The 2009 October Campout for Troop 453 was a trip to Moaning Cavern, in Vallecito, California. As the actual cave location did not have campsites, we camped in the nearby Calveras Big Trees State Park (imaginative name, I know).
The cavern itself was actually quite interesting, seeing as there was only one entrance in, and it led to a 165-foot tall cavern – from the top. This meant that the first leg of the trip was to rappel down from the top entrance, about 95 feet of rock wall descent and 70 feet of free descent. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to speed-rappel, or it could have been even more fun than it was. On a side note, the guides seem to be able to break this rule at will, seeing as they did the entire free descent at nearly free fall, with a jerk up at the end to slow down and land safely. What was quite interesting, however, was that free descent is actually substantially easier and faster than wall descent, since you don’t have to worry about accidentally whacking your head against the other wall.
Once we were at the bottom of the cavern, we entered the lower caves, which were all much smaller. The largest chamber was about 2 feet tall, so it was not possible to stand. We had to crawl through the caves, which is actually different than what you’d expect. Many of the entrances are too slippery and to narrow to allow a person to go on their knees, and as such, it is necessary to move forwards by essentially swimming and pulling oneself along via use of small handholds and footholds.
A small highlight of the trip was the “Hotel California” cave, which was a small detour that we took from the main route. It was made mostly out of mud, and was easy to get into, but quite hard to get out. Exiting required a decent amount of flexibility, and a lot of trust in the guide, seeing as there wasn’t enough space to see where you were going. Several people in our group left small messages made out of mud on the walls.
One other thing we did was to experience total darkness. We turned off all our lights, and pointed the headlamps away from each other (LED lamps have residual lighting after being turned off). It turns out that when it’s dark, and you expect something to be moving, such as your hand, you will hallucinate its movement in front of your eyes – an eerie experience once you realize you can’t see anything.
On the second day, we stayed at Big Trees State Park and took a hike in the South Grove. When they say big trees, they really mean big trees. The size of the average “big tree” was about 25 feet in diameter, measured near the ground (about 20-21 feet at 6 feet). As surprising as that may be, the biggest one, at the end of the trail, had a diameter of about 26 feet measured at six feet above the ground! To put this into perspective, it was big enough to fit all the people with us inside with about half the space to spare.