Historic Hood River
Ice Cave
5-24-2018
Notes
This ice cave is identified as “near Trout Lake, Wa.” I’ve been to a few up there, but don’t recognize this one. I think that ladder was left over from filming “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
The History Museum of Hood River County
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Buzz
Crawled down into one ice cave "near Trout Lake, WA" when I was working with a timber cruiser in that area in the 50’s. Was surprised how close the ice was to the surface and how clean the ice appeared to be.
Kyle
Fantastic image. I don’t recognize it either. It’s huge.
L.E.
I am not familiar with all of Trout Lake’s ice caves. They have a multitude of them. We don’t have ice caves on our southeast side of Mt Adams, but we have wind tunnels where cold air comes blowing up out of a hole in the ground. And we have creeks that run underground. Mt Hood probably has the same thing.
ArthurB
Scott Cook, we need you!
Longshot
The ladder didn’t look all that good when the picture was taken and I would guess that the stairs don’t look all that good today either. I don’t know the location of this one either.
L.E.
Here is another photo of the cave with some description and a better looking ladder.
http://www.washingtonruralheritage.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/klickitat/id/100/rec/34
Arthur
Yes, that’s the same ladder in better days. It says this was "Cheese Cave, off Cheese Cave Road". I wonder if it is privately owned.
Arthur
Here’s some more on the Cheese Cave: http://www.pnwcheese.com/blog/2011/05/trout-lake-cheese-caves.html
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese_Cave
Looks like this photo may be the private entrance, but there is another public access.
Gorgecat
I’ve been to the Cheese Cave. Believe there is a cabin built on top of one of the entrances with a stairway down to the cavet. Maybe this staircase was there before the cabin?
You can still access the cave although when I went years ago a friend took me to the location and it had a roof built over the entrance and you had to work your way down a boulder slide down into the cave. It was pretty neat, cool in summer and plenty dark. Take a headlamp.