Possible Undiscovered Cavern In Death Valley

[GowerGulch42]

I had read - somewhere - that one of the adits at Leadfield hit a natural limestone cavern. I've wondered, without anything definitive, if it was one on the slopes just west of the townsite that is closed off with steel bars to allow bat passage.

Correct. A few other adits in the area also hit smaller caverns.*

Nevada has had the luxury of having a surpassingly cold and wet climate for a long time now - due to its altitude - and most mountain ranges of the eastern 1/2 of the state have at least some caverns. Up around Great Basin and Eureka, large caves are practically common. There's a lot of water in those hills. Some caves in that area of Nevada are so old that they're completely dry - possibly millions of years old.

Why doesn't Death Valley have any large caves? It never went through the right kind of climatic conditions. Some old rocks in the south of the Park (Kingston Range and Ibex Hills, for instance) have "paleokarst" which are basically the crushed remains of caves hundreds of millions of years old. I haven't seen those, but they're on my DV Geology Bucket List. 

The National Cave and Karst Resource Database lists Death Valley NP as having 72 caves, split among limestone karstic caves, mineshaft (honestly a hell of a lot more than 72 there!), and pseudokarst (mud caves). The National Cave Resources Protection Act makes it nearly impossible for regular folks to get a hold of cave maps and locations, for good reason, but with a little geo-sleuthing you can get a good idea of where they should be. The rocks I know of which have some cavernous weathering are around Leadfield, Lost Burro Gap, and Devil's Hole. There's a few caves around the latter, most well-protected and unremarkable. The short summary of all that I just said is that Death Valley has areas with known cavernous weathering, but basically no known large caves. Most of those 72 caves are rock shelters in limestones, including that big overhang in Cottonwood Canyon. There's a number of mud caves, but none really large enough to explore (as far as I know…).


One more thought – the mountains of Death Valley are pretty young. The result of that is steep, rugged topography which is hugely unfavorable to cave formation. There's a few spots I've been looking at since I started this post with some karstic features (stone-forest-like spires) in high, inaccessible terrain. I still won't rule out any explorable caverns, but the odds are slim in my opinion. I'd love to be wrong.