Valentine Cave
Hike Review
On the cave guide, it stated that if there was only time to explore one cave, this one would be it, and it’s hard to disagree.
This cave was long (498 m) and while it was marked as a beginner cave, we found it to be the most complicated beginner cave we visited that day.
There were multiple paths that one could take (the optional paths were all low-ceiling and required crawling/duck-walking) and the last 1/4 of the cave was a low-ceiling affair.
We saw one couple in this cave, so it was tied for the second busiest cave we walked that day.
Unlike other caves, which were pristine, we found candles, hair ties, coins, and flowers that were left behind by others. When we entered the cave, we thought we smelled smoke and we theorized it was from these candles being put out.
The cave got more and more humid the further we went in. This meant that the last 1/3 of the cave was wet with gold-colored bacteria thriving on the ceilings. They were the highlights of this cave.
What Happened?
We left this as our last cave as it was the last cave in the monument if exiting via the south-east route, which we were. This cave would have been good for us to visit in any order, but we were glad we put it last as it was our favorite cave and we think if we had seen this cave earlier, we might have been disappointed in some of the other caves.
This cave started much like the others requiring a walk down some stairs to a depression that led to the entrance. Once we were through the entrance, we were surprised at the few figure 8s that seemed to be in front of us with one arm of the figure 8 having high ceilings and the other having a low ceiling. While we went through the low one first, we kept to the high ceiling paths in the subsequent diverging paths.
As we walked on, we noticed how humid (and warm) the cave was getting and started seeing silver on the ceiling. It wasn’t silver, but just water droplets reflecting our headlamp lights back at us. Soon though, the silver color turned to gold as we started seeing blooms of the gold-colored bacteria that was thriving in the humid environment.
We duck-walked and crawled our way to the end of the cave and were awed at how different this cave was from all the others (to be honest, each cave was different and had its own personality). However, we were glad to be leaving as it was getting a bit too humid and warm for us in this cave.
When we got back to Ramona, we changed our clothes into our most comfortable ones, changed our shoes out for sandals, and got comfortable in our seats as it would take us about 7 hours to get home.