Coronado Cave
Alan Cressler, Brandon Stephens, Jeff Moore, Greg Huston
We parked at the visitor center, got a permit, and hiked 700 vertical feet up the trail to the cave. The desert scenery was beautiful; there were surprisingly a great number of trees. The entrance to Coronado Cave wasn’t real large but the passage opened considerably as we descended the dusty slope. Brandon and I hid our backpacks behind some rocks and joined the others. The passage was 40-60’ wide and often 20’ high. The neatest thing about this cave was that the dip of the bedding plan was almost perpendicular to the cave development. The angled bedding was very obvious in the ceiling where the layers of rock would often stair step down creating a profile different than anything I’d seen before. We followed the huge, dry, walking passage for about 600’. Towards the end, the passage became smaller and we climbed up to the second, gated entrance. My head wouldn’t even fit through the bars. Air was blowing out of the cave. To Slick En Sides
By Brian Killingbeck © 2005
By Brian Killingbeck © 2005