Talus Room Orientation Tour

 I had the opportunity to lead some of the new employees through the Talus Room, an off-trail area of Lehman Cave. I had just gotten some new flashes, so I took those along to play with them and start practicing.

First we went through the West Room, a long passage with some nice cave decorations along the way.

As we entered the Talus Room, we saw a nice group of soda straws and lots of helictites nearby. Most of the speleothems in the Talus Room are on the ends of the room, not in the middle.

The Rainbow Wall is a 60-foot tall wall of draperies stained various hues. It's even prettier than the photo shows.

The Talus Room was open to the public from 1961 to 1981, when some rock fall caused the National Park Service to close it off. It hasn't ever reopened, and in 2008 and 2009 the trail and electrical system was removed to restore it to wild cave status.

This area of the cave was known from the earliest days, with several historic signatures from 1885.

The room is longer than a football field, but definitely not as level.

Once we reached the other end, we started seeing more speleothems again, including some stalagmites with some holes in the top from secondary dissolution.

Then it was time to make our way over some more talus and down a climb to exit the room.

We followed the Royal Gorge back to the main cave trail in the Sunken Garden. Now the interpreters will be able to tell their tours what more of the cave looks like.

There will be some special trips to the Talus Room during the NSS Convention. It's also possible that in the future the park will offer wild cave trips to this section of the cave.

Spring Wildflowers up Hendry's Creek

Back in late spring (mid-May, I think), we took a Sunday drive up Hendry's Creek (en route to doing some ranch work for my husband). I was amazed by the orange desert floor, lit up by globemallow.

We continued driving up the road until we got to the Hendry's Creek trailhead. Hendry's Creek is the main trail on the east side of the North Snake Range, especially now that the Hampton Creek road has been obliterated by the flooding following the wildfire.

It must have been a chilly morning if Desert Boy had to wear his winter coat!

It was warm enough that flowers were blooming and insects were pollinating them.

We didn't get far when we reached the obstacle. The trail crossed the creek bed. While it is sometimes dry here (like last fall), on this spring day it was roaring, and we didn't feel like getting our shoes wet.

So we hiked towards the cliffs and found a beautiful patch of Solomon's seal, a wetland-loving plant.

As we climbed higher, we got a nice view of the cottonwood-lined creek from the lichen-covered cliffs.

We could have gone farther, but we decided that was enough hiking, so we headed back down.

On the way we saw a gopher snake on the trail. These are awesome snakes, they eat a lot of rodents. I wouldn't mind a few more near our house!

I wanted to spend some more time with the flowers and I had my bike, so my husband and the kids went on in the truck, and I took a leisurely bike ride back down, stopping for photos.

When I came down the bench further and saw the majestic snow-covered Jeff Davis and Wheeler Peaks, I took a ton of photos. What a beautiful sight!

2016 Cave Rescue Training

 Every year Lehman Caves holds a rescue training so if someone gets hurt or becomes ill on a tour, park staff can safely get the person out of the cave. This year we also invited local agencies and had BLM and the county search and rescue attend. After about 45 minutes of lectures, we practiced moving someone in a litter. We didn't want to have it so easy, so one of the obstacles was to take the litter through the tree. The patient seemed happy at first.

He didn't seem quite so enthusiastic part way through!

Fortunately all was well...until a call came in that an interpreter had fallen and gotten hurt in the cave and needed help. It was time to have someone at the big radio and get folks into the cave.

With paved trails, it's pretty easy to get into the cave with rescue equipment.

But the patient was off trail! That made for some problem solving, which everyone did well.

Walking with a litter over uneven cave floor isn't so easy.

Everyone was glad when we got to the paved part and we could put the SKED into a Stokes with a wheel.

Entrance control made sure everyone got out of the cave.

And then everyone was smiles.

Until it came time for the eternal struggle--stuffing the SKED back into its bag! Ha.

It was a really good training, with a lot covered in just four hours. Some folks had never done any cave rescue training before, so they got a little taste of it. Others have done this training for many years, but we always have a different scenario and a different location in the cave so they have to figure out what to do. Fortunately, the skills don't get put to the test very often.

A Hot Day for Branding

A couple weeks ago I took the kids to check out the last branding of the spring. It didn't feel like spring, it was approaching 90 and windy. About 270 calves had to be processed, and the cowboys and cowgirls were doing it the old-fashioned way. The calves were sorted from their moms, then they were roped individually.

Each calf was ear-marked (instead of an actual brand), an ear tag put in, vaccinated, and for males, a rubber band was applied to a delicate part to restrict blood flow (let's just say that too many bulls are trouble). It took about a minute or two for each calf to be processed. Then it was marked with chalk and let go.

I find watching the roping to be fascinating. It takes a lot of skill and practice to be able to get a rope around a calf's back legs.

I'm told that the elbow position is extremely important.

When the right moment is spotted, the lasso is thrown out.

The slipknot is tightened...

...and if all goes well, a calf is caught. Oftentimes it takes multiple tries to catch a calf.

Several ropers were out there working their magic.

Meanwhile the calves were moving around. Did I mention that it was windy? The kids weren't so fond of all the dust. I found sunglasses a necessity to keep grit out of my eyes.

 The horses are so well trained. They were fun to watch along with the riders.

Baylee kept pulling calf after calf.

It was kind of neat getting down low and seeing what it all looked like from there.

In this corral, a metal doohickey called a Nord Fork is put on the calf's head to keep it from moving during the procedures.

The next corral over didn't have those, so a calf was held by two ropes, each attached to a horse on either end. I hadn't seen that before, so it was neat to check out.

It took about eight hours, but they got all the calves processed. Way to go!

You can see more about moving and processing calves (and other things about ranching) on this fun blog, written by my sister-in-law.

Snake Valley Yachting Club

 Years ago, we joked that it would be fun to have a Snake Valley Yachting Club. We don't actually have bodies of water around that are big enough for yachts, but out in the desert, anything that floats can be a yacht! A couple ladies started it up again this year to my delight. Yesterday afternoon we thought it would be fun to have an informal gathering of the Snake Valley Yachting Club. We brought out a shade canopy (we should do that every time, it makes such a difference!), an inflatable kayak, an inflatable rowboat, some floaties, and best of all, a sailboat. It's been years since my husband and I have last sailed. We had a bit of a traumatic event where we rolled the sailboat numerous times and got mildly hypothermic, and that might be why it was in storage for so long.

Yesterday my husband checked the weather forecast and thought it would be a great day to take it out. I'm so glad he thought of it, because the weather conditions were just right for us to practice. That means winds were about 0.5-3 mph.

The lake water was a little cooler than a couple weeks ago, maybe because some snow melt has been coming in. It didn't take long to get chilled.

But the kids and dogs had fun splashing around. I missed getting a photo of this dog doing doggy paddle--it was the funniest thing, with his head held high and his paws going out of the water.

Some of our friends also took the sailboat out for a spin, with directions from my husband. Going with the wind is easy, but making the turns to start heading back can be a little tricky. Everyone did great, although I did manage to tip the sailboat over! Fortunately it wasn't too hard to get back in.

The kids invented all sorts of games.

Even the youngest enjoyed her time outside.

I loved this scene of wild abandon, everyone doing whatever they wanted. The fun times of summer!

We hope we'll be able to go out again soon, it was a really fun afternoon, and we're starting to get the hang of it. To future expeditions of the Snake Valley Yachting Club!