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Dalene's Cave
About six months ago
I went to Moaning Cavern; which is right down the road from my house to visit with
my friend Bruce Brand who is the manager of the cave. There I met his new assistant
manager Cody Anne, and after finding out that I do a bit of caving in the local area
Cody started bugging me to take her caving in some of the local wild caves. She had
done the great adventure tours at both Moaning Cavern and California Caverns and
wanted to see what the local wild caves had to offer.
So finally last Saturday
afternoon June 10th, I arranged to take her and my two kids Courtney and Michael
to Dalene's Cave in the Stanislaus river canyon. The three wanted to try climbing
a vertical cave with only a belay and from what I could remember from visiting the
cave over twenty years ago Dalenes should be just right for them to try out their
climbing skills. My kids and I had to wait for Cody to get off of work at 6:00pm
from the cave, so we did'nt make it to the cave until around 7:00pm. After a mild
hike we discovered that the mosquitos seemed to really like the entrance area so
I rigged the belay as quickly as possible so everyone could climb down into the cave
and escape the bloodsuckers outside.
Courtney decided to
go first followed by Cody and then Michael, all three made the climb down with no
problems and quickly looked around the rather small, but pretty cave. After the other
three were done checking it out I headed back up to the top and got into a good belay
position and yelled down that the belay was ready and Courtney yelled back that she
was on belay. Courtney was first to climb out followed by Cody then Michael. Once
again all three made it with no problems and we quickly collected our gear and fled
from the mosquitos back to the sanctuary of my truck.
I think it is good
for people like Cody who work at commercial caves to get out into local wild caves
and see the damage done and to also see the pristine nature in some of the other
caves. I think this helps them to be able to understand and in return inform the
general public of the importance of cave preservation. Commercial caves have a great
avenue to be able to inform the public about the importance of caves and cave preservation,
basically they have a captive audience for 45minutes in which time they have plenty
of opportunities to get the message across. If you or anyone you know is interested
in learning more about caves, I highly recommend going to our links page and contacting
one of the local commercial caves and going to visit one of them to see if caving
is for you.
Mike
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