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family and friends living near old lava flows and when visiting we visited one really nice one. It has a tunnel that was made and the controlled air flow allowed ice to form in the summer. Sonya Henne iced skated in the middle of a frozen lake in it long ago. They made a lot of money off the ice as it was the only way to have a cold beer in the Summer.
North of Twin Falls in the middle of the lava fields.
That sounds like the Shoshone Ice Caves to me.
They were once a famous tourist attraction because they're close to Sun Valley. The movie stars who vacationed in Sun Valley used to tour around the area, so that story about Sonia Henne sounds very likely to me. She was the biggest skating star in the world back in the day, and starred in several movies.
Nowadays, they're still open but aren't as well known as they once were. A lot of those old tourist attractions were passed by once the Interstates were built. Shoshone had a fully developed campground, with RV hookups and all, but it's been a long time since I was last there.
There are a lot of ice caves in the lavas, along with dry caves. Almost all of it is open to exploration, but it's a very good idea to go very well prepared, and it's essential to let others know where you're going and when you expect to return.
Once lost in the lavas, it's very easy to stay lost forever. A few years ago two ladies went to the Craters for a day tour, and never checked in at the office before they went on their little day hike. The weather was fine, but there were few folks in the Craters that day.
Somehow, one just disappeared, unnoticed by the other. As far as I know, she hasn't been found yet.
There are also many stories of lost treasure that's been hidden in the caves; it's impossible to say how many of them are true, but the Arco Desert was close to part of the gold trail that all the gold from the mines in Montana and NID travelled over to reach the gold's final destination in Salt Lake City, Denver, and other areas.
The caves are mostly lava tubes, so they can stretch for miles, and many have different levels. Each is it's own little mini-environment. I've seen ferns in them that are enormous and could be ancient.
That sounds like the Shoshone Ice Caves to me.
They were once a famous tourist attraction because they're close to Sun Valley. The movie stars who vacationed in Sun Valley used to tour around the area, so that story about Sonia Henne sounds very likely to me. She was the biggest skating star in the world back in the day, and starred in several movies.
Nowadays, they're still open but aren't as well known as they once were. A lot of those old tourist attractions were passed by once the Interstates were built. Shoshone had a fully developed campground, with RV hookups and all, but it's been a long time since I was last there.
There are a lot of ice caves in the lavas, along with dry caves. Almost all of it is open to exploration, but it's a very good idea to go very well prepared, and it's essential to let others know where you're going and when you expect to return.
Once lost in the lavas, it's very easy to stay lost forever. A few years ago two ladies went to the Craters for a day tour, and never checked in at the office before they went on their little day hike. The weather was fine, but there were few folks in the Craters that day.
Somehow, one just disappeared, unnoticed by the other. As far as I know, she hasn't been found yet.
There are also many stories of lost treasure that's been hidden in the caves; it's impossible to say how many of them are true, but the Arco Desert was close to part of the gold trail that all the gold from the mines in Montana and NID travelled over to reach the gold's final destination in Salt Lake City, Denver, and other areas.
The caves are mostly lava tubes, so they can stretch for miles, and many have different levels. Each is it's own little mini-environment. I've seen ferns in them that are enormous and could be ancient.
That is the area I was speaking of. Like anything else underground and spacious be very careful and let people know where you are going and do not go alone. I remember looking at the lava fields and trying to imagine how big they were.
That sounds like the Shoshone Ice Caves to me.
They were once a famous tourist attraction because they're close to Sun Valley. The movie stars who vacationed in Sun Valley used to tour around the area, so that story about Sonia Henne sounds very likely to me. She was the biggest skating star in the world back in the day, and starred in several movies.
Nowadays, they're still open but aren't as well known as they once were. A lot of those old tourist attractions were passed by once the Interstates were built. Shoshone had a fully developed campground, with RV hookups and all, but it's been a long time since I was last there.
There are a lot of ice caves in the lavas, along with dry caves. Almost all of it is open to exploration, but it's a very good idea to go very well prepared, and it's essential to let others know where you're going and when you expect to return.
Once lost in the lavas, it's very easy to stay lost forever. A few years ago two ladies went to the Craters for a day tour, and never checked in at the office before they went on their little day hike. The weather was fine, but there were few folks in the Craters that day.
Somehow, one just disappeared, unnoticed by the other. As far as I know, she hasn't been found yet.
There are also many stories of lost treasure that's been hidden in the caves; it's impossible to say how many of them are true, but the Arco Desert was close to part of the gold trail that all the gold from the mines in Montana and NID travelled over to reach the gold's final destination in Salt Lake City, Denver, and other areas.
The caves are mostly lava tubes, so they can stretch for miles, and many have different levels. Each is it's own little mini-environment. I've seen ferns in them that are enormous and could be ancient.
I wouldn't have thought people would like to explore caves that go who knows where but one would think it's all guided or mapped?
I wouldn't have thought people would like to explore caves that go who knows where but one would think it's all guided or mapped?
You will find an ethic of "personal responsibility" here in Idaho. One example which is very unlike the nanny-state where you currently live...you will not see guard rails on the edges of roads. Not along cliff-edge mountain roads. Not along roads right next to rivers. Very few indeed...anywhere. There will be some in urban areas of the interstates, otherwise, not many. You either drive safely and responsibly, or you go over the edge or into the river. It's all on you. The state is not going to protect you from your stupid behavior.
You will find an ethic of "personal responsibility" here in Idaho. One example which is very unlike the nanny-state where you currently live...you will not see guard rails on the edges of roads. Not along cliff-edge mountain roads. Not along roads right next to rivers. Very few indeed...anywhere. There will be some in urban areas of the interstates, otherwise, not many. You either drive safely and responsibly, or you go over the edge or into the river. It's all on you. The state is not going to protect you from your stupid behavior.
Here they will put up a net to protect those people who want to commit suicide
Ruin what was a perfectly beautiful gun with some type of stupid ugly contraption of a safety device.
Here yes lots of stupid driving and aggressive driving road rage, freeway violence, freeway shootings.
Another biggie is drivers here don't stop for stop signs. Yet with all the mayhem going on there is still a giant population problem here.
There are places in west where guardrails make good sense. More to far more good sense than in less dramatic terrain. It may be a philosophical statement but it does not impress me much when considering impact on passengers and even not present at the accident families & businesses beyond the individual and in some cases the environment. If you are going to spend for road engineering, bridge safety, traffic signals / signs, speed limits, traffic patrols, tire standards, etc., I'd spend appropriately / efficiently on guard rails too. I have written local and state officials in Colorado suggesting that any location with more than x going off road accidents or y fatalities should be scheduled for guard rails. That probably isn't a foreign concept but it seems to be action under acted upon. There are spots where I know of 1 or more fatal accidents but still no guard rails, even with requests specifically for them there. I'd take some money out of road re-surfacing as necessary. Allowing stupidity and bad luck is costly and not that intrusive in this case, imo.
It is quite possible for some places to overspend on guard rails and other places to under-spend.
Volo and Crow are both partly right.
There is a strong libertarian personal responsibility attitude here but there are also spots along the highway that have guard rails because they're dangerous, whether you're driving responsibly or not.
Trying to put guard rails up to protect from road danger is simply impossible to do here when a major highway follows a river in a narrow canyon for 100 miles because it's the only place a road could be built. Every mile would need a guard rail on the river side, and another on the canyon side. it would cost millions and millions to build that.
...and once built, a car that spun out of control would be slammed around by the guard rails, and end up in the middle of the road, becoming a hazard to on-coming traffic from both sides.
So a response for one accident could easily turn into a response for 2 or 3 accidents instead.
Added to that is the fact that some of these highways aren't graded in their turns well because the terrain wouldn't allow a safe gradient on the turn.
I just described a big bunch of our 2-lanes here. None of them are dangerous from stem to stern, but I can't think of a single one that does not have dangerous spots in it somewhere. The state road and bridge knows where there all are, but if a driver doesn't see a guard rail, it isn't became Idaho is negligent, nor too cheap to install one. It's because a rail can't be installed there, or if one was installed it would increase, not lessen the danger.
So it is ultimately all up to the driver. The state marks these dangerous spots with speed limit signs very well, and many show the driver what's ahead- a sharp turn, a series of small turns, or whatever.
The only way to navigate them safely is to heed the speed limit signs. Once through, there are other signs that announce the driver can return to the max legal speed limit of the road.
Those slow-down signs are all set at limits slow enough that any vehicle that's on the road, no matter how good or bad, will be able to navigate the area safely.
Under normal conditions. If there's a blizzard going on, or the road is icy, wet, or slick, then a driver may have to slow down even further. That's the personal responsibility element happening.
Even then, anyone can still skid and slide off from something sudden. Livestock on the road, wildlife crossing, a spot hail storm that turns 5 miles of highway into a roller skating rink.
The only protection a driver has for any of those things is alertness, travel at a speed slow enough for basic safety, and a good set of tires that have traction.
A slide-off isn't always a life or death thing. It can be, of course, but safe speed can cut down the danger to a better point of survivability.
I found making headway even when I can only drive safely at 25 mph is still better that sliding off the road. Once I'm off the road it is either dig out or wait for a wrecker, and all that time and effort could put me 30 miles farther on down the road instead, if I'm driving slow enough to control my outfit.
I often have a lot of cars pass me in occasions like that. I often pass them 15 miles later, when they're high-centered in a snow bank and stuck for the next 4-5 hours in the middle of nowhere.
The 20 minutes it took me to catch up to them is nothing in comparison to the time they'll be spending waiting for the wrecker to show up.
I don't mind being called a Granny at all when I'm warming my toes by the fire at home, while they are freezing theirs out in the snowbank, and still 2 hours away from their home.
I wouldn't have thought people would like to explore caves that go who knows where but one would think it's all guided or mapped?
I'm sure Shoshone is mapped, but I'm pretty sure few others are.
There are quite a few of these lava caves that are quite open at their mouth and don't extend very far- maybe 100 yards(? never measured). Caves like this can be explored sometimes without the need of anything but a bright sunny day.
But at the same time, another cave like it may have 3 or 4 smaller tunnels at the far end, each just big enough to get into, and God only knows how far any of them go.
Lava forms these tubes as it cools. The surface cools the fastest, while the molten rock flows on. The crust is the top of the tube cave when the lava finally stops flowing outward. It happens in 3 dimensions too.
And from the surface very few of these tube caves are easily visible. Anyone could be hiking on top of one of them for miles and never know there's a cave underfoot that's 12 feet high, because it's 12 feet below the hiker's feet. Each twists and turns, often back upon itself, and/or up, down, or sideways. They join and converge, and can end at a vertical wall of lava at any time.
I grew up in a state where, to my memory, there was a guardrail at most sharp curves and pretty much anywhere the shoulder fell off more than 4 - 6 feet. Maybe it wasn't quite always that, but so common I almost never saw a place that might need it that didn't have one. If not everywhere, at least at all the worst spots. Probably too much. It did make it surprising to see 100 foot, 500 foot drops off shoulders with accident history without guard rails in the west. It is so rare to see one, you notice them. And that can help.
Yeah, use caution. The highway I travel home has some unguarded 250 foot drops. Some pulloffs and driveways and some real short pulloffs that probably shouldn't be used at all or at least not at anything faster than a careful creep. If you misjudged what kind of pull off it was, maybe as an unfamiliar tourist looking for their turnout, you could be flying a second from then. 3 slideoff wrecks in recent years to people I know of on this one road- alcohol involved in 2. Major but not fatal injuries in those 2 cases. Probably hundreds of thousands in medical expenses contributing to high rates for most. A grandma and a 8 year boy were lucky to not get hurt in their going too fast / hit the brakes on ice mistake. Not at the worst spots but bad enough. More people that I don't know on this road and within half an hour of here, including a failure to maneuver a curve fatality about 2 weeks ago. I dunno if a guard rail would have made the difference in that one. Maybe it would have raised awareness about the sharp turn. But the guy was drunk and going too fast.
Going to happen, but might be less with more active risk reduction.
Volo and Crow are both partly right.
There is a strong libertarian personal responsibility attitude here but there are also spots along the highway that have guard rails because they're dangerous, whether you're driving responsibly or not.
Trying to put guard rails up to protect from road danger is simply impossible to do here when a major highway follows a river in a narrow canyon for 100 miles because it's the only place a road could be built. Every mile would need a guard rail on the river side, and another on the canyon side. it would cost millions and millions to build that.
...and once built, a car that spun out of control would be slammed around by the guard rails, and end up in the middle of the road, becoming a hazard to on-coming traffic from both sides.
So a response for one accident could easily turn into a response for 2 or 3 accidents instead.
Added to that is the fact that some of these highways aren't graded in their turns well because the terrain wouldn't allow a safe gradient on the turn.
I just described a big bunch of our 2-lanes here. None of them are dangerous from stem to stern, but I can't think of a single one that does not have dangerous spots in it somewhere. The state road and bridge knows where there all are, but if a driver doesn't see a guard rail, it isn't became Idaho is negligent, nor too cheap to install one. It's because a rail can't be installed there, or if one was installed it would increase, not lessen the danger.
So it is ultimately all up to the driver. The state marks these dangerous spots with speed limit signs very well, and many show the driver what's ahead- a sharp turn, a series of small turns, or whatever.
The only way to navigate them safely is to heed the speed limit signs. Once through, there are other signs that announce the driver can return to the max legal speed limit of the road.
Those slow-down signs are all set at limits slow enough that any vehicle that's on the road, no matter how good or bad, will be able to navigate the area safely.
Under normal conditions. If there's a blizzard going on, or the road is icy, wet, or slick, then a driver may have to slow down even further. That's the personal responsibility element happening.
Even then, anyone can still skid and slide off from something sudden. Livestock on the road, wildlife crossing, a spot hail storm that turns 5 miles of highway into a roller skating rink.
The only protection a driver has for any of those things is alertness, travel at a speed slow enough for basic safety, and a good set of tires that have traction.
A slide-off isn't always a life or death thing. It can be, of course, but safe speed can cut down the danger to a better point of survivability.
I found making headway even when I can only drive safely at 25 mph is still better that sliding off the road. Once I'm off the road it is either dig out or wait for a wrecker, and all that time and effort could put me 30 miles farther on down the road instead, if I'm driving slow enough to control my outfit.
I often have a lot of cars pass me in occasions like that. I often pass them 15 miles later, when they're high-centered in a snow bank and stuck for the next 4-5 hours in the middle of nowhere.
The 20 minutes it took me to catch up to them is nothing in comparison to the time they'll be spending waiting for the wrecker to show up.
I don't mind being called a Granny at all when I'm warming my toes by the fire at home, while they are freezing theirs out in the snowbank, and still 2 hours away from their home.
This is an extremely informative post. So many people from states like California just assume the roads are similar to what they're used to. Like you've said in a past post Mike, you need to be alert and prepared for the worst when driving these roads, especially in winter.
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I wouldn't have thought people would like to explore caves that go who knows where but one would think it's all guided or mapped?
