Caves Trail in Craters of the Moon National Park

 Our third hike in Craters of the Moon National Park was the Caves Trail. This 1.6 round trip hike took us to 3 caves and a tunnel. The trail goes over lava flows on a paved trail

 and has some nice views.

 The first cave we entered was Dewdrop Cave.

 This is a small cave, we needed to duck most of the time we were in it.

 We found a small "cave" within the cave

 Looking back to the cave entrance

 Second, we went into Beauty Cave

 This is a larger cave than Dewdrop.









Some sections were closed because of unstable roof conditions.

We had to be careful where we stepped because of large ice patches on the floor.

 looking back at the entrance to Beauty Cave

 We then went to Boy Scout Cave. There are two separate sections. We did not go into the tight narrow entrance to the east side.

 We entered the "larger" entrance to the section on the west side

 We found most of the floor in Boy Scout Cave to be thick ice. It was very slippery.

Last, on this trail, we went to Indian Tunnel.  This is a high ceiling tunnel that has steps going down into at the large ceiling collapse area at the main entrance.

There are three other smaller ceiling collapse areas that allow in sunlight and photo ops. There are also a few rock piles to scramble over or in some areas to walk around.

At the far end of the tunnel there is a small opening you can crawl out of to exit.

Looking down into the far end opening

 The opening is small when it reaches the surface.

 From the far exit, there are posts across the lava marking the route back to the paved trail.

 There were lots of cracks and holes in the surface.