Mushpot Cave

Mushpot Cave is a lava tube 770 feet long, a short walk from the visitor center at Lava Beds National Monument in northeastern California, and the Park Service treats it as an extension of the visitor center. It is the only cave in the park with lights, a paved path, and interpretive signs explaining its formations, ecology and cave climate, and the park recommends that everybody new to caving starts here.

Lava Beds covers more than 46,000 acres of Siskiyou and Modoc counties on the northeastern flank of Medicine Lake Volcano, the largest volcano by area in the Cascade Range, where the Cascade, Sierra-Klamath and Great Basin provinces meet. Flows of smooth lava between 10,500 and 65,000 years ago formed its caves, and as the lava cooled they became homes for unique cave life. Some 27 lava tubes have marked entrances and trails. The monument also holds fumaroles, cinder and spatter cones, pit craters and hornitos, and in 1872 and 1873 it was the ground of the Modoc War, involving a band led by Kintpuash, known as Captain Jack, whose name is kept by the area called Captain Jack's Stronghold. It was established on 21 November 1925.

The caves are home to large, stable populations of at least 14 species of bats. In summer some caves close to protect maternity colonies where thousands of pups cling to the ceiling, and in winter hibernating bats can die if woken too often. Every cave needs a free caving permit from the visitor center, which helps keep the fungus behind white-nose syndrome from spreading. Even in lit Mushpot the park suggests extra lights and a watchful head; the commonest injury it sees is a cut or bump on the head, so a helmet is worth it, and basic ones are sold at the visitor center.

From Mushpot the next step is usually Valentine Cave, with smooth, organic-looking walls that still look much as they did the day after the lava cooled, and from there the harder tubes, each ranked by the park so you can choose the one that suits you.