Unlock the Geologic Mystery of Clay Cave in Southern Idaho
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- Опубликовано: 27 июн 2023
- Geology professor Shawn Willsey takes you underground through Clay Cave, a lava tube in southern Idaho that holds an interesting surprise. Check out this impressive cave and learn about its geologic history.
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Shawn Willsey
College of Southern Idaho
315 Falls Avenue
Twin Falls, ID 83303
Shawn Willsey 
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Cool. I was the 22,222nd viewer 😃 This will be one of my stops when I go touring in the footsteps of Shawn Wilsey some day. Thanks!
Here's a tip my Dad showed me; to characterize sand/silt/clay he used a little clear jar with a lid. He filled it with water then added a small representative handful of the sample and then shook it up. The sand settled out right away, and the clays stayed in suspension for a long time. Silt settled out after a short delay. This way he could see the distribution of the sands (i.e. "well sorted" vs. poorly sorted etc.) and get a feel for the silt/clay component. Thx for the video. I kept waiting for a giant cave snake to jump out and grab your ankle...
Very cool your story just made me a better dad. 😀 ty!
Excellent video and great tip. 👌🏾
Them thar cave snakes are called “gila monsters.” (jk)
That is so cool to have preserved evidence of the Bonneville flood. It looks so recent.
Very interesting. Having lived through the Teton Dam flood in 1976, I immediately recognized flood mud and thought of the Bonneville Flood. I like it when I'm right.... thanks very much.
My thoughts too. Speaking of Teton dam flood, I helped clean up Rexburg afterwards .
@@ped832 maybe I saw you there
Ha! Good timing. I just filmed a new Teton Dam video (old one was bad audio and I didn't show anything up close). Look for it soon in coming weeks!
@@shawnwillsey Looking forward to that. I actually lived in Shelley at the time. I was young and stupid and went to I.F. to rubber neck and see Broadway bridge almost cease to exist. There were no falls, it was nothing but river. Amazing stuff to see, but I should have stayed home out of the way. Canals in Shelley could have used another sandbagger.
Water from one big flood deposited silt with a mud like texture and has filled up half of the lava tube. Makes sense that
the Bonneville flood was the one that did this. Tube appears wider than taller now. Thanks for showing a remarkable
hole in the ground, 'er place.
For some reason, I could never have gone into that cave. Even watching the video made me very uneasy. Glad you got out ok!
Do you happen to know what kind of clay? Smectite? Bentonite? Montmorillonite? Weathered from volcanic ash? Eroded basalt? Granitic? - the geologic history that formed the Latah clay deposits in northern Idaho absolutely fascinate me, but I’d never heard of this cave before - Thanks for sharing!
I went into Lava River Cave, in Oregon, right next to US Hghway 97, a little south of Bend. If you go the very end (a little less than a mile), as I did, it's blocked with sand. Apart from that, it's an interresting cave. Part of it is double-decked. The Wikipedia article says the sand came in through cracks, though I was inclined to believe it came in through the entrance and washed down. And, administered by the USFS, it's not full of graffiti.
Thanks for the narration. I would NEVER want to visit inside there, but I am enjoying visualizing all the stuff that washed in there with the silt. Enjoyed your vid on theBonneville flood! Many thanks.
Awesome all around. Thanks for watching and learning with me. Happy to go in the cave so you don't have to.
@@shawnwillsey would love to go there. thank you for going there for me
These are just so interesting to watch, thank you again.
That was so cool! I bet that was a tad unnerving!
A little unnerving? Yes, you are comfortable with more risk than me. Thank you for taking me where I would never go. 😁
I live in Twin...I'll have to go check this out sometime! Idaho caves are so interesting because of the network of lava tubes spanning most of the southern part of the state.
Thanks for showing us this. Very interesting!
You can support my field videos by clicking on the "Thanks" button just above (right of Like button) or by going here: www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EWUSLG3GBS5W8
Your channel is so interesting, I can't stop watching. Really great stuff.
Thanks! Glad you enjoy learning and discovering with me. Be sure to share with others.
@@shawnwillsey Definitely. Thank you for the great content. All of my friends have learned about Lake Bonneville because of your videos 😆
There is a wall of clay inside the Kuna Cave lava tube, to the south. Well, when I was a kid it was a wall... Over the last decades people have dug a tunnel into it, extending the accessable portion of the lava tube by a few meters to the south.
I hope to visit ID, OR, WA this fall. Your posts give helpful info. I live in Hurricane UT. it's called the Triple Junction: Mojave Desert, Basin and Range and Colorado Plateau. All those ecosystems merge here. A more jumbled up bunch of rocks and plants is hard to find. Utah ROCKS !!! Love your posts. Thanks
Awesome. Enjoy your trip up this way. I know SW Utah pretty well. We own some property north of Veyo. Lots of diverse geology for sure.
I was there maybe 40 years ago and it was so cool! The graffiti sucks. The teenager who showed us where it was said they ( high-school kids) would drink down there! Went cleat to the end. Some people take clay home and make stuff with it! It's scary all the way in the back!
I used to live on a road called Victory Road. There used to be a part where 3 roads came together and in the triangle of the 3 roads met there was a clay pit . When they widened Victory Road they had to dig out the clay out and fill it in so that section wouldn't shift when it rained.
Super cool Shawn ...
I only had like 3 seizures from that flashlight 😂
BUT I made it to the end ty
Not sure why video did that. The flashlight was not fluttering in reality. Thanks for enduring. Sometimes good education can be a little painful.
@@shawnwillseySomething to do with the phasing of the LED and the camera detector.
@@shawnwillsey Modern LED flashlights often regulate power with a switching micro chip, switching power at a frequency too fast for the eye to notice, but creating a interference pattern with the camera frame rate.
@@catcherdarwin Yep. They control brightness by rapidly flashing the LEDs on and of, which isn't visible to the eye but gets picked up by cameras. For example, 50% brightness is achieved by having the LEDs lit half the time and off half the time.
Thanks!
Thank you for your kind donation. It's much appreciated.
The term riff raff is right on
Yikes-I was feeling claustrophobic just sitting here watching your video. As always, thank you Shawn, for another cool and interesting video!
I kinda had the same reaction, especially in a cave half-full of silts and sands and a roof prone to rock falls. I wouldn't feel comfortable in there at all. I live near Mt. St. Helens and I still want to visit Ape Caves, but it's going to have to be a substantially more voluminous lava tube before I'm gonna set foot in there. The roof of Ape Caves is much more stable so that's not a concern; just the closed quarters of a lava tube sorta gives me the heebies.
Ape Cave is an awesome lava tube. Hope you make it there but, if not, I'll try to do a video there sometime.
Glad you enjoyed it
Very interesting. Glad you made it out of the cave okay.
Great stuff, thanks for taking us along
My pleasure!
Very cool geological feature! I'm gonna have to visit next time I'm in the area.
Fascinating!
Glad I wasn’t there to see the silt get deposited!
Ditto.
Hey Shawn! I hope you read this comment.
You made a video about the Pyroclastic flow in Southern idaho!
In Twin Falls county. There is a town name Castleford.... on the other side of the town theres a road called Lily's grade. Right as you drive down the grade on the left you see that orange rock/clay but whats weird is right in between the rock wall and the orange theres a really soft Purple sand.. i cant find anything about it
Comment read. Yes, I’ve been to Lily grade and do remember the red paleosol there beneath a basalt lava flow. Don’t remember the purple sand so I’ll check when I get down that way again sometime.
My guess is that manganese makes the sand purple, because that's what's found in purple paleosols in the Jurassic Morrison Fm.
There's a lava tube just like that in northern Fuerteventura, Canary Islands. You can also see the marks where water flowed through. Obviously not due to a massive flood, but in the past when that region was a lot wetter.
That was awesome Shawn 👌 All that i could focus on was the bouldering potential 😂 I checked out the Crag & there is climbing 👌 I probably wouldn't compare it to Yosemite 👌
Thanks, Shawn. That clay looks like it came out of my backyard in Salt Lake City. Hmmm . . . maybe it did . . . I visited Red Rock Pass just this afternoon.
Awesome. Glad you made it and hope it was a fun adventure. Let me know if I can help direct you an any more of your geo-adventures.
Great Video!
Glad you enjoyed it
I don't know why but, my brain completed "[I'm going to] a place I haven't been to in probably ten or twelve years" with "Your mom's house." I also don't know why my brain finds this to be the funniest thing ever. I'll watch the video in five minutes when I've grown up a bit...
Truly interesting. Can you estimate the size of the interior? (Pretty good light...I've been in caves where some lights can't dent the darkness. ) Thank you Shawn ❣️
The grace ice cave in caribou County is similar to this one with the silt/ clay bottom
Very cool video Shawn! I know you said that this cave is unique with its clay floor in Southern Idaho, but if the cause is the Bonneville Flood, shouldn’t we expect to see other lava tubes with similar clay floors in Southern Idaho? Probably depends on the location/elevation of the cave I suppose!
Did the area around the cave get inundated by a previous (or many previous) ice age megaflood? That'd be my first guess as to where the clay came from... Edit: Bonneville Flood, makes sense.
There was a prior opening that allowed soil to drain in and fill the bottom. There is another opening at a higher elevation . Exact same floor as the " Ape cave " on the south side of St Helens.
Graffiti?
Cave paintings, my dude!
Humans gonna human.
All a matter of perspective, for sure.
The amount of clay there shows the sheer magnitude of the event. It looks like something that would take many years for a normal river to deposit. I wonder what the evidence for such massive floods looks like millions of years after the fact, maybe strange thick silt and clay deposits mixed in with previous strata? I wonder if there are any such features from the Carnian Pluvial, there are ancient giant river remains after all.
5:54 In older, defunct mines you see this same depositional behavior. If there is water infiltration with pronounced sheer zone, clay particles get wash into the adit, same applies with sulphides. Others with a lot of calcite will precipitate it onto the adit floor, requiring great effort to remove.
The “Ice Cave” is near the Bear River, and just south of Grace Idaho. Was there also a major flood through the Bear River channel?
Very interesting!
Thanks!
Interesting cave. The Lava River Cave near Bend, Oregon has the “sand gardens”. Have you heard of these? I saw them years ago, but they had been mostly destroyed by inconsiderate visitors to the cave-even back then.
2:59 Wish you had lingered here to explore the flow features/structures.
How deep is the mud? Did it fill from the upper end, or back-fill in layers? Thank you for the interesting vid, Shawn.
Not sure. I would guess several feet based on shape of tube, maybe as much as 10-15 feet in places.
my backyard, adjacent to the Snake River Canyon Park
4:36 Clay, punctured by holes, indicates water flow to me, the holes, remaining open indicates seepage. Come back to this place when its pissing rain, either a prolonged rain event or when a torrential downpour, flash flood event occurs. As the water flow dies down, the clay particles start to settle out, stick to others and the cycle repeats, periodical.
The holes are clearly drip features from ceiling of cave. I could even see several dripping right into holes.
Why didn't clay/silt cover the floor to a higher level in the lower part of the tube instead of further in?
Thx Professor for the fun geo-adventure. ✌🏻
❤
Ah forgot on another note how deep do you think the base is ? 24 feetish?
Not sure. I would guess several feet for sure. Maybe as much as10-15 in places.
Being from the upper midwest, I'd recognize glacial outflow sediment anywhere!
A lava tube has a high end (near the source of the lava) and a low end. Where does the deposited material lie in relation to those points? Is the modern entrance that you used the same entrance that deposited material entered the system? If not, where did the material enter the cave system? In attempting to understand the nature of the depositional event, it would be good to excavate a pit to see if the cross section shows that there was more than one depositional event. There might be some organic material that would allow the event(s) to be dated. And just knowing how much material has accumulated might provide an insight into the event(s).
I do not know of any other entrance to this cave either up or down gradient. The tube and topography all slope down to the west. The vent for the tube and lava is ~10 miles east of this cave.
Shameless plug: If anyone is interested in exploring our local (South-Central Idaho and surroundings) caves, check out our local grotto (chapter) of the National Speleological Society, the Silver Sage Grotto. Our next meeting is Thursday, June 13th in room 248 of the Student Union Building at CSI, 7:00 PM. We welcome anyone with an interest in caves and caving.
No shame at all. Plug away, Chris.
How did the yellow,..some blue, clays form that I stand on here in Iowa? It's roughly 80 to 200' deep then limestone.
I don't know Iowa well but likely glacial deposits and also weathering of limestone and other substrate.
I've noticed that the term "wallah" is common to Idaho and Utah. I find that interesting. I presume that it's a variation of the word "voila" from the French language. That's another video altogether.
6:50 Let's be clear, the clay your walking on, deposited AFTER the lava tube evacuated, it became an erosional / depositional process.
Yes,
What brand paint do you recommend for optimal adherence to basalt?
Any idea of how far back the cave goes and how far the clay goes???
Not sure. I haven't pushed the cave that far.
Filled in by silt when area was underwater.
look into floods from the younger dryas impact (theory), but that theory is gaing a lot of traction as time goes on..
This is awesome! Thank you for taking the time to share. I love learning about this stuff.
Also, with regards to graffiti, I would not be so disparaging of it. Our lifespans are very, very short, and one way our species ascribes to feel connected to something more permanent is to create a relationship with rocks. This is one reason why we use carved rocks as our tombstones. We feel rock has a sense of permanence… while I don’t condone graffiti there is something about it that is just the effort of someone trying to make a connection beyond their short years…. I think we all know what that feels like.
Interesting! The Bonneville Flood deposits are probably the answer to the clay on the floor. But wouldn't there be pebbles or cobbles as well? Lots of basalt rocks on the floor. Did they fall down or are they erratics from the flood? Just some food for thought. Thanks!
I would expect pebbles to be layered below the clay since it takes clay size particles a long time to settle out of water. It would be nice to have a hole to have a cross section!
@@jackiekane297 I had the impression the the clay was in a thin layer. However, it could be thick enough to cover cobbles. 😀
The flood boulders around the cave entrance are too big to fit into the cave. And possibly the entrance was smaller then. Melon Gravels around cave are up to 1-2 meters in diameter.
If I were to guess I'd venture that any "gravels" carried along by the Bonneville flood were too big to enter the hole; but in Magic Valley there's no shortage of loess just about everywhere, and it's readily apparent that the floodwaters hosed all the loess out of Eden Channel and some of it made its way into the lava tube with the water. It's certainly possible, with a sediment unit of that thickness, that some cobbles small enough to get through the hole did indeed settle to the bottom of the tube; but it'll have to be excavated to find out. But I'm not surprised at all to see that much loess made its way into the lava tube after a flood of that size.
What are the possibilities that floods on Mars did the same thing to lava caves?
It's possible, I suppose.
Took some smart people to figure that stuff out.
Bonneville Flood.
Looks pretty dangerous, I sure do hope no graffiti artists get crushed the next time it collapses. If you look at 9:00 - 9:05 you can see one of them staring back from amongst the rocks.
Oops it’s in the Eden Channel. So high energy.
The ripple marks also suggest a high-energy deposition environment. The floor is flat, but even worn by foot traffic it isn't _completely_ flat.
There were lots of small pits (which I failed to point out and explain-sorry) formed by dripping water from ceiling. I think that is main reason floor undulates a bit.
I would think water transported it. Low energy.
Did you walk or crawl inside the cave? I cannot tell.
Walk.
@@shawnwillsey oh good deal. The light you had, and lack of your description of how you ambled and didn't see your feet made me think you might be crawling. I saw in Google maps images of people standing in it with flashlights. If I had not seen that, I would have assumed you crawled the whole way.
Great vid! Grrrr-graffiti
Would be a nice place to pitch a tent and camp there. Would be nice a cool in summer. Wear a hard hat.
Maybe its a mudcano 😮😅
Grafilthy pisses me off at times ,Theres a beautiful canyon just outside L.A covered in Grafilthy. And at the same ti9me ive seen it wheere it belongs ie sides of trains and thought it was cool
A lot of riff raff nowadays
Yeah but heading out into the desert on a trashed-out dirt road to spray-paint a lava tube is a whole special kind of self-indulgent.
@@briane173 we domain experts call it adolescence.
Guess: flood water
how is painting inside the cave unfortunate people have been painting caves for 30 millennia or more what would make you think we would stop
Local riff-raff?
Wow I can't believe someone go that far into the cave and do all there bad art.
Oh no I don't hit buttons...I give advice... Grab a shovel and start digging, you may find something nice!
Nice lava tube. You know that what we now call "prehistoric art" all started out as "graffiti," right? Just think of those that created this "cave art" as less evolved proto-humans.
Have any biological remains been found in the clay?
Not that I know of.
CLAUSTROPHOBIC ALERT!
🎉
I think this is 17-mile cave. 🙂
Thanks!
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