Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25037
says Stephen Fairchild, lifelong spelunker and president of the Sierra Nevada Recreation Corporation which owns and operates several underground cav erns in the northern California gold country. He's talking about their newest cave: Black Chasm. Originally dis covered by miners in 1850, and abandoned after a viewing platform for tourists collapsed, the cave opened last September. During an early exploration of Black Chasm, Fairchild rappelled 170 feet into the dark. In the beam of the electric light mounted on his hard hat, he saw a four-inch slit in a wall of clay. He started digging. Two feet in, the muck opened up to a narrow passageway. Fairchild wormed headfirst into the hole to find a chamber of tiny pointed stalagmites and a frost blanket of delicate, crystal-clear calcite formations. On the ceiling were dagger-sharp stalactites and gnarled, milk-white helictites that look like tree roots. "Several cave operators told me this cave was undevelopable," Fairchild says. "They said that with the sheer vertical distances, mud and strenuous climbing, this would never work as a commercial cave." Fairchild thinks back to the wonder and reverence he felt standing in the little room he knew had never before been visited by another human being. "They shouldn't have told me that. I'm only interested in what everybody else gives up on." Commercial caves are spelunking training grounds. "Caves are sensitive-one careless move can break off a formation that took thousands of years to form-and dangerous. There is a lot to learn," says Fairchild, who has caved from Mexico to Russia. Experienced caver and photographer Ann Bosted says spelunking is gaining popularity: "It's like indoor mountaineering, but it doesn't hinge on the weather." Black Chasm is not for the faint-hearted. With two rope rappels, raft trips across cold underground lakes and slurping mud, this guided wild cave trip is a good introduction to the serious underground scene. -Dennis Pottenger