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Fire Glow Cave (VOF) - Trip Notes for 04/13/2016

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This page last updated on 06/15/2017
(Fig. 01)
04/13/2016 Trip Notes: On today's trip to the Valley of Fire state park with my friend Jim Herring, one of our goals was to locate something I had read about online, the Fire Glow Cave (Fig. 01). We asked the ranger at the entrance for directions, however he had no idea where it was. Entering the park from the west entrance, I knew it was off of Atlatl Scenic Loop road that leads to the campgrounds. This is the first dirt road on the left that eventually turns into the paved road to Atlatl Rock and the campgrounds. With only a general idea of the possible location, it took us quite a while to figure out where it was located. On our first attempt to find it, we actually drove past the area where it was located and had to complete the loop. While driving along this road, we made a couple of stops, got out and hike around the area in search of the cave. Though we didn't find it on this attempt, we were afforded some nice views (Figs. 02, 03, 08 & 09), as well as a wide variety of unexpected flowers (Fig. 04) and several lizards (Fig. 05). (con't)

(Fig. 02)
(Fig. 03)
(Fig. 04)

(Fig. 05)


Trip Notes Continued: After completing the scenic loop, we drove back to the beginning of the Atlatl Scenic Loop road and made another attempt. It turns out that after turning onto this road, you only have to go about a 100 yards in. As the road goes up a little hill, it then begins to dip down. This is were you need to park. There will be a large rock red sandstone structure on the right side of the road. The cave is located in another structure to your right behind the first large rock structure.  The picture in (Fig. 06) shows Jim sitting inside the cave taking some pictures. The light coming in from the holes on the sides of this small cave create the "glow" seen in (Fig. 01). While hiking around and exploring this area we actually found several other small caves in the surrounding sandstone outcrops (Fig. 07). It seemed that every sandstone outcrop contained dozens of small arches and cave-like openings. After exploring this unique area, we headed on to Elephant Rock at the opposite end of the park.

(Fig. 06)
(Fig. 07)
(Fig. 08)
(Fig. 09)
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Play a Slide Show
Clicking the picture-link below will open OneDrive in a new window and a folder containing 21 pictures taken on a hike off Atlatl Scenic Drive road. To view the show, click on the first picture in the folder and you will get the following menu bar:

Click the "Play slide show" will play a fullscreen window of the slide show.