The South Riding RV Travels

June 2nd - Provo UT - Timpanogos Cave

Having failed to visit the caves the previous day we started bright and early climbing up through American Fork Canyon to visit the Timpanogos Caves. There is a fairly stiff 1.5 mile climb on a tarmacadam path all the way to the entrance at 6700ft, some 1092ft above the canyon floor. Along the way you catch this view of Provo and Lake Utah (not the salty one). The climb is predicted to take about an hour and a half although we managed in just over half that. The others on our tour took longer. This is another feature managed by the Parks Service

The cave walk is half a mile in length and my knowledge of geology is way inadequate to describe what we saw. There are three caves which were connected by tunnels in the 1930s, the path and lighting was good and the ranger guiding us was informative.

I had spent some time looking for a camera with a variable sensitivity (up to 1600ASA in old film speed terms). This paid dividends in that I was able to take viewable photos in the negligible light available. If you use flash it just washes out because the surfaces are too close to you.

The path to and from the caves is a feat in itself. At one point a short tunnel has been cut through the rock. On the left hand side is a diagonal white streak which is a fault line. Great care was needed to avoid the whole rock face falling away.

The path down is almost as difficult as it was coming up. You just use different muscles as you work your way down the traverses. At the higher levels the view down the canyon is worth a second view particularly as the sun was now so much higher and so reached into the canyon.

The river in the bottom was really in full flood because of the melting snow from the peaks high above the valley. This was true of all the canyons heading east from the Salt Lake Valley. We had hoped to go further up the canyon following a route called Alpine Drive. But the road is quite a switchback and was also closed due to flooding higher up the canyon. So it was not to be. So we headed north.