Cave Waterfalls

INTO THE Heart OF Stone

WE'D BEEN UP SINCE DAWN and now were 150 miles closer to a dark descent into the heart of stone where I hoped to find a new footing with my son, Seth. I'd been scrambling lately to update our relationship-he caught between boy and man, I between father and friend.

So I had invited him along on a trip into Van Horn Cave, a twisting, batharboring limestone maze in the Huachuca Mountains southwest of Sierra Vista in the Coronado National Forest. Very much “alive” and still forming, the cave boasts an ever-changing panorama of impressive mineral formations as well as waterfalls, underground lakes and dark rivers. Jerry Trout, the national coordinator of cave resources for the U.S. Forest Service, had promised to guide us-provided we were willing to use ropes and harnesses to negotiate a slimy cliff

The blackness of VAN HORN CAVE harbors waterfalls, lakes and rivers

[PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 18 AND 19] Convoluted ruffles of calcite flowstone mark cracks along a dome pit in Van Horn Cave in southeastern Arizona's Huachuca Mountains.

[ABOVE LEFT] Intersecting lines of bladelike mineral deposits, called box work, edge Van Horn Cave's faulted stone blocks. BOTH BY DAVID ELMS JR.

[ABOVE RIGHT] The travertine floor, pocked from eons of mineralized water droplets, cradles grayish polished gravel and white cave pearls, gradually formed as the minerals coat tiny granules. JERRY TROUT

Pulling the logs away, they stared down into a SECOND CAVE CHAMBER that had been carefully sealed off for perhaps HUNDREDS OF YEARS

Face above a 50-foot drop into blackness. His description of the underground cliff made me nervously wonder whether I'd disgrace myself.

At the cave's iron-barred entrance, our party numbered five: Trout; Seth; photographer David Elms; Stan Hoefer, an expert spelunker and Forest Service volunteer who guides cave explorations in southeastern Arizona; and I. We donned kneepads, adjusted our headlamps and shouldered our water bottles and climbing gear, then Trout unlocked the gate and we started in.

Van Horn Cave was named for Henry Van Horn, a local prospector who worked the canyon. He never made a major gold, silver or copper strike, but he eked out a living on quartz, azurite and other minerals. The cave bearing his name turned out to be the one in the area that he'd never been in.

Van Horn's namesake cave encompasses hundreds of caves, some twisting, turning, slumping and squirming for miles back into the mountains. It houses a rare colony of big-eared, or Townsend's, bats.

We scrambled into the cave, picking our way carefully down a damp, muddy slope into a large chamber where pale rock formations 30 feet overhead gleamed in the light of our headlamps. This chamber ranked as one of the cave's highlights until the day in 1971 when some hikers-Jack Tousuell, Henry Scheiker and a couple of friends-made a chance discovery. Stopping for a cigarette break, one of the hikers noticed that the smoke was being sucked down into the floor.They began moving rocks and dirt and, to their astonishment, unearthed a construction of logs wedged into an opening. Pulling the logs away, they stared down into a second cave chamber that had been carefully sealed off for perhaps hundreds of years. Dropping into the lower chamber, they discovered dozens of intact pots, firepits, animal bones and an underground lake fed by a subterranean stream. Clearly, Indians had used the cave for generations.

The group hid the secret of the cave's lower level for 18 years, and the chamber remained vulnerable to anyone who knew about Van Horn Cave and cared to enter. Some found the chamber, taking pots, trampling the firepits and scattering whatever remained into hopeless disorder.

In 1989, the hikers revealed the find to Trout, hoping the Forest Service would protect access to the cave. In 1990, the floor entrance to the "basement" chamber was secured with a locked metal lid, and later the cave's main entrance also was gated. Van Horn has protection as a "significant cave" under the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act, and is a recorded heritage site.

Archaeologists conclude the cave's occupants in about A.D. 1000 had built the log cover to protect their water supply in the cave's lower level. Different styles of pottery suggest more than one Indian culture had used the cave.

We unlocked the metal lid protecting the chamber, climbed down a concrete-lined shaft and crawled into the deeper levels of Van Horn Cave. I turned, my headlamp's beam moving across Seth's face. His eyes seemed huge-all pupil and amazement.

We crawled, scooted, stumbled, slipped and crab-walked uneventfully through the cave for half an hour until we reached the cliff, which lurked beyond a narrowing of The tunnel. Trout went ahead, free-climbing the cliff to secure a climbing rope at the top. Hoefer shepherded the novices, showing us how to snug into our climbing harnesses. Clipping my rope to the one Trout had thrown down from the top, I eased forward to where the tunnel floor dropped away into blackness. I willed myself to look away from the drop as I clung to my lifeline and inched across the void-feet on one wall, shoulders wedged against the opposite side - and pulled myself forward with a climbing han dle clipped to the rope. To my satisfied sur prise, I made it over the black pit without incident, then kneed my way up the cliff, which now seemed more like a steep, mud slick incline. I clambered to the top in 10 minutes, knees barely trembling. I extracted my camera from my backpack and waited for Seth to emerge from the darkness below. A short while later, I could see the wavering point of light cast by his headlamp as he climbed, pulling himself up with the handhold. I snapped away, blinding him with the flash only once or twice. I could scarcely recognize him, this confident young stranger in a hard hat who scaled the cliff like some young explorer on a TV documentary.

He reached the top, grinning with relief and accomplishment.

"You looked great." "That was kind of cool," Seth said. "You looked like a pro."

"Oh, no. I was shaking going over that hole. Just ask them," he said.

We made our way on into Van Horn's depths, where the air temperature averages 56 degrees. Limestone formed from the fossilized skeletons of billions of microscopic marine creatures that settled on sea bottoms millions of years ago, only to be buried and compressed into sedimentary rock. The pressure of overlying rock created complex fractures in the limestone. Groundwater then dissolved the limestone along these cracks, leaving mazes of tunnels, crevices and great soaring rooms when the water table fell. When the groundwater retreats, the caves begin another phase of their achingly long existence as rainwater trickles through the stone from above, emerging into the caverns through cracks in the rock. All sorts of wonderful things form when the cool, mineral-saturated water hits the cavern's warmer, humid air. The dissolved minerals crystallize, growing into stalactites, stalagmites, stone curtains or delicate crystal formations. Van Horn Cave boasts a modest assortment of these stone artworks, many lining ceiling fissures or draping over plant roots that grow down hundreds of feet. The The cave contains box work, thin mineral deposits that formed in cracks in the rock. But Van Horn Cave is best known for several waterfalls, thanks to a water table that can rise or fall 50 to 100 feet in a year. The lower area can remain under water for months or years at a time. As the water levels sink, water spills from cracks, free-falling through the darkness to spatter against the stone floor. The splashing, falling, gurgling, dripping water plays tiny harmonies against the stone and echoes in the darkness. The main waterfall was not running this day, so we wandered through the cave, gazing at the puddles, dark lakes and crystalline water glittering like scattered diamonds in the light of our headlamps.

We spent a few hours exploring the deep levels, then reluctantly turned back for the entrance. I thought it would be easier going down the cliff, but it wasn't. Crossing the pit was actually much harder, mostly because my backpack began slipping as I wedged my way over the chasm. The straps pinioned my arms, and who knows what would have become of me then without the rope.

Near sunset, we emerged from the cave, a group of weary, mud-coated explorers blinking in the light. Trout offered to take our picture, and Seth and 1, feeling accomplished, broke into big smiles. Father and son. Friends.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The cave is open to visitors from April through September by permit only. Groups entering the cave must include a person with proven climbing ability. Call Coronado National Forest, Tucson office, at (520) 670-4552 for more information. All