limestone cave above Comb Wash

Bears Ears National Monument

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Geocachers assure me that there is a living limestone cave a bit north of Arch Canyon. Well, they refer to it by the formations of stalactites and stalagmites, but that's surely what they mean. The road is rather good up to the junction to get there, and then continues being good to the left until a crossing of Comb Wash. That's fine, because I'm not going to try crossing it and there is parking a short way before. The rest of the road in either direction is not something to attempt without appropriate wheels if one is looking to drive it. Odd that they sort of keep the road up to here.

The road just before it stumbles into Comb Wash and the cave that holds something a little different.

Following the road up is easy. There's a camp site at the end and a big red pickup truck trying to hide the more obvious of the trails up. There is a second across the slick rock above the canyon as well. I take the one up the dirt. It has some rather steep moments.

The edge of the canyon below the cave. It is much the same on the other side and the use trail sticks below the top layer.

Comb Ridge doesn't have the rises and falls this far north.

The riders of the huge truck are coming down, some with boisterous slides through the dirt at the bottom of the cave. I have to wait out the dust storm they make as best I can. Then the last little bit to find it is true. There is a living, growing limestone cave. Since it is rather shallow and light gets to the back each day, it is also growing with algae. But naturally. Not because someone has forgotten to keep the artificial light off as much as possible.

The structures occupy the back wall.

Less green on the south side, but the way the layers show up growing spikes is more interesting.

The shapes are so odd, even for the curtains in the back.

This looks to have been something once but now broken. The water has moved back, perhaps as the cave grew larger.

The view out.

Tall structures in the center.

The stalactites aren't so long at all.

Close up of an odd branching growth pattern. I expect this is due to the algae.

There is a little water seeping outside the cave, but not nearly so much as inside.

Next I'm off to a nearby canyon with no road, at least none officially. There's a lot more roads than officially, it seems. There's a promise of something else up this one, but I can't find it. Just a difficult to travel canyon.

The canyon ahead. The road does not go there, but to the side. Entry is via a boulder blocked canyon mouth.

One view up into the canyon. It's getting late in the day.

Looking out and across and a little south. The canyon has many areas that are jumbled rock below.

Then I head back down again, following the main wash back to the car. I must be getting tired because I manage to bang my knee again as it gets ever so slightly steep. The tear in my pants have been demonstrating that a stitch in time saves nine since the second outing in Mule Canyon yesterday and gaping, so they don't help soften the blow to the very same knee.

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One last view from the way back. Not a ruin, just the view late in the day from halfway up the old road over Comb Ridge.

In the last of the light, south along Comb Wash to the rippled section of Comb Ridge.

©2019 Valerie Norton
Written 19 Nov 2019