Sierra Mountain Times

Dave Bunnell captures the author looking into Moaning Cavern’s “Black Hole” beneath a wall of spectacular cave formations.

By Thomas Atkins

Photos by Dave Bunnell

Clicking into my harness I slowly worked my way down into the small passageway, letting the rope slide through my hands as my feet pushed off the slick limestone wall in front of me. I had done this rappel l about six years ago and, knowing what was ahead, I must admit I was a little nervous. Reaching the edge of the tunnel, my grip tightened on the rope as I backed up to the edge of the monstrous void below. Releasing the tension on the rope, I kicked off the wall a few more times as I descended until the reassuring rock beneath my feet disappeared…and I was surrounded by nothing but air. I suddenly found myself suspended in space, dangling 165-feet above the ground in one of the largest underground chambers in the state – Calaveras County’s famous Moaning Cavern.

Pulling up on the rope, I came to a stop and soaked in my bird’s eye view of the colossal cavern where strategically placed show lights lit up the underground room, revealing its sparkling treasures. This was by far the most thrilling way to see the main chamber and as I spun slowly into the abyss I was surrounded by glistening formations, which adorned the expansive walls of the cave. Made up of snow-white calcite deposits, these underworld ornaments clung to the cliffs and cascaded to the floor below in a series of stalactites, flowstones and draperies like a frozen waterfall. As I hovered within the room, literally large enough to fit the statue of liberty, it made me realize my insignificant size as I gazed at the cavern floor far below. Thankfully, the delightful decorations kept me distracted from the daunting heights, and I was soon safely on the concrete platform at the floor of the cave.

Moaning Cavern’s massive room.

Not long after I “landed”, I was joined by professional cave photographer Dave Bunnell and cave employees Jack Hutchinson and Eric Cumberland, who had descended into the “other world” by a different route – the 234 stairs, most of which are on the impressive spiral staircase which ends at the platform. Dave, a resident of Angels Camp who has been photographing caves for over 35 years, had invited me to tag along on a photo shoot of the cave, and I was more than happy to take part in the adventure.

“Our main objective is to photograph the undeveloped part of the cave seen by people who take the Adventure Tour,” said Dave, 56. “This particular shoot will be for photos for postcards, their website, and possibly for a book on the cave. I am on a contract which means they don’t pay me for coming to the cave, but they guarantee that they will buy a certain number of pictures from the shoot.”

Since moving to the Mother Lode nine years ago, Dave has photographed almost all of the commercial and non-commercial caves in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties.

“When I moved to the area I had a friend that knew where most of the caves were and I have explored and photographed most of them,” he said. “There are hundreds of caves between these counties and I am sure there are a lot of caves that I haven’t been in, but I have visited all the ones that I have wanted to go in. Although there are some very spectacular caves, others are nothing more than a muddy hole.”

In fact, it was in a hole like this that Dave embarked on his first caving experience.

“I lived in Delaware at the time, and the college outdoor club took a trip to a cave in Pennsylvania in 1973,” he remembers. “It was a wet, muddy hole with a lot of crawling…but I enjoyed it. And because I was already into photography at the time, it was only natural for me to start taking pictures of caves. I used to visit a lot more caves when I lived in the East because there were more caves closer together and easier to get to, but now I visit about 25 to 30 caves a year.”

This year, Dave can mark Vallecito’s Moaning Cavern off his list, although it is a cave he has photographed before. However, with each trip, there are opportunities for new angles to document the cave and he was hoping to produce some one-of-a-kind pictures during the photo shoot.

Dave’s first objective was to take pictures in the main chamber, and was hoping to do the shoot in the cave’s “natural light”…which is no light at all. Because there were no tours taking place while we were in the chamber, his wish was granted and with a flip of a switch, the cave collapsed into darkness.

“Now I am in my element,” said Dave, probably with a smile…although I couldn’t see it.

Standing in complete darkness over 150 feet below the surface of the earth was an eerie feeling. I felt as if there was nothing around me, and if my feet didn’t have contact with the cave it would have been easy to imagine that I was a figment of my own imagination…that I didn’t exist – just a speck in infinite emptiness. Yet the blinding light of a headlamp quickly snapped me back to reality and soon four beams pierced the darkness as we headed to our first destination.

Climbing down a ladder below the platform, which is as far as most tourists who visit the cave ever venture, we began setting up for the first shoot. Realizing that a crucial piece of equipment was left back at the top, Jack volunteered to take on the tiresome stairs to retrieve it – not an uncommon task for Moaning Cavern employees, and Eric claimed that he made this spiraling trip 11 times in one day! While we waited, Eric showed us a mound of dirt where some of the oldest human remains known in America have been discovered.

“This area is where everything thrown into the cave landed…and that included animals and people, and if you look closely you can see remains of bones,” he said, pointing to a piece of a human skull. “This stuff has been preserved and calcified into place layer by layer, but each time we get a heavy rain it erodes this mound and exposes the bones.”

Although the ancient bones were interesting, Dave’s focus was on the dazzling draperies and flowstone that covered a wall above a section of the cave known as the “Black Hole”. It wasn’t long before Jack returned with the missing gear, silently repelling down above us as his light spun in slow circles like a floating firefly coming in to land.

With Dave’s photography gear and crew complete again, the shoot could began. While Dave manned the camera and a flash, Jack, Eric and myself would take turns being the cave “model” or would hold portable strobe flashes in strategic positions to create the best lighting effects for the photos.

“Depending on the power setting the flashes are on, one set of batteries is capable of producing about 70 flashes,” he said. “I also use one-time-use flash bulbs for large rooms.”

Once the flashes were in place, we would turn off our headlights so as not to trigger the flashes prematurely, and the cave would fall into darkness once again – until of course Dave’s command, bringing forth an explosion of light. Each flash was attached to a “slave” unit, an electronic sensor that triggers it automatically when it sees a burst of light from another flash.

A self-portrait of Dave Bunnell beneath a ceiling of stalactites in Volcano’s Black Chasm Cavern.

“One, two, three,” said Dave, as he pushed the button on his DSLR Nikon D-70 camera to trigger his flash and the three others, assaulting the cave with brief, but blinding lights as the flashes went off like fire-works. The cave would then return to dark and the faint hum of the recharging flashes would compete with the soft splashes from the dripping cave. After examining the photo Dave would then direct the flash holders where to move their flash or to turn the intensity of it up or down to create the desired picture. When he was finally satisfied with the quality he would say, “That’s a wrap,” and we would move to the next location.

Yet before we left the main chamber, the lights were turned back on and we prepared for our descent into the “wild” section of the cave. Knowing the rest of the cave would become much smaller and narrower we divided up Dave’s camera gear to lighten the load, taking only the essentials. Besides his camera, flashes, batteries, food and water bottle, I noticed that one of Dave’s essentials was a “PEE” bottle, which was written in extra large letters so as not to be mistaken for something else (which he said has been known to happen). Although we didn’t all have the “essentials”, we were each equipped with LED headlamps attached to our helmets and knee and elbow pads for extra padding as we began to make our way down a knotted rope through the aptly named “Black Hole”. Leaving the cave lights behind, we plunged into the mysterious blackness below around 1 p.m.

Reaching the bottom of the slippery slope we found ourselves in a room called the “Upper Mudflats,” which had a pit at one end of it.

“That pit will take you to the very bottom of the cave,” said Eric, who has worked for Moaning Caverns for nearly ten years. “First you rappel 90 feet into a small room full of beautiful white formations and some rimstone pools, and then, after another 90 foot rappel, will reach the end of the cave at 410 feet below the surface. It’s very nice down there, but it’s not worth the safety factor…and the more you bring people down there the more damaged it will become.”

This was definitely evident in the rooms we went through, and I noticed several broken formations here and there and polished limestone from years and years of cavers crawling through the belly of the cave. But of course there was still beauty to be found, and plenty for Dave to photograph. And although Dave knew how produce the best results for his pictures, he admits that cave photography takes a lot of practice.

“When I saw the beauty of the underworld, I began to photograph it…but it took a lot of practice to adapt to underworld photography,” he said. “In fact, just about everything from my first five years of photography were garbage – they definitely weren’t up to the standards I have now. The very first thing I started to realize was that you can’t use the flash that is built into the camera. Not only is it not enough light, but there are two things that happen in caves. One is the humidity. The water vapor creates a humidity that is usually close to a hundred percent so you get this kind of fog when the light beam is right in line with the camera. The other thing is if you move the flash off the camera you get more shadows and it creates a more textured look and adds depth to it.”

Our next stop was in the “Lower Mudflat,” where he documented a small room full of the fascinating formations known as helictites. From there, our hands and knees journey took us to places with names such as “Belly Flop Rock”, “Joe’s Adventure” and the “Breakdown Room.” It continued to get tighter, and there was even an escape route called “Claustrophobia Alley”, for cavers who didn’t want to continue into the tight quarters of the “Meat-grinder”, “Roach Motel”, “Pancake Room”, “Column Squeeze” and “Godzilla’s Nostril”.

These rooms were very small, and it was interesting trying to fit everyone in them…especially while taking pictures. However, Dave was able to capture all of the desired locations and we eventually emerged to the main chamber. Over the intercom at the platform a voice welcomed us back to the real world by telling us the gift shop was about to close. It was already 5 p.m.! Time flies when you’re in the dark! We had been underground for over four hours…but it had been a fun, and successful expedition.

Yet it was nothing compared to some of the expeditions that Dave has been on. Having traveled all over the globe, Dave has visited the world’s premier caves, including New Mexico’s famed Lechuguilla Cave, which, as of 2006, is the fifth longest cave (120 miles) known to exist in the world, and the deepest in the continental United States (1,604 ft.). However, it is most famous for its unusual geology, rare formations, and pristine condition, and Dave says it is unlike anyplace he has ever been.

“Overall, Lechuguilla is the most beautiful cave I have photographed,” he said. “It is certainly a place that I would count as the most beautiful place anywhere that I have seen. It is truly a bizarre place.”

Located in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, this cave is limited to approved scientific researchers, survey and exploration teams…many of which Dave has been a part.

“In the early days when they needed pictures of things in the cave, I could organize trips just to take pictures, but now it is so heavily photographed that to enter the cave you have to be part of a science project, a conservation project or a survey expedition,” he said. “I can still take pictures, but that can’t be the main goal of the trip.”

On some of these trips to the cave, often spending five or six days within, Dave was able to witness places that no one had ever seen before.

“I have gotten to see a lot of virgin cave and the coolest piece of virgin cave I saw was in Lechuguilla during a surveying trip,” he said. “We made it into this big chamber and in this one area I shined my light into this beautiful turquoise blue water and could see these big stalagmites under the water, so I named it the “Lake of the Blue Giants.” Years later I went back with scuba gear to explore. It ran down about a couple hundred feet and opened into a big chamber completely sealed with pure-white flowstone.”

Although Lechuguilla is his favorite overall, in the Mother Lode his favorite cave is Black Chasm Cavern, located in Volcano, Calaveras County, which was designated a National Natural Landmark for its extensive displays of translucent helictites. It has also been developed as a show cave by Sierra Nevada Recreation, who operate Moaning Cavern.

“Oh yeah, hands down,” he said. “It is definitely the most beautiful cave in the area. I took enough photos there to do a book…and I am hoping to do like a 40-page book that will have about100 pictures of the cave.”

Dave has already written three caving books and his most recent, Caves of Fire: Inside America’s Lava Tubes, was released a few weeks ago.

“My first two books were survey books with maps and descriptions of the sea caves in the Channel Islands,” he said. “My latest book covers the lava tube caves of Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Arizona and Idaho. Two thirds of the book is about the features in these caves and other third is about public access caves…caves that have trails and signs where you are encouraged to go into.”

Besides writing books, he is also the editor of National Speleological Society News, a monthly publication sent to all members of the National Speleological Society (NSS). The NSS has over 12,000 members and 200 grottos (the name for local caving clubs), and the Society does more than any other organization to study, explore, and conserve cave and karst resources; protect access to caves; encourage responsible management of caves and their unique environments; and promote responsible caving.

“I often end up writing something for it if we are short on material,” said Dave, who has been the magazine editor since 1996. “I’ve had the deadline approaching with no feature article and I will have to write the feature article, but fortunately I always have some stuff in reserve from my trips.”

On average Dave goes on about two to three major caving expeditions each year, and so far he has been caving in 18 countries not including the U.S. His most recent caving expedition took him to a little-known cavern in central Laos.

“The name of the cave is called the Xe Bang Fai River Cave,” he said. “And last February National Geographic sponsored us on an expedition to survey the cave.”

Led by veteran caver John Pollack, the expedition comprehensively mapped and photographed the 5.9-mile length of the cave for the first time, and the spelunking team encountered some of the largest rooms and most impressive cave formations of any river cave on earth. Not only were the caves’ towering entrances big, but so were its phobia-inducing spiders – which were up to 10 inches across!

”It was quite an experience,” he said. “In fact, National Geographic just posted my pictures and the story of the expedition on their webpage.” (To view these amazing pictures, visit www.nationalgeographic.com).

Dave has also had his pictures printed in numerous books and magazines including National Geographic Adventure.

“They did a piece on extreme scientists and one of my good friends is Hazel Barton, a microbiologist who studies extremophiles – organisms that grow in extreme environments…which is virtually anything that grows in a cave,” he said. “So they used some of my photos of her on caving trips.”

With the amount of time Dave has spent underground, one could almost include him in the extremophile category.

“Many of my trips I will spend several days inside a cave,” he said. “The longest amount of time I spent in a cave was ten days. It was within the then-longest cave in Mexico, Sistema Purificacion, l, which is over 60 miles. That was a little too long actually…I think I prefer five days.”

Although it is the beauty and wonder that attracts him within the depths of the earth, Dave is also aware of the dangers, and has experienced many close calls.

“Rock falls are the main dangers I’ve experienced,” he said. “And yes, I’ve definitely been lost. The second trip I took my wife on (before she was my wife) we were in this cave called Lilburn in Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park) and its incredibly complicated because there is a lot of breakdown with a lot of holes you had to find. Although I was paying pretty good attention, it was difficult to get back and I kept returning to this one spot. I knew the hole was around there, but I couldn’t find. But it was just a matter of time, and it ended up being like five feet away.”

But the beauty seems to outweigh the dangers, and Dave keeps returning to the darkness for more.

“It is the other worldly-ness of these places that draws me to them,” he said. “They offer landscapes that you won’t get anywhere else.”

To see more of Dave’s pictures and to see what the underworld has to offer, take a tour of Dave’s Virtual Cave at www.goodearthgraphics.com/virtcave and his Under Earth Images site at www.underearth.us.