Adventure Idea: Skylight Cave

A favorite adventure of mine is a trip to Skylight Cave. Only a few miles from Black Butte Ranch, it's a gem of a geologic feature and makes for a wondrous short foray off the Ranch. Although it's close enough to hike to, it isn't the easiest place to find, so I'd recommend driving to it the first time. Head out the McAllister gate like you're going to the dump and then take a left on road NF-2061 (see

directions here).

Road 260 heading up to the cave is rutted and there are parking areas before the worst section, allowing you to walk from there. The cave has a visible sign from the road so you can't miss it. There's a sturdy ladder down to the cave floor. From there you can head either direction… the Western section gets low quickly and is not as much fun. The Eastern section has the skylight holes towards the back. After a couple hundred feet of lava tube hiking (watch your head), you'll arrive where there are a couple of ceiling openings that allow a stream of magical light to pierce the darkness. Take photos and enjoy! (Although you rarely need to, you can kick up a bit of dust to accentuate the beam).

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A couple extra ideas…

- Once topside, see if your kids can find the holes from the top.

- The first time we took our kids here when they were little, I created a crude treasure map (burn the edges for added authenticity!) and we hid it in a stump on the Ranch. We coaxed one of the kids around the trunk until they “discovered” it. I proclaimed that I'd heard of such a cave, but thought it was only legend and we should go look for the treasure. We found the cave, paced off steps from the beam indicated on the map, and then lifted a child to search a large crack, high up on the wall. To their amazement, there was a jar of gold!! (Werther’s butterscotch candies in this case). The younger kids squealed with delight while the older kids rolled their eyes knowing we'd planted it. That story has been retold more times than I can count.

- More recently, when our older kids had friends staying who had never been to the cave, I scouted out a cool bike ride back to the Ranch. Road 260, that ultimately goes to the cave, carries on down the back

side of the mountain towards Black Butte Ranch, but it’s impassable due to several fallen trees. It eventually opens back up again and heads down the hill to an intersection with another dirt road. We drove the kids and their bikes to that intersection, parked the truck and rode up the backside of the mountain until we had to ditch the bikes and finish to the cave on foot. After exploring it, we hiked back to the bikes, and then rode all the way back (all downhill!). There’s a logging road that runs parallel to the West side of the Ranch. There are several trails from that road which connect to Ranch (hard to notice them at first). We scouted it out ahead and put a marker on the logging road so we’d know where to turn left.

Happy adventuring!

Photo: Jamie Hale