Pescio Cave

November 25-26 2005 - Tamie Jensen

Location: Nevada Trip Leader: Robert Cranney On Trip: Ralph Powers, Robert Cranney, Tamie Jensen It started by packing my dog and 2 days worth of stuff in the car and meeting Ralph and Rob at Saltair. My over-protective dog got off on a bad foot and scared Ralph out of riding with me to Wendover. After a quick rest at the rest stop and miles of beautiful desert, we made a gas and food stop in Wendover. Then it was on the road again. The mountains were so beautiful that I had to work at keeping one eye on the road. Miles and hours passed before we made a turn off. This was just a quick scout trip for Goshute Cave. We were back on the freeway in less than a half hour later. I’d given up on all my feelings of anticipation and followed like a robot at this point. I still had no idea where we were going. Pescio Cave is all I knew. That road became familiar soon enough. It wasn’t long before we were turning off for Pescio. We missed the second turn to the cave and drove up a road until Rob decided his car had enough of a beating. It appeared that Rob’s car took a sharp rock to the transmission pan and was leaking fluid. Of course, he wasn’t going to let that ruin our fun. We drove out of that canyon and Rob parked his car and I drove them up a canyon we had passed. At the end of the road, I parked and we grabbed our helmets and jackets and headed for the cave entrance. My dog enjoyed the hike. He seemed to bond with Ralph. He would run up and check on him then run back and hike with me. Once we were at the entrance, I tied my dog up and tried to make him comfortable while Ralph and Rob took pictures of the entrance. There was a lot of air coming out of the cave. I knew it was going to be a smelly place. Just inside, mounds of bio-waste, said to be urine, were like toxic stalagmites. There was so much of it. One flow had come from a hole in the ceiling and down the wall. These mounds were just as much of a part of the cave as the other formations. I tried to walk and crawl with out getting in the ooze. It looked sticky and positively disgusting. It wasn’t long and we transitioned into an area that looked dark and dusty. Rows and rows of stalagmites made from cave popcorn nearly choked the entrance to a huge room. The floor was these ball-like formations all solidly attached together. Then Ralph yells, “Dolly Parton’s over there.� You can guess what this formation looked like. Even with a close up look, it didn’t take much imagination to understand why it was called that. There were a few patches of rimstone, and a neat little section of several soda straws. Ralph had his super-lamp. He would shine it around the cavern while Rob was filming. I could imagine the cave a thousand years ago when it was in its glory. But it was still beautiful. There was a short crawl passage to a second entrance. Ralph was out taking pictures of the entrance when I came out pretending I was a bear. It was nearly dark by this time. From there I could see the rain running across the valley. I had to switch over to my secondary light source then. I was a bit worried because I still had to get back to my dog and climb down the mountain in the rain on my secondary light source. So I got moving. I headed back into where Rob was then out to where my dog was tied up. Heading down the hill was hard on my rear end and my gps receiver which both hit the ground far more frequently than I would have liked. We decided to camp near Goshute Cave due to the trip planned the next morning. Rob’s transmission was slipping, so I followed in my SUV. We parked and cooked some dinner in the sleet and wind. My dog and I slept in my SUV. The guys thought they would try sleeping in the car too. I went and visited them in their cozy digs. During the 15 foot run to my SUV, it was raining so hard I soaked my nightclothes. The wind rocked the car all night. We woke up to snow on the ground and it was still falling. We weren’t even sure if we were heading up the right canyon for Goshute Cave or if Richard was still coming out. We drove out to the main road and tried to make some plans. My phone worked in analog there, so we made a few phone calls hoping for enough information to decide what to do. This just added to our obstacles: no one answered. The snow pressed us to make a move. We still had to cross the pass in the snow no matter what. So we gave up and headed to Wendover for a hot meal and transmission fluid.