Mark’s Photos #9

“BAM!!”

The car bottomed out again! Note to self, “Don’t take the Corolla up a jeep trail again.”

“BAM!!”

Ron, another UofA grad student, and I were coaxing my little car up a two-track in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson on a sunny day in March, in 1976. Yep! 50 years ago. We were on our way to Onyx Cave, deep in the heart of these mountains. We had a key to the gate that protected this cavern, and Ron and I were going spelunking.

We found a place to pull off the two-track and park. I checked the oil pan. No leaks yet. We took our ropes, carbide miner’s lights, helmets, water, lunch, and, most importantly, a hand-drawn cave map. We hiked through the desert and up the draw to the entrance. The key worked in the gate, and we crawled through the tiny opening into another world. A world without light. A world of blackness. A world of silence. We lit our carbide lamps, locked the gate behind us, and slithered along a 24-inch-high passage for 20 feet. There we set up the first of many rappels, dropping our rope into the abyss. This multi-level cave had passages that often entered a room near the ceiling and required as much as an 82-foot drop to the floor. With over 2,500 feet of passageways to explore, there was a lot to see, even if you couldn’t see a lot. There were large rooms and small ones. Places you had to crawl and squeeze through, “bottomless” pits, stalactites, stalagmites, helictites, popcorn, soda straws, columns, shields, drapes, flowstone, and a bunch of other formations I don’t know the names of. We had to rappel, crawl, climb, walk, crouch, slither, chimney climb, and slide to get through the cave. There were stunningly beautiful formations and places where vandals had bashed in everything (hence the locked entrance gate). All in all, Ron and I spent about seven hours exploring in the pitch-black darkness with only our carbide flame headlamps for light. Towards the end, we were looking forward to getting back out to daylight. When we did finally crawl the last 20 feet back to the cave entrance, it was night outside. But at least we could look up and see the stars. We found our way back to the car. With no oil leaks seen, we climbed in and started back.

“BAM!!”