Jewel Cave, snowy Needles
I forgot my GPS on the walk around Devil’s Tower. C’est la vie. It’s a nice little walk, a mile or so. The channels of stone that make up the tower are impressive five- and six-sided prisms. The clouds were thick, but not dramatic, making for sad grey photos. We left by 1pm and it started to rain soon after.
Jewel Cave, our next real stop, is the second largest cave in the world, at 150 miles explored. At the very end of the tour, our guide revealed that due to barometric indications, the current known volume of the cave is approximately two percent of the entire cave. Jewel Cave has only one known natural opening, a good distance from the elevator entrance installed around 1960 in order to bring tourists into the really stunning area. The elevator took us down about 300 feet, to maybe 4500 ft above sea level, still significantly higher than we were earlier that day standing at the bottom of Devil’s Tower.
Jewel Cave’s most stunning features are basically crystals like the inside of a geode. And the bacon, a thin strip of calcite streaked with iron ore. It does look an awful lot like bacon, and apparently the term has become common in spelunking to describe that type of formation. Jewel Cave’s formations are as stunning as they are because it has been a predominantly dry cave. Few stalactites and stalagmites have formed, covering the crystals.
I thought the most interesting part of the experience may have been seeing the map notation used to describe a cave. No GPS short cuts allowed.
Sadly, it had not stopped raining by the end of the tour, so Bird and I leaned on our group to do the scenic drive through the Needles before heading to our campsite at Wind Cave National Park. There was a little grumbling from the group when we realized it was going to cost us money to drive through, plus it was snowing when we got to the Custer State Park entrance, but we persevered. The snow really made it worthwhile, but the rock formations were entertaining to view and climb on. Not to mention drive through.
The snow changed into cold rain as we descended from the higher altitudes of the Black Hills. So we got to set up camp in the dark and in the rain. Ouija and Drea had brought a rain/bug shelter for the cooking table area, and it was welcome. It wasn’t even too hard to set up, with all five of us working on it. I got to observe the pulse width modulation of my LED headlamp looking at the rain drops moving discretely through the beam. Nifty.
Apparently there were coyotes yipping that night, but I didn’t hear them.