"Totems of Hircine" is my current Companions quest. I went to Haemar's Cavern, Aela in tow, and tried to use the portal into Haemar's Shame. My game crashes every time I try to pass through. Note: I had previously done the quest "A Daedra's Best Friend" in the same caves. Apparently this causes Totems of Hircine to CTD. I suspect it was a Bethesda error that put two Daedra quests in the same cave.

I used the fix described in the wiki, "set stage cr12 20". This did not put any totem in my inventory. My Journal now says "Take the Totem to the Underforge". But I don't have the benefit of a Totem.

As ordered by the journal, I activated the forge in the Underforge and a piece of what looks like a carved bone appeared. This had not been in my inventory before. It was possible to activate this bone to pray to Hircine. I prayed: a magical aura thing activated. I checked my magical effects, etc. Nothing has changed that I can see. Maybe only when I am in beast form will there be an extra effect. Dunno. None of this matters really. The only thing I use my lycopanthy for is disease resistance.

Annoyingly, I have about six side quests in my journal that cannot be completed due to glitches. Fortunately this one is completed.

I hate to be bearer of bad news but I believe your game has reached a critical point in terms of game file size. You will get CTD trying to enter previous entered areas, and maybe even new ones, and this will progress until the entire world is locked off and you will be forced to abandon your game permanently.

With that aside, what is the file size of your most recent save? This might be an isolated incident otherwise.

You can simply reload before you progressed the quest, add the item using in console, then progress again.

I've completed the three Totems of Hircine quests without further ado. But ...

A Companion's radiant quest has also sent me to this same Haemar's Shame to recover a "family heirloom". Another CTD inside there. I doubt it's a bloated save file problem. The CTD is specific to this cave. I never CTD ... until this cave. I have no other location-based CTDs anywhere else in the game and I have been all over Skyrim today in a large number of interior locations. No CTDs.

Please note that the UESP wiki does indeed record that this cave is bugged with CTDs as I wrote in my first post. I am putting my problem down to this specific bug.

So I don't accept that the problem is the bloated save file problem. However, I'll keep that concept in mind — maybe this problem will start to show up given my long hours in the game. Fingers crossed.

A simple check though, what is the file size of your most recent save game? There are ways to slow down the degredation using certain mods if you indeed have this issue.