Lava Tubes Are Boring? or what everyone else has been missing...

[Les W]

The only lava tubes that I've been in were some fairly small ones in the caldera of Teide in Tenerife. Admittedly I was wearing shorts, T-shirt, and a sun hat with a petzl light, but I found them very painful to crawl along.

Were you actually in the caldera or just outside?

There are some tubes just outside called Cuevas de Samara which are quite near the road and quite short.
There is a more extensive system of tubes actually in the caldera near "les Roques" which is called Cuevas Negras (Black Cave). This Tube system is actually off the permitted areas and paths of the Teide National Park, so official access requires a permit (and a good reason), however quite a lot of people visit them because they are so near a major tourist spot.
The penalties for going off the paths in the National Park can be quite swingeing (when we got caught they started by threatening fines of over ?6000.00  ) but I don't think they actually enforce them much on foreign tourists because it is counter productive.

 

[susie]

Were you actually in the caldera or just outside?

There are some tubes just outside called Cuevas de Samara which are quite near the road and quite short. There is a more extensive system of tubes actually in the caldera near "les Roques" which is called Cuevas Negras (Black Cave).

We were inside the caldera, west of but within a kilometre of the road between the Parador and the cable car. My notes made at the time (April, 1999) say:

"...within the pahoehoe lava above Los Roques de Garcia on Monte Teide. There are three entrances in a line over a distance of about 500 metres with a vertical range of possibly 60 metres. The first, and lowest, entrance is a flat out crawl which drops into a larger (3 by 3 metre) tube. The second is a more obvious entrance, with the larger way on being a smallish passage dropping sharply into a larger passage which connects to the lowest entrance. The top entrance located, near the top of the flow, is a large collapse entrance, with a large obvious passage leading off. This is firmly gated after 30 metres or so, presumably to stop tourists (like me!) from wandering down. However, scratching around smaller passages eventually led into a large passage which eventually connected with those already explored. "

 

[Les W]

You were in Cuevas Negras.
The gate is to "protect" some form of cave fauna that isn't there now.
Persons unknown have bent one of the bars so we were able to post the thinnest member of our party through and he explored the rest of the passage to a conclusion. The fatter members of our group waited by the gate. 

Sounds like you pretty much covered the whole complex. I remember it was quite dry and dusty. Kneepads are a must on lava as are strong gloves but t shirts and shorts are fine (I wear a cotton boiler suit as well), anything more and you will overheat and dehydrate.

 

[underwhere]

Here's my snaps of Cueva Miranda, La Palma, Canary Islands.

Nice photos. I really like no's 350 and 360. 

Ah, you spotted the ones I didn't take. 

 

[Les W]

You were in Cuevas Negras.

Sorry I made a mistake you were actually in Cueva de los Roques.  :-[

Cuevas Negras is a bit further west and seriously out of bounds.
I have of course never been there.  :-\

 

[susie]

Sorry I made a mistake you were actually in Cueva de los Roques.

But the rest of your post was accurate?

 

[graham]

Cuevas Negras is a bit further west and seriously out of bounds.
I have of course never been there.  :-\

 

[Les W]

The rest of that post was accurate.
The bit in my last post concerning Cuevas Negras

I have of course never been there.

may not be accurate.  :-\

 

[zippy]

Just come into this as a newbie...

NO - lava tubes are not boring, although if you'd asked me this a year back I would probably have answered differently.  Spent some time furtling around the lava tubes in Hawaii last year and was very pleasantly surprised...  will point people at a photo gallery in due course.