Ice Caves

Tate and I woke early this morning and took a trip up to the Ice Caves out on the desert. These caves are located south and east of Kilgore, Idaho. The old "Red" road is now paved, though traffic is low. At the county line we took a very rough dirt road that took us 5 miles east. Very rough. It has been 6 years since I had been out there, so it took a bit of searching before we found the caves. We did find them eventually and spent a couple of hours exploring. Most had ice, like the name implies, but the big one had 1 inch of ice on top of about 2 feet of cold, cold water, blocking our way.

These cave are actually Lava tubes, formed when lava continues to flow under a hardened surface. Then, when the source of the lava dries up, the tube drains, leaving a tunnel that can stretch for miles! Think of all the tubes that may exist deep in the earth, buried from one eruption after another.

Some of the ice was 2 feet thick and very clear. Each cave was a little bit different.






Did you know that one-third of Idaho is covered with lava. Idaho has the largest unbroken field of lava on the North American Continent, covering 23,000 square miles. The volcanic rock can be as thick as 5,000 feet that accumulated over a period of 30 million years..wOw!