How I Spent My Summer, 2012 Part V: Travelogue, Darby Canyon and the Wind Cave

Rhys and me at the Wind Cave

My son Rhys spent a week up at Treasure Mountain Boy Scout Camp.  Last year, when he was there, we hiked Table Rock together.  This year, the hike was to be the Wind Cave in Darby Canyon.  Darby Canyon is a glacial valley in the greater Teton area.  I don't know if it is actually in the Teton Range, but it's a next door neighbor if it isn't.  The Wind Cave is a water carved cave through dolomite.  Somewhere in the miles of cavern is another entrance which allows a brisk wind to blow through.

In 1951, a group of girls from Iona, Lincoln and Idaho Falls were camping at the Darby Canyon Girls Camp and chose to hike to the Wind Cave.  It was an overcast day and after playing in the cave for awhile, they came back to where they had stashed their lunches and began to eat.  As they were eating, lightning struck nearby and some of the camp leaders shouted for the girls to go to the open field and lie down while others told them it would be safer for them to hide in the trees.  Before anyone could really move, another lightning bolt crashed into a tree that some of the girls were huddled under.  Accounts say that girls were flung through the air up to a hundred feet.  Two of my aunties were there and one was knocked unconcious and the other was badly burned.  Four girls and one leader lost their lives that day.  A memorial was placed near the site where the unfortunate incident happened.

Memorial to the ones lost

When my boys go to camp, I like to take a day and spend with them if I'm available.  Lately I've tried to go with them on their hikes.  I was excited to go to Darby Canyon with them.  I had only been there once before and had only gone as far as the memorial.

We met at the trailhead at about 7 AM which meant I had to leave home no later than 5:30.  I drove through the Teton Valley and arrived a little early.  When the boys arrived, we spent a few moments getting ready and then we embarked.  I've discovered that each hike I go on takes on a different characteristic.  This one ended up being all about wildflowers.  I was absolutely amazed at the abundance of wildflowers in the canyon and the many different varieties.  There were many varieties I don't believe I have ever seen before.

Leaving the house at first light

The Teton Valley at first light

The trailhead

Images at the trailhead

Images at the trailhead

Images at the trailhead

Images at the trailhead

Our troop at the trailhead

The trailhead lies at 7069 feet above sea level and over the course of 2.6 miles gains about 1800 feet in elevation.  The elevation gain is masked by the fact that the trail switches back and forth frequently so even though there is significant gain, it is really a moderate hike.  It is a very pleasant hike, even for someone like me who is out of shape and has bad knees.

At 8940 feet above sea level, the hike isn't quite alpine, but close.  The trail is forested for most of the way but further up the trail, it breaks out into sub-alpine meadows strewn with wildflowers.  There is evidence of glaciation everywhere, from the U-shaped valley to glacial outwash and deposits to striations on the rocks. 

The valley is fairly narrow where the trailhead begins and there is a giant boulder that has either fallen from above or dragged into place by the advancing glaciers.  Rhys called it the "tent rock" because of it's shape.  The vegetation and thick undergrowth everywhere reminded me at once of the Jenny Lake Trail we went on last summer in Grand Teton National Park.

The "Tent Rock"

The "Tent Rock" from above

Cool rock in the canyon wall

Lush undergrowth

Rhys is usually a very fast hiker and last year he summitted Table Rock a full two hours ahead of me.  This year, he hung back and hiked with me.  Also in our group was my dear friend, Christan Airth and Rhys' friend Kyle. 

Along the way, there are a few huge boulders still clinging to the side of the valley, left over from the periods of glaciation.  There is great water erosion marks on the tops of the boulders.  Those flat boulders offer great views of the valley and the first views of the Wind Cave.  On one of the boulders, one of the boys spotted what he thought was a wild turkey, but as I looked at it, I thought is was a sage grouse.  I photographed it and identified it online when I returned home and found we were both wrong.  It was a "dusky grouse" male, which is a species I had never heard of before.  When I got close, the bird fanned it's tail, inflated it's body to make it look bigger and thumped it's air bladders and made a 'threatening' sound.  It was very cool.

Rhys and Christian on the trail

Boulder on the side of the canyon

Erosion patterns in the top of the boulder

First view of the Wind Cave

The "wild turkey" on the boulder

Closeup of the dusky grouse

We crossed a beautiful sub-alpine meadow filled with wildflowers before we reached to last part of the forested trail to the Wind Cave.  The last hundred yards or so are the toughest of the hike, the elevation gain is quite steep.  There are stairs there, however but I'm not sure if they were placed or naturally occuring in the rock.  At the base of the summit, the trail splits off to the bottom of a waterfall and the other side goes to the brink of the falls and finally the Wind Cave.  We played around at the base of the waterfall then we hiked into the cave.  It is quite a cavern.  The ceiling has collapsed over time and coverd over the creek that flows under the rubble.  Rhys thought that was extremely cool to be walking over the scree and hear the water flow underneath.

We spelunked back into the cave to the point where it narrows and I stayed there and let Rhys and his friends explore beyond.  It felt too small for me to get through with my camera.  Next time, however I will go deeper into the cavern.  Right at the narrows, the wind is the strongest and very cold.  Next time I go, I will definitely take a jacket for this part of the hike.

The sub-alpine meadow just before the summit

Christian, Rhys and Kyle just before the summit trail

Glacial striations in dolomite on the trail

Sub-alpine meadow

View of waterfall and Wind Cave just before the summit

This picture makes me feel peaceful

The valley from the base of the falls

Rhys and Kyle

Rhys and Kyle under the falls for a sense of scale

Waterfall through scree going up to the cave

Lots of moss

I just liked this picture

Rhys and chums at the narrows

Rhys in the cave

The troop at the waterfall

When we were done with the hike, we went back to the scout camp.  This is the same scout camp I attended when I was a boy.  There is a giant boulder in the center of the camp that is now called Chief Rock.  When I was at scout camp it was called Eagle Rock.  When I was there, only people who had attained the rank of Eagle Scout were allowed to stand on it.  I hadn't been an Eagle when I was at scout camp so I never did.  Some of my troop mates did stand on it without getting their rank however.  Today, the requirements for standing on Chief Rock are different than when I was a scout.  They aren't tougher, by the way but more reasonable for someone attending.  I went to the camp counsellors and asked them if I could stand on Chief Rock under the old standards and they agreed.  This has been something on my bucket list for 36 years.  I scratched it off.

Me standing on Chief Rock, scratch an item off the bucket list

This post has become too long and I still have more material, namely all the wildflowers to show, so I am going to add a part II to this blog post that will be dedicated to the wildflowers I saw on this hike.  There were so many and they were so pretty that they deserve their own blog post.  I will add it at a future date.

This was a great day, from spending the day with Rhys and our friends to hiking up to the Wind Cave, to standing on Chief Rock.  I very much enjoyed my time in Darby Canyon.  Christian said that we needed to find a time when we could take our wives up to this cave.  I agree.  I will hike here again.  Now I'll leave with a parting shot of the Tetons in the afternoon from the same position I photographed them that morning.  Enjoy

The Teton Range in the afternoon from the same vantage point

How I Spent My Summer--Travelogue: Part VII

Trip #7--Lewis & Clark Caverns and Crystal Park
A couple of weeks ago, I found a notebook that I had used a long time ago and on the first page there was a note that said, "Crystal Park, 2011".  I took that as a sign.  I've been a rockhound since I was eight years old.  There is a place in Montana, near Dillon, called Crystal Park.  It's a 220 acre deposit of quartz crystals that is held under claim by the Butte Gem and Mineral Society but the Forest Service manages it.  For five dollars you can park your car and dig all day long if you like.  All these years of being a rockhound and I had never done this trip.  High time I did it.  I've taken the kids on digs before and they seem to enjoy it.  Garrett has told me that he wants to collect rocks as well. 

As I was looking at the map I realized that Lewis & Clark Caverns is about an hour and a half away from Crystal Park.  We hadn't been to Lewis & Clark Caverns since our daughter Cynthia was a baby.  I looked up on their website and found that the price of admission is a mere $10 for adults and $5 for kids under 12.  Ten bucks a head is dirt cheap.  Garrett is our only discount kid now.  We had to do this. 

Last Wednesday was the first day of school, so the kids were free on Monday and Tuesday.  We planned to drive up to Lewis & Clark Caverns on Monday, drive down to Dillon after the tour and camp in the Grasshopper Creek Campground near Crystal Park.  On Tuesday we would dig until we got tired of digging and head home.  Pretty good itinerary and with little deviation we stuck to it.  Of course we had Chimene's fried chicken.  We can't camp out without that.

We headed north towards West Yellowstone, but turned on the Henry's Lake Flats toward Ennis.  When we got to Ennis, I took a wrong turn and headed over to Virginia City.  Luckily it was only fifteen miles out of the way.  We drove up to Boot Hill and talked about the bad guys buried there and headed back to the road and made our way to Lewis & Clark Caverns.  Because of the mixed up detour, we got to the caverns at about ten minutes to four and got in on the four o'clock tour.

There is a mile long trail from the visitor's center to the caverns that rises about 300 feet in elevation.  It's paved all the way so it's not a bad walk.  All along that trail there are interpretive signs and benches.  If I had it to do over again, I'd have stopped at the signs a little more because the tourguide was the last person up the trail and we waited at the cavern entrance for at least fifteen minutes before she got there.  The views of the valley, from the trail were incredible.




The entrance trail and the exit trail from the cavern entrance



The valley as viewed from the cavern entrance

Rhys and Garrett at the cavern entrance

The cavern entrance

There were thirty or so people on the tour.  The tourguide was a young girl (high school age) who had been a tourguide there for three years.  She was a little annoying.  She had done the tour for so long that she had everything memorized and didn't need to think about what she was saying.  Her voice was fairly high pitched and had almost no inflection.  Plus, the script hadn't changed appreciably since I took the tour in the 70's and 80's.  The jokes are just as bad now as they were back then.  She took a few minutes at the beginning of the tour to tell us the history of the caverns and outline the rules, then we took the tour. 

The caverns were discovered by deer hunters back in the late 1800's.  The reason they are named for Lewis & Clark is that the expedition passed nearby.  At the time of the naming, almost nothing had been named for Lewis & Clark, now you can't turn around in western Montana without bumping into something named for them or the expedition.  The original guy who claimed ownership of the caverns used to take tours through them and would allow guests to break off stalachtites in one room as souvenirs.  That went on for about thirty years, from the turn of the century to the great depression.  The railroad claimed they owned the land, and the government agreed.  Then the railroad gave it to the federal government who used the Civil Conservation Corps to make some improvements to the caverns.  Improvements such as concrete steps and handrails instead of the rickety wooden stairs that the original guy had put in.  Finally, the federal government turned it over to the Great State of Montana and Lewis & Clark State Park was born.

The caverns are an active drip cave, meaning the host rock is limestone and water dripping through the millenia has hollowed out the caves, dissolved the limestone and redeposited it in a form called calcium carbonate.  That's the same thing pearls are made of, by the way.  The calcium carbonate is redeposited in wierd, otherworldly forms called stalachtites, stalagmites, columns, flowstone, helictites and soda straws.  Flowstone is the most common formation in solution caves and is formed by more "rapidly" flowing water.    It's not rapid at all, just more than the others.  Stalachtites grow from the ceiling down, while stalgmites grow from the floor up.  When a stalachtite and a stalagmite meet it's called a column.  Soda straws are tiny hollow stalachtites.  Helictites are very rare, and very fragile and don't survive long in tourist caves.  They grow in all directions an look as if gravity didn't have anything to do with their formation.  There are very few helicities in Lewis & Clark Caverns.  I told you I was a geology nut.  I've told my geology professor friends that I'm a geology groupie.



Stalachtites and stalagmites

Flowstone on the cavern wall

More flowstone

Column surrounded by stalagmites

Soda straws

The last room of the caverns is the most active of all the rooms.  It was discovered after the original guy died, so it hasn't had to withstand the vandalism.  It's also the largest room in the caverns.  Very beautiful.  We posed for a group photo there.  At the end of the tour, the tourguide asked if there were any questions and I asked, "What is Beethoven's birthday?"  She was unprepared for a smart alek on the tour and to my credit, I got a bigger laugh with that than she did on any of her stale, tired jokes.

The Civil Conservation Corps blasted an exit tunnel through 500 feet of solid limestone.  They blasted from two directions in the days before GPS and laser sights and were only off by a few inches.  Pretty good work by those guys with old school surveying tools.



Formation in the last room

Formation in the last room

Group shot

Exit tunnel

After the tour, we drove back to Dillon and then another hour to the campsite which was along the Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway.  When we got there, we had the second hitch in our plans.  The Grasshopper Creek Campground was closed for remodelling.  It was dusk and I was close to being in trouble with Chimene.  Luckily, we had a map in the car and she said it looked like there was another campground a little further north.  As it turns out, there are many campgrounds along that scenic byway.  We stayed at the Price Creek Campground for $8.00.  It was a beautiful, private, quiet campground.  We pitched our tent, ate a meal, enjoyed the fire for awhile and went to bed.  I will stay there again.  It was idyllic.



Price Creek Campground

At the campsite

The boys around the fire

After breakfast, we broke camp and headed over to Crystal Park.  The Price Creek Campground was actually much closer to Crystal Park than the Grasshopper Creek Campground, so that was a bonus. 

Crystal Park is 220 acres of quartz crystal goodness.  It has been core drilled up to 180 feet and they were still finding crystals at that depth.  Only hand tools are allowed at Crystal Park so this deposit will never run out.  It is immense.  It has been heavily dug, though so there are a few strategies for finding crystals.  The easiest way is to walk the park and look for shiny things on tailings piles.  Chimene found alot of crystals that way.  Another strategy is to find areas that have not been dug.  That's the hardest way because the whole of the mountain has been dug on.  It looks like it was carpet bombed.  The other strategy is to find a likely looking hole that has been worked and expand it.  That's probably the easiest way to get to virgin ground.  That's the way I chose to work and I found some stuff.  Next time I go, though I will take a pick and some five gallon buckets to better work the diggings.  It was a fun day.  We stopped digging at about three o'clock and headed home.  We were home several hours before dark.



The diggings

Tyler and Haydn screening for crystals

Tyler and Haydn watching the rest of us work

Gasoline...$100
Lewis & Clark Caverns....$55
Food....$50
Campsite....$8
Parking at Crystal Park....$5
Beautiful Memories....Priceless