Originally posted on my old site Life In A Mikeycosm.
Note: As of Nov '26 I've added an afterword with some further research, information, and videos from inside the Hell Hole by other people.
9/30/2005
I was wandering the trails through the woods by UC Santa Cruz, taking some pictures of trees and stuff and trying to shake off a cold, when fate brought me by sheer happenstance onto this intriguing tableau:
Click any image to enlarge
Hmmm... a bunch of college students out in the middle of the woods... a hole with a ladder into the ground... me coincidentally carrying a camera... what to do... what to do?
The last in line down the hole invited me to follow them and in a moment I was here... this is the Porter Caves, right there on UCSC's campus.
The kids loaned me a spare flashlight, were astoundingly good-natured about the constant firing of my flash, and led me through room after muddy room of this....
While we were down there, one of the guys asked if anyone had been to "Hell Hole". He said he had only been shown it once, it was outside the USCS grounds, it was cramped and dangerous, and he wasn't even sure where it was. We decided it needed to be checked out.
And as soon as we climbed back to the surface, some more people were just coming down the trail, and they said they were looking for some some caverns up the creek. So we joined forces.
After a ramble through a culvert into the wilds beyond Empire Grade, up the creek and through an enchanted forest...
...across hills and gullies and scrambles up and down the side of a ravine....
....when finally, halfway up the side of the ravine, was spotted this: a tiny steel grate in the ravine wall, set right into a rock, with an opening in it just big enough to crawl into.
...Hell Hole.
As we approached, we saw two guys crawling through this narrow metal grate, straight into the rock. In the remainder of the time we spent there, we never saw them again.
Hell Hole is NARROW. Inside that entrance grate is a tiny space no more than a few feet across, which immediately shrinks to this:
...and that's all you get. There's no cavern or open chamber, no horizontal area to explore, waiting on the other side of that cramped opening—or anywhere further down, deep into the earth. It's like this all the way down. It was so small I couldn't even bring my backpack down. The only way for a group of people to explore Hell Hole is to scramble down it one beneath another, single file, as deep as they want to go. Not somewhere you want to go if you're claustrophobic.
I've never been claustrophobic in my life. But, for no reason, as soon as I was down into the hole, waiting for the last guy to climb in above me, I began to get apprehensive. I told myself, this is safe, hundreds of people have done it, there are six other people ahead of me, plus two more guys we saw go in ahead of us. There was no reason to be afraid. So I told myself, this is a good time to challenge fear, another chance to learn to what I can actually do if I push through the dread. (I do these sorts of things sometimes.)
Once the last guy had climbed in above me, I had an all-out panic attack. After just a minute or two of "challenging fear", I completely snapped. I just freaked. I still, almost 20 years later, clearly remember the trapped feeling of rock walls just inches from me on all sides, someone below me, and someone sliding in and filling the tunnel above me. I've never experienced a fright like it.
Flight instinct completely took over. I involuntarily said "I have to go. I have to get out. I have to get out" and the guy above me backed up out of the hole, so I could pass back up to the entry grate, there to be greeted with smiles.
How was I going to explain this to the girls?
I waited outside with a few others who hadn't wanted to go down. Most everybody else resurfaced after 20 or 30 minutes, although the two lead people continued downward when everybody else decided to turn back. They didn't emerge for maybe an hour—they had climbed so far down the hole that they couldn't hear us yelling down to them.
My ego hurt. I want to go back to that damn hole.
The two guys who went in ahead of us still hadn't resurfaced yet when we left. Imagine how far down into the world they must have climbed.
As we were walking back, we tried to find a shortcut home through the woods, and took the next easy path we could find up the ravine bank. All of a sudden I recognized the woods where we were—I had been right there shooting pictures of the same trees earlier in the afternoon, before I met them.
I looked and the kids were standing in a circle. One of them picked something up off the ground. "Is this yours?" he asked, and handed over my wide-angle lens. I hadn't realized I had dropped it there earlier. Nice.
"Now it's a story," he said.
I don't know why it is, man, I always have to leave Vapid City for the magic to happen. Never here.
Later that night I had to deal with this...
...but that's a story for another forum.
(Note to UCSC folks: I went to Tree 9 too, but by that age I was already too fat to climb it.)
Afterword, Nov 2026
Lately I've been doing a lot of reading and documentary viewing about caving—including unfortuntely, about a couple of horrible tight-space tragedies like the Neil Moss and John Edward Jones incidents (and if you are at all claustrophobic, do not google those names, there's a reason I'm not including live links)—and it led me back to thinking about the Hell Hole.
Last night, I decided to google it, something I'd somehow never thought of before. It turns out there's a lot of info on it, including extensive maps... apparently, it's not the single narrow hole straight down into the earth that I'd been told. In fact, the part that was narrow enough to freak me out was only a 40 foot passage before it opened to a chamber, although there are a number of similarly tight squeezes later on. Having seen the map, I do understand now how the people who went in ahead of us spent hours down there. Also, the Hell Hole's official name is "IXL Cave".
Here's the latest map: (click image to view in hi-res on Imgur)
It's quite a cave system.
"Enter The Caves" has two somewhat overlapping but wonderfully comprehensive pages on Hell Hole, with some great photos of sculptures deep in the cave, some of the more obscure features and very tight squeezes, and the famous spiders (did I mention there's spiders?):
- This is What People Said About Hell Hole (IXL) Cave
- Hell Hole Cave: If You’re Claustrophobic, Don’t Try This One
There's a great travelogue through the depths of the Hell Hole with a ton of photos—sort of what this page would have been like if I hadn't chickened out—at Peaks For Freaks ob Blogspot.
There's a lot of good videos:
- Claustrophobia Engaged - Return to the Infamous Hell Hole - this is the best video I've found of the narrow entry tube (which I made it maybe 12 feet into) and first parts of the Hell Hole, and does the best job of capturing the claustrophobia that drove me out so quickly. Watching this video, I'm not sure I regret bailing.
- To Hell Hole & Back, but at what cost? - A good video tour of much of the cave, all the way down to the Hall of Faces, which lies at the bottom of a 90' drop, where past explorers have sculted faces and other body parts into the soft clay walls.
- Why Hell Hole is a BAD idea in the Winter - another video of a deep excursion into the cave, all the way down to the Hall of Faces and the Buddha Chamber below it, during a particularly muddy and wet season.
- Hell Hole has a secret. We found it. - a video of an exploration all the way down to the furthest, narrowest reaches of Hell Hole.
- Why I'm Never Caving Again. (Exploring Hell Hole) - this is short ( 12 minutes, most of these are 20-30 mins) but pretty decent one, a couple of kids who made it down to the Buddha Room, but had a hard time of it
- Why I'm never caving again... (Surviving Hell Hole) - A similarly-named but different one, and the ultimate in stupidity, two clueless guys who ventured down into the Hell Hole for the first time without a guide, ropes, or enough batteries.
Lookout Santa Cruz has an interesting interview with the explorer who originally drew the map of Hell Hole.
The Wikipedia Page for Wilder Ranch State Park, where Hell Hole is located, has some Notes and other links about Hell Hole.
