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Contact: Travis Mason-Bushman, 775-293-2146
BAKER, Nev. – Visitors to Great Basin National Park can now explore the park’s 10-million-year-old Lehman Caves from a new perspective by joining an Introduction to Wild Caving Tour. As staff capacity permits, three-hour ranger-guided tours will be offered into wild sections of Nevada’s longest cave on Saturdays and Sundays through Labor Day weekend. These tours visit areas of Lehman Caves which have been closed to the public since 1981, restoring access to some of the most spectacular rooms in the cave.
“The Introduction to Wild Caving Tour provides Great Basin visitors with an opportunity to explore the wild side of Lehman Caves,” Great Basin National Park Superintendent Ashley Adams said. “We’re pleased to unlock new visitor experiences in the park and encourage greater understanding of cave resources.
Funded by the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, the new wild caving tour is part of an interdisciplinary project to expand scientific knowledge and public appreciation of wild caves in Great Basin National Park and the surrounding area. While Lehman Caves are the largest and most accessible, there are 39 other caves within the park’s 77,180 acres. Park cave ecologist Gretchen Baker spearheaded the effort to study these resources and, as an avid caver, sought an opportunity to give park visitors a chance to experience wild caving.
“I treasure the time I get to spend underground, exploring cave passages and assisting with scientific discoveries,” Baker said. “I’m so excited that visitors will get a taste of this experience and also get to see and hear a part of the cave that is so different from the traditional tour route.”
Tour participants will receive an orientation to safe and sensitive off-trail caving techniques before entering the caves. After following Lehman Caves’ paved trail to its end, visitors will leave lighted rooms behind and enter a spectacular realm of the cave long unseen by the public. Rising through the Royal Gorge, the group will scramble up boulders into the football field-sized Talus Room. Those who choose the optional squeeze into the Behman Annex – never before open to the public – will find delicate helictites and calcite formations. Then the tour will venture under the Talus Room’s 80-foot vaulted ceilings to the West Room and back to the developed part of the cave. Along the way, the ranger guide will explain the cave’s intricate natural and cultural history, pointing out 19th-century inscriptions and million-year-old geological formations.
The Introduction to Wild Caving Tour is limited to eight participants. Tickets are $40 and are available only by advanced reservations online at https://recreation.gov. The tour is open to adults 16 and over; those under 18 will need parental permission. Participants should be prepared to take part in off-trail hiking and rock scrambling, and should be comfortable in dark spaces. Complete information about the tour is available at https://go.nps.gov/LehmanCaves.
Last updated: July 14, 2025