Thursday, May 19, 2011

The Devil's Playground Cave (The Alabama Hills Series)

(GPS: N36° 36.205 W118° 07.110)

I had thought I covered this one before early on when I started this blog. I did mention the location at one point with a picture which I will list below, but I don't think I have ever covered it by itself. I will now. The above coordinates are within range, but not exact. They get you close, and then you just look for the entrance to the cave to the east.

In the Hopalong Cassidy movie, The Devil's Playground, the section that is often called Gene Autry Rock, Lone Ranger Canyon, etc. is known as the Devil's Playground. In the movie they make it look like this mysterious rocky place that one could easy get lost in. The scene near the end deals with Hoppy and friends trying to find this cave where stolen gold has been hidden. The guy in the cave in the picture below, Curley Evans, was setup by a Judge Morton who was after the gold. So, he was not really the bad guy in this story, but Hoppy had to find a way to show Curley they are on the same side and get the gold out of there before Judge Morton eventually would show up. The video linked below has this scene and shows the trick Hoppy used.

It turns out the "cave" is not a cave at all. All they did was add a black backdrop or drape behind the rock you see. By doing that they made it look like a dark entrance to a cave. It sure fooled me the first time I saw the movie. They do show the outside of our cave from inside of it. Looking back out in my picture. You may notice the trailer camper. For some reason this area that leads to Lone Ranger Canyon, just past the camper on the right, tends to get a lot vehicles that park right in important spots. I cannot tell you how many times I have come here only to realize that I would have to come back later, or on another day because of this. After the rescue, they are out in front of the cave. They are just sitting down where that small rock is on the ground. The rock just behind that is the one you see in the above picture.
Lone Pine Peak and Mt. Langely show up rather nicely outside of the cave.

The Devil's Playground Cave (Youtube Version)

The Devil's Playground Cave (Vimeo Version)

Back in 2006, there was a Hallmark Christmas movie that used this perspective from the cave as the main character enters to spend the night. If I remember correctly, they used this shot, but combined the cave with another area.

Hallmark Christmas Blog from Dec. 2006

Important note: from now on if I have a new video of some area that I have covered in the blog before I am just going to link it in the old blog it is connected to. In the past, I was doing the temporary FYI blogs which announced them as they came out. I am not going to do that anymore, but I will announce each that I do via twitter, or if you are subscribed to or follow my video channels then you should see them as a new video. If not, then just check the channels once in a while for new videos. I just got tired of doing it the way I was doing. The only time I might create a new blog entry is if I have something new that I want to add, but a lot of the new videos I am doing I do not see the need to do that just yet.