Northern Colorado Grotto

Spanish Cave is by far the largest and most dangerous cave on Marble Mountain. In fact, the spelunkers who have explored it call it the worst cave in the state and their contentions are truly justified.

...I must reiterate: "Spanish cave is the most dangerous cave in Colorado and should be explored by highly experienced cavers only!" Caves of Colorado, p. 112.
On Friday August 20, 1993 Chris Andrews, Chad Pedigo, and myself left Ft. Collins for the Sangre de Cristo Mountain range near Westcliff, Colorado. Our ultimate destination was the unlikely chunk of exposed limestone at 12,000 feet on the northeast face of Marble Mountain, home to La Caverna del Oro: The Cave of Gold.

The start of the trip was fraught with the usual last minute stops for cash, fuel, and refreshments. After nearly an hour of buzzing around town, we finally completed the quick trip down Harmony Rd. and injected ourselves into the steady stream of traffic heading south on I-25 at around 5 p.m. As I brought the Topaz up to cruising speed, Chad pulled out a giant bag of chips and his famous guacamole dip, and we all settled back for the four hour trip to Westcliff. Little did I know that the guac. would come back to haunt me with a vengeance.

Since Chad was the only member of our party who had been to Spanish before, Chris and I battered him with questions: "Is the cave really as bad as the legends say? What about the ghosts of the Indian slaves who used to mine the cave? What about the gold? What's the temperature in the cave? What about the drop into Frank's Nasty Pit? How far is the Hike?" These were just some of the queries we posed over an ear pounding rendition of Queensryche's psycho-thriller masterpiece: "Operation Mindcrime". After a couple of hours on the road we found ourselves racing past the ominous 15' fence that separates the sprawling state penitentiary from the outside world, and we all fell silent contemplating the forthcoming natural prison that we were all heading for at breakneck speed.

Following a quick stop in Westcliff for directions and fuel, we continued out of town looking for the dirt road that would take us to the long awaited trail-head. After a grueling hour and a half on a four-wheel drive road (the Topaz will never be the same!!), we arrived at about 11:30 p.m. A short discussion ensued as to whether or not we should proceed up the trail, or camp and wait until morning. We decided to suit-up and attempt the 6-mile hike to Marble Mountain. At this point Chad's excitement became apparent, and he soon outdistanced Chris and I on the trial. The first 2 l/2 miles of trail are rolling and quite easy so we settled into a comfortable pace. A slight drizzle settled over us as we discussed the usual trail topics.

At the three mile mark we came to the fork in the trial that leads the way to Marble Mountain. At this point the trail became much more difficult and we spent the next hour scrambling up the steep pitch with our 90 pound packs. At around 2:00 a.m., we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were not going to make it to the camp at timberline, and we pitched the tent to catch a few short hours of sleep. Little did we know that we were only about 15 minutes away from timberline. After finally breaking through the excitement induced insomnia, we all fell asleep until sunrise. At that point, I woke up to the most retched smell. At first I thought that we had set the tent up on top of a dead squirrel or something equally morbid. After a few seconds of nose searing delirium, I realized that Chad's Guacamole had come back to haunt us!! Cursing the source of the toxic fumes I piled out of the tent, grabbed my pack, and set off up the trail.

Soon after leaving the camp I followed the trail up a shallow gulch which had its origins on the treeless mountain top towering to the west. After a few minutes I broke free of the forest that we had entered the night before, and caught my first view of Marble Mountain. The morning was fresh, with a few wispy clouds blowing over the 13,000 foot mountain. To the south I saw the massive limestone outcropping that has yet to give up any significant caves. To the north I saw the smaller outcropping which housed Spanish, White Marble Halls, Frank's Nasty Pit, and several other caves. As I crossed the alpine meadow bordered by evergreen trees, the three tents of my cohorts came into view. I walked into the camp just as Ron Ryan and Brad were crawling out of their tent with their usual early morning scowls.

An hour later, Chad and Chris walked into camp and we all completed the final preparations for the trip to the cave. The last half-mile to the cave entrance is almost straight up. It took about 45 minutes for us to reach the entrance of Spanish Cave. As I looked at the famous Maltese Cross close up, I wondered just who had put it there. It looks very old and is somewhat faded, but it still carries a lot of history with it. The first task was to rig the traverse line that we would use to exit the cave after the through trip. The overall plan was to enter Frank's Nasty Pit, which is about 700' above the Spanish entrance, then travel through the cave to exit from the lower entrance.

Tom Shirrel, Ron Ryan, Brad, and myself set off to locate the Frank's Pit entrance as the lower entrance was being rigged. After about half an hour traveling northwest along the escarpment from Spanish, I found a shelter cave with a very small hole just outside it. This was the blowing hole that cavers a few decades before had chipped into to gain entrance to FNP. After a quick insertion to make sure that this was it, we settled down to wait for the rest of the party. Half an hour later Chad and Rob and Chris arrived and we all entered the cave together and began to rig the 150' rappel into the first main room of the cave. One by one we dropped into this magnificent room, each commenting on what is arguably the best drop in Colorado. It soon became apparent that to continue on in the cave, we would have to use the extra rope lying on the ground to descend into a much smaller, but still un-climbable pit, located on the north wall of the big room. After everyone had completed this short 20' drop, we set off down the main fissure heading west.

As we continued down and to the west, the cave features began to change from primarily bare limestone with some flow stone, which was prevalent in the big room, to a strange milky white popcorny surface. Rob, Chad, and Chris were ahead as we dropped down the fissure and after about 200' those of us in the rear noticed that the fissure began to undercut it self, leading back east underneath the big room. We signaled to the leaders that we were going to check the lead heading east, since this was the general direction we knew we wanted to go. Some rather tight and unforgiving popcorn squeezes worked to separate me from Tom and Ron as we fought our way down below the big room. After descending about 50' I came across a fissure leading north that began with a short, but welcomed, sand crawl. I yelled back to Ron and Tom and entered the new fissure. I crawled about 20' before the passage became high enough to stand up in and soon after entered a fairly good sized room with a large and active formation at its north end. Ron and Tom soon followed and we began checking the room for leads. As we were poking around in the room, Chris poked his head out of a high lead and wondered aloud about how he was going to find his way down to the floor where we were. From his vantage point he could see that the fissure continued on northward over the large formation which I had spotted when I entered the room. At his direction I scaled the formation and passed through an easy duck-under yelling back that the fissure continued on and was blowing air! This was the connection we had been looking for.

I dropped my pack to make the scouting a bit easier, and then continued along the fissure passing through some of the best decorated passage I had yet seen. The formations were primarily flowstone and moonmilk with a noticeable lack of crystals. Before long I climbed down to the edge of a massive cylindrical pit approximately 25 ft. across and 45 ft. deep. The pit was formed by another fissure connecting to the new fissure. From this vantage point I felt a gentle but perceptible breeze blowing down the new fissure. At this point I turned around to get my pack and collect the rest of the team. Tom and Ron were the first to follow and before long we were all standing on the ledge looking into the massive pit. Without thinking I dropped my pack, walked out onto the ledge, leaned out over the pit to use the far wall as a chimney, and scrambled into the new fissure. Turning around I watched as each member of the team decided against free climbing the transition into the eastward trending fissure.

After a short discussion about how to proceed, I climbed down into the pit to check the lower part of the new fissure for leads. There was a slight trickle of water falling from above the ledge where the others were standing, and this worked to create a nice set of formations below them on the wall of the pit. After a quick and nasty stupid loop through some gnarly popcorn, I realized that the lower lead did not go anywhere. I climbed back up the pit just as the team decided to send someone with better rope tying skills across the chasm on a belay. Tom was the first volunteer and he soon joined me in the eastward trending fissure. I decided to poke around while they rigged the traverse line, and so I followed the upper lead of the fissure down a nice passage until it intersected a rough and broken fissure which turned in a more southerly direction. The eastward fissure intersected the new fissure about 15 ft. from its northern most termination. As I entered the new fissure I looked to the left and noticed a fair amount of water flowing out of a flow-stone lipped ceiling lead. I went to the source and looked up at what is probably the longest continuous flow-stone formation that I have ever seen. I found out later that this is called the "slide" and is the way that the first through-trippers took to reach the Spanish entrance. I carefully climbed up the flow and soon found myself above and behind the other team members waiting to cross the pit. I yelled that I had found a bypass, but the distance in the cave made it so that the others could not understand me. After a short wait, I turned back around, descended down the slide, and continued to explore the southward trending fissure. I traveled down the fissure until I came to a short pit with a low volume waterfall trickling off its lip. Looking upward I saw a narrow fissure continuing in the ceiling and climbed up to search for more passage. I passed over the water fall pit in the ceiling fissure, and descended into a short east/west fissure at a slightly lower level. At this point I heard the others catching up and crawled back into the ceiling fissure to meet them.

I greeted the team at the entrance to the ceiling fissure, pointed them in the right direction, and teamed up with Rob G. to the traverse line over the first pit. As Rob worked his way back to the traverse line, I went up the Slide and found my way back to the pit. I untied the traverse line, and Rob set up a belay so I could come across the pit, one last time, with some protection. By the time Rob and I had stowed the rope and made our way back to the rest of the team, they had all crossed over the waterfall room via the ceiling fissure and had assembled for the final push out of the cave. It seems that Chad and Brad had began to recognize portions of the cave that they had been through when they were in Spanish the year before.
The last hour and a half in the cave was a blur as we all tried to keep up with Chad and Brad through some fairly burnt popcorn crawls, sketchy serpentine passage chimneys, super high-ceilinged rooms, rockfallish crumble climbs, and white '"gorilla shit" crawls. The exit consisted of a quick traverse over a snow plug, using the line that Chris and Rob had rigged earlier, and a quick crawl into a nighttime drizzle zone. The "stumble" back to camp was made interesting by the 45 degree slope we "walked" down. One hint, if you plan to exit the cave after dark, put up a reflector that can be hit by a light to mark your camp. We spent half an hour wandering around looking for camp in the rain. Not a whole lot of fun after 9 hours of caving. Chad, Rob and I were the first back to camp (the others had to go to the first drop into Frank's Pit). We got a fire going and made supper for the rest of the crew who made it down about an hour later.