Just a few steps in (and it wasn't really so narrow at all) and then it was "WOW!" It's absolutely amazing and like another world in there. I'm so glad I did! Our guide was very reassuring and told me that really only the entrance itself, just the first few feet, is a little tight but once you get through there it really opens up and it's beautiful in there. So I read lots of reviews and looked at photos and based on that I decided to try this one. This is a great place for family visit and is certainly worth the stop of you are in the area.Īnd I am claustrophobic! My wife really wanted to see some caverns and I wanted to oblige but was reluctant. There are quite a few steep stairs to climb on the way out. All in all you'll spend approximately 30 - 40 minutes in the cave. The other two chambers are relatively big.
The first chamber shows the "pool" and has a drop of nearly 100' so take this into account. The temperature inside the cave is a constant 58F so plan accordingly. The cave tour itself takes you into 3 separate chambers. This is a great activity for kids and each of our four (ages 8 - 13) thoroughly enjoyed. Inside you can purchase bags of earth which either contain minerals, fossils, or arrowheads. Outside of the gift shop they have water flowing through log pipes with sifters. The facility has a gravel parking lot, clean restrooms, and decent gift shop.
One of the important things to keep in mind when planning a visit is tours leave 20 minutes after the hour and take place once an hour, so if you arrive at 11:15, you will likely have to wait until 12:20. All in all, not a bad way to spend a day.California Gold country is filled with little off the beaten path attractions and the Black Chasm Caverns is certainly one of them! The main chamber of Black Chasm was used as a model for the Zion cave in the second and third Matrix movies, so that was kind of cool.īoth Black Chasm Cavern and Moaning Cavern provide a sluice so kids and family can pretend they are prospectors panning for gems (you buy a bag of gravel and dirt which has been doped with a certain amount of crystals and wash away the dirt using the sluice box). Black Chasm Cavern is probably most notable for its helictites - calcium carbonate formations that grow not upward or downward due to dripping water, but outward in small spicules that can come straight out, bend around randomly, and even curl back on itself. There were tons of chambers, but only three that we could visit (but you could see into several more, each with unique formations). It was probably over 400 ft deep (as far as we could see) but went deeper than that under a pool of water. They had just had their power restored, so we drove back to Black Chasm (another hour of driving…).īlack Chasm turned out to be a much more extensive (and deeper) cavern than Moaning. We then had the staff at Moaning call Black Chasm for us to see if they had their power back yet.
BLACK CHASM ZIP
zip line (outside of course), but we didn't do that. Pictured here are two rappellers performing the second half of their descent. Watching someone rappel down really puts a sense of scale to the vastness of the room. We took our time at the bottom and watched a few people rappel down. He was also entertaining and amusingly morbid (he explained how the first discoverers would enter the cavern and after a couple steps take the "seven-second tour" - the length of time it takes to fall the height of the cavern - then he showed us the LARGE COLLECTION of bones from animals, children, and adults that had fallen over the millennia through the entrance hole - nice!). The guide explained a lot about the rock formations and how the stalactites and stalagmites grow over time. We went down 234 steps on a narrow staircase (partially steep and straight down, the rest narrow and spiraled) to descend all the way to the bottom. Since we had my in-laws with us, we walked - otherwise, I'd have totally jumped on the rappelling opportunity. You can rappel down to the bottom (for about $65) or walk down the stairs. They main cavern chamber is 165 ft deep and is the largest publicly viewable cavern in California. (I called ahead to make sure they had power - they did.) I was all for going on the flashlight tour, but Tina and her parent's thought it would be better to move on to a town with power (so we could get some food) and to Moaning Cavern. They were still giving tours, but with flashlights.
We first went to Black Chasm Cavern but found out the entire area didn't have any power (so no bathrooms were available there and almost everything in the town of Volcano was closed). Tina and I took her parents to a couple of caverns in Califonia's Gold Country.
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