Lehman Caves (pronounced Lee-man [Lee..la… man! Lemon! Lee Lemon! (Futurama reference…)]) was a truly amazing place. I had to do a guided tour of the cave, as they don’t just let anyone into the caves, which is honestly a great idea, as caves truly are very fragile places. So my tour was at 2:30…. Pacific time, as Nevada is in the Pacific Time zone. It was a bit confusing for me, I had to constantly remember that the time on my phone was an hour ahead, as it didn’t get enough service to change the time.
Anyway, the tour I went on had like 20 people in it, it wasn’t bad. Plus the tour guide was very entertaining. Also, I paid for a 90 minute tour… but it was one of the last tours of the day, and ended up going for nearly 2 hours.
So this cave was truly spectacular. It contained so many typical cave features, the stalagmites, stalactites, and columns, plus some of the more common cave ‘food’ – cave popcorn, cave bacon, and cave turnips. Yet the most unique features were the shields, which I have a few pictures of below. The thing about shields are that they are very, very rare. Apparently, they are only found in about 60 caves in the entire world. And, if a shield is found in a cave, there are many, many shields present, not just one, and not just in one part of a cave either, but found throughout the cave. But the craziest thing is that there are no actively growing shields, so scientists can only hypothesize on how shields are formed. Just crazy.
But this cave was amazing. I had no idea that Great Basin National Park had a cave… nor such a unique cave for that matter. The tour was great, it took us into several main ‘rooms’ where the tour guide explained a bit about the room and its history and discovery, and allowed all of us to snap some pictures.
So all of the pictures I took below are not using flash. If you know me, I really, really hate using flash, even in dark places. So all the pictures were taken using the handheld nightshot mode on my camera.
Alex Galassi
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Getting such photos with that setting is amazing! Love them