June 28, 2013 Jewel Cave

We are camped right next to Jewel Cave. We went down when we first arrived, but their tours were sold out. We went to Crazy horse instead and today John went to Jewel cave at 730 in the morning and got us tour tickets while I slept in.

A photo of the park brochure. I guess they do have crystals that look like this, just not where we went. The cave is huge, the 4th longest in the world.  They measure all the little rooms and add that together for the mileage, in reality they look more like this map. The darker the color the lower the  rooms. About 700 feet down, but they are still exploring and the cave goes much deeper. We toured near the name tags on the map.

Here are some of the calcite crystals in the visitors center. We took an elevator down 230 feet, then had to walk 730 stairs.

The walls looked like this. Most of the crystals are black, covered with a magnesium deposit. They were all formed underwater when the cave was full of water.  The crystal layer here is about 6 inches thick. It gets too 16 inches in the lower portions.

There were some slimey formations where it was still damp. The roof of the caverns were cool, many of the crystals have fallen off and left these kind of formations.

The only thing that impressed John was the 23 foot cave bacon. You can only see 16 feet of it from the trail and they won’t let you climb over the crystals to see the whole thing. Pretty impressive at 16 feet.  The whole cave was covered with the crystals.

The CCC built the first ranger station in 1935. The ranger lived there and had the station all in this cabin.  This rock was outside the cabin. The crystals with out the manganese. The historic cave entrance is near here. They led lantern tours in the the early 1900’s. The cave was discovered by two cowboys riding in the valley. They heard a weird whistling, they investigated and found a small hole, maybe the size of their had, they dynamited it to get in and explore. They saw the crystals with their torches and they thought they were rich. They filed a mining claim, then came back and found out they were worthless calcite crystals. They then led tours to make their living.

This is what I call a campsite. Trees, grass, lots of space. John fixing the rain gutter on the roof.