Lint Camp: Cleaning Lehman Caves, Then Going Off the Trail

On the 90-minute tour of Lehman Caves, at the Sunken Garden, look past the railing. There's a rough path disappearing into the dark — something beyond the guided tour, something wilder. Peggy Horton, a volunteer at Great Basin National Park, got to find out what lies there, by going to Lint Camp.

Cleaning lint in the Giant's Ear area. Credit: G. Baker, National Park Service.

Volunteering underground

Horton came from New Hampshire, the "Live Free or Die" state, inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt's advice to do the thing you think you cannot do. She took a three-month volunteer post supporting the rangers who guide visitors through Lehman Caves' rooms of formations — a walk back through millions of years to the cave's creation, with stories of its history and early visitors along the way. Every visit, she found something new.

Lint Camp brings volunteers from all over the country to work with the cave's resource management staff on restoring it to its natural state:

• dusting debris off formations;
• scraping up dirt from old pathways;
• treating algae that grows near the lights.

The reward at the end of the day: a guided off-trail tour of the Talus Room and the West Room.

Off the trail

Lint Camp participants entering an off-trail part of the cave. Credit: National Park Service.

The first thing you notice is the dark. Even with headlamps and company, it fills the corners, the ceiling and the cracks. The path is gone, and you scramble over broken rock "like mountain goats," with tall walls that seem endless in the darkness. Then comes a 15-foot climb over big rocks — a solid grip, steady feet, and a helmet for the low rock that appears without warning. At the top, a climb leads on to magnificent flowstone covered in initials and writing from years past, where everyone makes up their own story about who left them.

Past the small opening of the Gypsum Annex ("an adventure for another day"), a room as long as a football field and 80 feet tall opens up. The walls glow with rainbow color, the formations grow more elaborate, and forests of soda straws hang from the ceiling, each tipped with a drop that shines like starlight in a headlamp. Returning to the paved cave path, Horton writes, "feels like a coming home."

A wilder tour to come

The Park Service is working on turning the off-trail experience into a more advanced caving trip — another way to get people excited about the beauty of caves, and to inspire them to protect them.

Sources

Based on "Walk on the Wilder Side," by Peggy Horton, park volunteer, The Midden (Great Basin National Park), Vol. 18, No. 1, Summer 2018, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.