Sequoia next May

cruisehopeful

DIS Veteran
Joined
Oct 25, 2015
I reserved a weekend for Sequoia next May. It looks now like it is too early in the season to go to Crystal Caves. I am thinking of changing dates because of that, but the calendar isn't letting me look far enough, yet. It's hard to get a room May/June and I think with my schedule, I won't be able to check online often enough to get a room later in the season (end of May or early June).

I was looking for feedback on visiting the Crystal Cave while there. I know it eats up most of a day, but I wanted to do it because I don't know if I'll ever have the opportunity to go into a cave like that again. Has anyone here done it? There are several types of tours. I am mostly looking at Discovery tour.
 
I've done it. I checked this year's online reservation system, and the tour season starts May 25. It was a while ago, and back then tour tickets had to be purchased in person at one of the NPS visitor centers. I believe only the ones at Lodgepole or Foothills had them. It's not really an all day thing, although it's better to get there early just in case it takes a while to get there. It's a narrow one-lane road and it gets kind of dicey when there's traffic in both directions pulling over. But the tour is on 50 minutes. It also takes about 15 minutes to get down to the cave entrance from the parking lot. There's also lots of poison oak along the way to the entrance.

An alternative would have been Boyden Cavern, which is in the Giant Sequoia National Monument portion of Sequoia National Forest. Technically that's in Kings Canyon. However, it looks like it's currently closed due to a dispute over who will pay for a pedestrian bridge destroyed by the Rough Fire that leads to the cave and what will be involved. The licensed concessionaire claims that the federal government owns the property and that the USDA should directly pay for a replacement bridge. The Forest Service says that they will waive the annual permit fee for several years in lieu of paying for it directly. There's also a dispute over whether the structural metal is safe to reuse after the fire who would be paying for tests on the structure to determine if it's OK to reuse.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/sequoia/recarea/?recid=79588
http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article96275952.html
 
@bcla Have you ever visited the Mitchell Cavers in the Mojave desert? I am thinking I may just do a trip there soon and forget about the Crystal Cavern in Sequoia.
 
@bcla Have you ever visited the Mitchell Cavers in the Mojave desert? I am thinking I may just do a trip there soon and forget about the Crystal Cavern in Sequoia.

The only cave tours I've ever done in California are Crystal Cave in Sequoia NP and Boyden Cavern in Sequoia NF. I've actually done the latter about three times over the years. If you're really interested in caves, there's a couple of talus caves at Pinnacles NP near King City, although when they're open varies depending on weather and the presence of bats.

https://www.nps.gov/pinn/planyourvisit/cavestatus.htm

I tried finding more on Boyden Caverns, but it's been closed for a while. Their website seems to be dead, but I found a link to the former (not the current one with the financial dispute) operator, which still operates a couple of caves in Calaveras County

http://caverntours.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Caverns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moaning_Cavern

 



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