Cold War Cave

From 20090726

From 20090726

Today we hiked up to a place in Water Canyon that I refer to as Cold War Cave. Back when I used to go there a lot, during the cold war, we didn't really have a name for it. It's quite close to the campground, but there is no trail. Not only is the mountain quite steep, but towards the top it's bathed in scrub oak. I lost a lot of blood on the way up. On the way down, I put my gaiters on, and it was much more pleasant. The pass into the valley seemed different, and once through it I discovered that I had taken the right one instead of the left one. The left one (as you face it from the bottom) has a jumble of rocks with a corkscrew gap that you can wiggle up and down.

The valley itself is steep and brushy, but small and semi-sheltered. There are lots of overhangs, small cracks, and a couple of small caves. The cave we had planned to hide out in after nuclear war is a deceptive dead end cave with a side tunnel hidden on the left. The tunnel goes in, turns, and has a side room off of it. It isn't big, or glamorous, but for a post-apocalyptic world it would do nicely. It would need work to level out the floor, and it would always be extremely dark inside.

The trip down was quick. In the corkscrew rocks I dropped my pack down into the first hole. It ended up tumbling down and went over the edge. My nice metal Sigg bottles didn't take it very well. The camera I had with me was too slow to catch it going. Once I had managed to climb down to it I was taking pictures when Brad lost his pack in a different part, but it also came out and shot past my head. I didn't get a picture of his pack flying through the air either.

As you can see above, the GPS tracklog and profile show problems. The new GPS is more sensitive, and does a much better job, but there were lots of places where I was underground and it just isn't sensitive enough.