the end, it opens up to a final large room with massive boulders in it that have fallen from the cave roof.

I don't have pictures in there, as I couldn't squeeze a camera along with me without destroying it. I will say, it is not for the faint of heart, not for anyone with any sense of clostrophobia, not for anyone without proper cave gear and equipment, not for going in along, not for anyone too large and not for anyone without some some good courage in the dark and tight spaces. Despite all of that, I love it and have enjoyed this cave everytime I've visited.

This is a sample of one of the holes and tight quarters I crawled out of. The sequence was taken with a flash ever few seconds to show me crawling out. HAHA

The best part we explored this time, as a side passageway from inside the cave that tunnels way down (crawling on your belly) to an open area you can walk through and back towards the cave entrance, but all under rock (cave within the cave). After a 20 minutes crawl / walk you hit some scrambling in the cave within the cave and you can climb your way out to the top of this crack at the main cave entrance. Its an awesome tight scramble and then you simply scramble down this chimney down to the mouth of the main cave and you are out. A great way to end the cave experience if you have some climbing skills!

I hope you enjoyed this series, I sure enjoyed the spelunking and captures some of the photos.

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