Being Cool In The Underground – Exploring Caves In Oregon

Wanna be cool this summer? There’s a happening underground scene in Oregon, and it’s plenty cool: caves!

We have caves around here beneath our feet in Oregon, and the temperature just below the surface can drop significantly in some of them as you descend to explore, so substantially that summer is the ideal, and sometimes the only, time to visit. No doubt this has your attention right about now in these candle-melting days we’ve experienced lately.

Turn that fan up another notch, grab something refreshing (with ice cubes) to drink, and start planning to go underground in some of our fascinating caves around Oregon:

Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve (Cave Junction, Josephine County)

Sea Lion Caves (Florence, Lane County)

Redmond Caves (Redmond, Deschutes County)

Lava River Cave (Bend, Deschutes County)

Boyd Cave (near Bend, Deschutes National Forest, Deschutes County)

Hidden Forest Cave (near Bend, Deschutes National Forest, Deschutes County)

Arnold Ice Cave (near Bend, Deschutes National Forest, Deschutes County)

Skylight Cave (Sisters, Deschutes County)

Fort Rock Cave (Fort Rock, Lake County)

Derrick Cave (Devils Garden Lava Bed, Lake County)

Your visit to the underground will be a surreal sensory experience, one that can only be found in otherworldly settings, such as the planetary subterrain.

As with any family expedition, check ahead for specifications relevant to your own group and your chosen destination, including age or accessibility guidelines, required permits or permissions for hiking, parking, or entrance, any tours and fees, safety considerations, availability or absence of public-use facilities, and more. Some of the caves listed here are privately owned and may not always be open to the public for visits. Some are simple, focusing more on the journey or a single cave feature than on the destination itself.

Some of the caves listed here are indeed public access and very family-friendly, but not for the youngest or less mobile family members; navigating any of these places, even the most accessible ones, tends to involve some climbing, squeezing, and crouching.

Some cave visits are meant only for visiting with your teens and require a little extra safety planning, like bringing multiple light sources, gloves, boots, helmets, extra layers of clothing, extra water, and the reminder that it’s always wise to let someone know where you’re headed before you go exploring.

An additional note on cave safety: Oregon is rich with vast networks and pockets of underground sites, both natural and human-made, and many of these––especially unmarked entrances to some lava tubes and all old mining shafts––are absolutely unsafe for anyone at any time, which is most important to know in the event you or a loved one discovers an opening. These types of sites are usually found off-trail or on private land, so this is another good reason to teach kids to stick to the trails that are meant for public-access hiking. Staying on the trail preserves life growing elsewhere, both underfoot and on our own. If an opening into an underground space is unmarked and unfamiliar, if it looks simultaneously innocuous and also like something out of an ominous movie scene, and––here’s the clear giveaway––if you have to pause to wonder if it’s safe to enter, then the wise Oregon truism stands: we do not go in.

However, it’s absolutely some family fun to imagine what’s actually in there or down there, and then do the research safely online together to find out. There’s usually more history underneath us than we ever previously considered.

A visit in person to a very popular, cool hotspot, such as the Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve in Cave Junction, is both safe and exhilarating in a way that kids will always remember and incorporate going forward. Once we see those stalagmites and stalactites “growing” in drippy, cavernous fields, smell the musky minerals hanging in the air, and feel the humid chill on our skin from being underground, the experience stays with us. It broadens our understanding of the world we walk upon every day.

So, when you’ve had enough of the sunny, hot surface highs this summer, remember this invitation to chill out and join us cave explorers down in the underground right here in Oregon.

Oh, and before I forget: the popular mnemonic device for remembering, whether it’s the stalagmites or stalactites forming up or down, is to remember that the stalactites are the ones hanging tightly to the cave ceiling. No worries, I’ve got you, neighbor.