1998 Northern Rockies Trip

Our Craters of the Moon camp site
Note the white of the frost on the tarp between tents and on the bench as well as the white blob of frost that broke free and landed on the lower edge of the front of my tent when we opened the door.

The four of us huddled in my "4-man" (sorry: 3 max, 2 comfortable -- why do they call it "4-man"???) tent playing "Give Me the Brain" till time to sleep. When I say "huddled," I mean that we sat on my fully-opened 3-season bag (with closed-cell pads under it) with my down bag, Subrata's sleeping bag, and all parkas puffed in around behind us to keep the cold tent walls away from us. The wind continued to howl like a banshee. When it came time to sleep, Mark & Scott went off to their tent.

Come morning, there was rime ice inside and outside both tents and the 2-gallon water bag was frozen nearly solid. When we had arrived that evening, the rangers were already off-duty, so we had to pay the following morning. When we tracked down a ranger to pay he said, "Boy! You're lucky you didn't get here last night! It was a bear!" We said, "We did. This is for last night. Do we get a price break?" :-) (Yes, we really did ask ...with a smirk. No, we didn't get a price break.)

Postcard text:
Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho
North Crater Flow Trail---
Lava flowed through this area as recently as 2,100 years ago.
Features such as pressure ridges, squeeze ups and these rafted
blocks can be seen along this trail.

My note to the recipient (who saved it for me!):
I hiked farther today than you walk in a week or two. I was
rewarded with a "matrix" blister covering the entire
underside of the head of my left #1 tarsal bone. Happily, we're
mostly driving tomorrow. They were wondering how I'd hold up to
the elements... Better than they!

From Mark's "Book of Doom":
Day 2: Sunday May 17th
Got up way early this morning (5:30), watched the sun rise, struck camp, and got on the road by 8:00. We're going to be looking for a new sleeping bag for Scott in Elko today -- his old one's falling apart... mmm... K-Mart!

And then off to Idaho. The route to Craters of the Moon National Monument (U.S. 93) is fairly smooth and straight. We end up dodging rain clouds for most of the afternoon.

We arrive at Craters of the Moon after closing and set up camp, and then have chili for dinner. By 8:00 or so, it's already getting colder... Steph breaks out "Give Me the Brain" game to pass time. Overnight low is below freezing. It's plenty warm inside the tents, though.

It was cold enough and windy enough, and we were hungry enough that the chili we heated for dinner didn't get as hot as it needed to be and cooled down dramatically as soon as it hit our mess plates. It was not entirely as appetizing as it might have been.

A scrubby pine in the middle of the barren landscape (left)

Probably a latex plant (right)

The Trail wanders thru the cinder cones.

The upper edge of a cinder crater and a lone tree at the bottom of the cone.

It was still damned cold, but not as windy come evening as it was the previous night. Still, we spent the evening playing "Give Me the Brain" till it was time to turn in.

A couple of examples of "arty" wood

A quick note about "Give Me the Brain":
Lots of folks play cards (poker, hearts, etc depending on the group) when camping. "Give Me the Brain" is a proprietary card game from Cheapass Games. It usually leads to much laughing and hilarity which can be quite restorative... especially in the face of campers griping about how cold it is. Try it sometime! It's even fun at home!

There's a really tall cinder cone that towers over the area that you can climb.
This one is basically just flat on the top ...like God just backed up his Tonka truck and dumped it there.

Various formations just floated around on top of the lava till it cooled

All the cold and wind was totally worth the rest of it! It was freezing cold (literally, there was ice and snow) inside the lava tubes and caves and searing hot (I had to peel down to tank top and shorts and was still sweating) at midday hiking on top of the dark flows. We only spent two nights there, but there was plenty more to see and do.

Some mini lava tubes and flows.

A Lava tube is formed when a stream of very liquid lava starts flowing, but cools sufficiently on the outside to form a protective crust yet allows the superheated core to continue to flow inside. If this internal stream stops flowing, the internal lava flows away leaving the crust in the form of a tube. Over time parts of the crust may collapse. A hole may form at the top and is called a skylight. The whole roof may cave in leaving a long strip of rubble. Or part of the side may break away making a nice entry point for hiking into the resulting lava tube cave.

A Helpful Tip:
Rock is an excellent insulator. After water and snow and ice has collected in a lava tube over the long, northern winter, you're gonna encounter ice on the floor of some of the lava tube caves. Walk CAREFULLY. You could be walking on ice!

Another Helpful Tip:
Lava tubes that have not developed skylights are DARK! Take a flashlight or lantern.

Yet Another Helpful Tip:
If you're leading your group in a lava tube cave that has an ice floor, it is not helpful to point your flashlight beam at the ice floor at a point between yourself and your group. The light will just reflect off the ice and blind your now-former friends.

Puffy lava and lumpy lava
There are simply too many ways the lava flowed and cooled and shaped itself to capture them all in a single web site. You just have to go there and see!

More floating artifacts
The technical term is, I believe, rafts.