Skull Cave, Lava Beds NM, NorCal
Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California, located northeast of Medicine Lake along the CA-OR border, is a national monument most people have never heard of. With all the recent attention on the Disneyland-like crowds in Yosemite NP, it makes you wonder—what else is out there?
Lava Beds is known for over 800 caves in the park, or more accurately, lava tubes. I’ve ridden up here multiple times through the years, and this park has always been nearly deserted. All the roads in the park have also have been recently repaved.
Out of the hundreds of lava tubes you can walk into, the best for a quick visit is Skull Cave. There are no ticket takers at the cave entrance—just pure, unencumbered freedom. I was on the bike at 4:00 AM, night-riding to enter the park at first light and reached Skull Cave by 7:00 AM on a Sunday morning. Not a soul around, and I had the entire park to myself.
Skull Cave turned out to be the perfect destination. The entrance (pictured) is an enormous cavern 60 feet in diameter—a scale that completely defies the senses. As you descend into the depths transiting a well-worn path and then descending several steep ladders, you find year-round ice coating the floor.
Cold air sinks into the lower chamber and becomes permanently trapped, creating a natural refrigeration effect that lasts through the heat of summer. The entrance can be 90 degrees in summer, but here, there is ice, boggles the mind.
Several other tubes in the park share this year-round ice, but Lava Beds has more to offer than just underground exploration. Schonchin Butte, a perfectly shaped cinder cone, sits right in the center of the park, featuring a .75 mile trail where you can climb up to a historic fire lookout that’s open to the public, offering a spectacular 360-degree view of the entire volcanic region.
To top it all off, nearby Glass Mountain rounds out the southwest corner of the area. A mountain of glass? The second I heard about it, I had to see it for myself. Reaching that massive obsidian lava flow at 6,400 feet is an adventure all its own—but that’s a story for another day- click the link to see it.
Skull Cave - The entrance is 60 feet in diameter
Obsidian lava at Glass Mountain
The road to Glass Mountain - three miles of hard pack dirt.
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