What can you tell us about the secret caves discovered under Mount Charleston in 1962? They're apparently so secret that I just heard about them yesterday!
There are shallow caves in various places around Mt. Charleston, notably Mary Jane Falls. But the one you’re asking about is a major cavern that was discovered in December 1961 and sealed shut in 1965, around the same time the original dirt road between Kyle Canyon and Lee Canyon was paved, turning it into NV 158.
The exact location of the cave is, as the question states, a state secret, shielded by the Federal Cave Resource Protection Act of 1988. It’s somewhere along Deer Creek Road, a portion of NV 158.
Soda Straw Cave, named for the formations deep within it, contains the special crystal formations that look like icicles. But the cave’s threshold (opening) drops 25 feet from a narrow ledge, according to reports from the ‘60s; beyond that is another drop, but this one is 50 feet. Beyond those are about 700 feet of narrow tunnels, interspersed by rooms with no formations, before the Soda Straw room is reached.
Private parties that explored the cave at the time also found that the ceiling was fractured in places, making the cavern unstable and unsafe. On their own, they fabricated the concrete plug to sealed it in 1965. It's been sealed, a secret, and mostly forgotten since then.
Interest in Soda Straw resurfaced, so to speak, in 2003, when the owner of the Mt. Charleston Lodge at the time floated the idea of reopening the cave, then formed the Mount Charleston Cave Association to promote it.
But it didn’t take long for the Forest Service to nix the proposal, mostly for reasons of safety, but also due to the size of the investment to try to turn the cave into an attraction and the fact that two other caves in the state — Lehman Caves at Great Basin National Park and Emerald Cave near Willow Beach at Lake Mead (accessible only by boat) are more spectacular and commercial.
