Tabernacle Hill Lava Tubes

Saturday, December 10th 2005 - Tamie Jensen

On Trip: Rob Cranney, Duane McCully, Tamie Jensen It was up in the air until the night before the trip regarding our destination. The idea of seeing some lava tubes sounded very appealing. Duane picked me up from my house first thing. We drove down and picked up Robert and Sponge Bob Square Hat. We were able to spot Tabernacle Hill from some distance away. My GPS and I did some erroneous navigation but we were soon driving onto the lava flow. We stopped every so often to look at areas that we thought looked like there were lava tubes. It was fun hopping around and climbing into giant cracks in the rock. The sun was bright and the sky was clear. It seemed the perfect place to be. The dark lava went for a couple of miles to the south and west. It seemed to create a dramatic atmosphere in contrast to the beautiful weather. Some one on the trip knew where one of the tubes was. We drove over one and stopped to explore. We all went in different directions. Duane managed to find another access to the tube and scared me when he popped out when I was climbing in. The tube turned out to be more of a valley probably 100’ across. It ended in a large shelter. I noticed that once we were on the surface, the tubes were nearly invisible until you were right on top of it. Robert and Duane hiked Tabernacle Hill while I hiked up the interesting looking formation with the narrow little prominence. There were neat rock formations all over the hill. We met back at the Jeep for lunch. When I started to freeze my feet off, we headed for a monolith looking formation. We stopped at few places on the way. We had the 2005 regional guide with a map of one. We figured that we found “Hell Hole.” But it will remain under discussion until we can confirm it some how. Then there was a collapsed bubble with some polygonal blocking and small passages around the edges. The monolithic formation wasn’t monolithic at all. There were actually two large cairns made from the lava rock. It just so happened that there was a large lava tube. When Rob climbed down in, an owl flew out. I wonder what it thought when it saw Sponge Bob Square Hat. Far back in, it looked like a large chunk had fallen into the tube before the lava was completely cool. It made for interesting formations. A few days later, I called the BLM branch in Filmore. I asked about private property in the area on the flow. He said only the excavation business was private. The rest was public. He mentioned some points of interest that we missed. He faxed me several pages of good information and a map. We have the makings of another trip. Plenty more to see.