18: Montana Musings C

Glory to Jesus Christ, y'all!

Since childhood, I've been fascinated by underground places, whether caves or mines. Looking down a man-made tunnel or gallery, or a down a natural one, evokes within me a sense of mystery simultaneous with adventure.

Neither of these underground spaces came into being without considerable drama, whether by pickaxes and explosives or by the earlier posted-about actions of the Great Flood of Noah.

And there is an element of surprised wonder when you enter into one of these places. I remember Crystal Cave in Kutztown, PA, a large room or rooms with eye-poppingly beautiful formations, all under a very ordinary-looking low wooded hill. It was in my childhood, my first ever underground experience. You went through a door into the hill, then down some stairs, the air rapidly got cool, then your eyes widened 👀, your mouth agape.

Caverns, being natural, are God's artistry, beautiful in their variety and individual personality: impressively long like Mammoth Cave (KY), of staggering variety like Meramec Caverns (MO), cute like Lost River Caverns (PA), or man-enhanced like Luray Caverns (VA) with their Stalacpipe Organ which uses various individual ceiling formations as sources of tone, each producing a note through being connected to a little electric hammer and microphone.

Each is an example of God bringing good out of evil: mystery-wrapped beauty out of the cataclysm of the Great Flood, the Flood necessitated by the need to rescue souls from a life almost unavoidably leading everyone to hell, with no other alternative possible.

With the above in mind we will now take a tour of the formations (speleothems) found in the Lewis and Clark Caverns near Whitehall, Montana, roughly halfway between Butte and Bozeman.

The Caverns have two entrances, the upper roughly 200 vertical feet above the lower. (See far left of map.)

The upper opening (Entrance) is natural. In colder weather, the cool, humid air inside would come out and condense, forming a plume of vapor. This led to it be called Smoking Mountain. However, the tunnels/galleries of the Caverns were mostly below that entrance, so, pre-WWII, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) blasted out the 500-ft access tunnel pictured far above. Both entrances are now protected by locked doors. (We were told of one poor fellow of the CCC that decided to explore the Caverns ALONE at the start of a weekend. He got lost and his lamp went out. After a couple of days, he was finally found, lying in a fetal position, not responsive to calls bc, in that total darkness and deep silence, he thought he was hallucinating! Only physical touch was believable to him. Took him a week to recover. COMMON SENSE around underground cavities, please!!🤦‍♂️)

Entering can be a dizzying affair when you're not accustomed to the 5300-ft altitude…

…but the staggering and risk of bumping one's head on the ceiling is worth it when the Paradise Room is entered!!

A plethora of speleothems meets the eye within one field of view:

— StalaCtites (C for ceiling): fang-like things hanging down.

— StalaGmites (G for ground): fang-like things pointing up. They tend to be thicker.

— Flowstone: the beard-like ridges on the stalagmites. And on the walls. And smoothly covering the floor in spots.

(Note numerous small Stalactites.)

— Soda Straws: tiny Stalactites that are hollow inside.

— Columns: when a Stalagmite and Stalactite grow to meet and join.

(Here's Babe Ruth's Baseball Bat.)

— Cave Popcorn

(Note the 55-degree tilt of the pre-speleothem limestone strata.)

— Draperies: Stalactites growing into an undulating curtain-like slab of stone hanging from the ceiling.

(Far right, above the brim of my friend's cowboy hat.)

— Cave Bacon: Draperies w undulatingly parallel stripes.

Remember, they are all post-Flood phenomena, still occuring today. (Just ask Rocky, your now-petrified teddy bear! 😅)

Next post, we'll look at how these speleothems are formed.

Until then,

Our Lady of Guadalupe, guide and protect us!!