Spelunking: An Underground Adventure in the Ice Crystal Caves

All photos by Michelle Bucher

California is a popular road trip destination for us during the winter months. It’s a “quick” 12 hour drive down the I-5, which leads us to sunshine, warmer weather, and many afternoon adventures.

If you’re heading down to California this winter, we recommend checking out Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California. There’s over 700 lava caves to be explored, and one in particular is worth the drive; the Ice Crystal Caves.

What’s so awesome about this place?

Well, the Ice Crystal Cave is only open between December-March, on Saturdays only, and they only allow 6 people down each weekend. There’s a certain exclusivity surrounding the Ice Crystal Cave because of their strict visitor regulations. Also, you can only access these ice caves with a guide from the park.

Down in the lava tubes, the Ice Crystal Caves houses some of the most spectacular ice formations in the park.

We were the only ones to show up for a tour the weekend we went, so we had the guides to ourselves for a private tour of the caves.

One of the best parts about having the guides, besides their wealth of knowledge when it comes to the caves and ice formations, was they were free! You just have to pay the $10 park entrance fee. That’s a great deal.

The tour was around three hours, took us down under several lava tubes, across a huge sheet of ice that you had to pull yourself across with a rope, and down to what looks like a frozen waterfall. What an adventure!

Why such strict visitor regulations?

There’s actually some interesting information about the ice crystal caves, and the ice formations in the caves. Only a small amount of people are allowed down into the ice caves each year because they are trying to protect the crystal formation from human contact and condensation. We were also told that the fall weather gets trapped in the caves over the winter time, and ground water drips into the caves, freezing, and then causing the crystal formations. During the summer months, the air in the caves gets too warm, and they don’t let visitors down into the tubes to prevent any crystals from deforming.

Travelers note: I’m extremely claustrophobic in small spaces, and the idea of being underground in lava tubes was kind of a scary thought, but I was fine down in the lava tubes. It might have been the excitement of exploring underground tubes that outweighed my claustrophobic fear. It’s worth exploring.

Fun fact: we drove 12 hours from the Canadian border and were a few hours early for our tour. The guides at the visitor center were very nice, and even let us sleep on their couch for a few hours.

For more information on the lava tubes, click here.