We spent the entire day today crawling, climbing and
meandering approximately 750-850 feet underground. Carlsbad Caverns National Park is an easy, 30
minute drive south of Carlsbad. The visitor’s
center is perched atop a mountain in the Chihuahuan
Desert. Let me tell you, desert scrub brush, yucca and prickly pears look a lot more interesting when they are accompanied by changes in elevation.
We arrived about one hour after the visitor center opens
at 8:00 am and grabbed our tickets. (Most of our special tours were reserved
online over a month ago per park recommendation.) There are two ways you can see the cave for the basic entrance fee - the natural entrance and/or the Big Room. Each can be accomplished in an hour - two hours if you do both. The natural entrance is a mile walk down some pretty steep trail. The Big Room can be accessed by elevator. We, of course, headed immediately
to the cave’s natural entrance. Over lunch, we discussed which you should do if you only had one day to spend in the cave. The consensus was, if you have already
been to a cave and only have time to work in one of these tours, do the
natural entrance tour. Otherwise, do the
Big Room. We did both and got bored
halfway through the Big Room.
Our first BIG ADVENTURE happened at the mouth of the
cave. Flying around the entrance in a
continual loop were about one hundred, chirping cave swallows. The site was mesmerizing and incredibly
cool. We all paused to watch. The adventure began when we realized that the
swallows would change their trajectory occasionally to sometimes fly en masse
up an out of the cave and then sometimes turn and fly down and into the cave. When they would fly down and in, they would
fly incredibly close to the cave path.
Those of you who know Ross and his aversion to birds already understand
the things that were running through all of our minds. Steep inclined path. Very deep, long drop to the bottom of the
cave. Flying, winged creatures zipping
in, out and around the path. A definite
recipe for potential disaster.
After a moment, we headed
down. Thankfully, about the time we started
down the path – half of the birds headed up and out, another half headed down
and in and only one lone soldier remained flying menacingly in circles around
the top of the entrance. Perfect. We scooted into the cave where we saw the
rest of the swallows resting and “chatting” at the top of the cave. Cool. Very cool.
Carlsbad Caverns is actually more famous for its nightly bat viewing. Unfortunately, March is a little too early
for the majority of the bats to arrive.
Even so, we felt that we got a private preview of the show via some bat-like little birds.
The rest of the cave was just like a regular cave – only
bigger. A book at the park bookstore says, "It isn't the longest cave in the world...It isn't the largest cave, or the deepest...What it is, is overwhelming." The temperature in the cave is a pleasant 56 degrees
and has 90% relative humidity. We ate a
sandwich from the snack shop at the bottom of the
cave. (Calling it a restaurant is stretching it.) Then we grabbed the elevators back to the top for dessert and then split up for our
tours that started at 1:00 p.m. 
Split? Yes.
Split. There are those of us in the
Hick’s clan who are not fond of heights and tight spaces and those of us who
appreciate that kind of challenge.
Carlsbad Caverns has cave tours for all types of adventurers. So, Ross went back down the elevator to what
he started calling the “AARP” tour of the King’s Palace – he is, after all, the person in
the family closest to the age requirement for membership. From his report, the tour was delightful, the
ranger guide informative and he met and chatted with several nice
people. The boys and I went the opposite
direction to meet Rangers Tess and Tish at the far end of the Visitor’s Center where we would
don our gear for the Lower Cave tour.
The three of us and nine other people were handed cave
helmets with a headlamp (we supplied the batteries) and gloves, individually
questioned to gather our names, hometowns and affirmative statement that we did
want to go on the tour and were then herded down the elevator to the Lower Cave
entrance. We went through a gate in the
rail where Tish attached a knotted rope to an established spot near the Big
Room path and we proceeded to rappel backward down a slanted flowstone to a
flat space on the rock about 15 feet down.
After that, we descended another 90 feet down three stainless steel
ladders anchored to the cave walls. Only
one person at a time was allowed on each ladder and we were taught to listen
for the verbal code “On ladder 2” before we could start going down ladder 1.
Ranger led tours never disappoint, folks. If you visit a National Park, take the time to attend a ranger led tour of some kind. You will be glad you did. Tess and Tish were funny, interesting and playful making our time wandering through the lower depths of the cave fun. I have three more pun jokes to add to my arsenal thanks to Tess – code names: “deer,” “carion” and “column.” I taught Tess my “What do you call a fly with no wings?” joke. We both knew the “What do you call a fish with no ‘i’s’ joke. Like I said, we had a great time.
Down there, the cave is left much as it was when it was
discovered in 1906. Our “path” was two lines
of red tape spaced about 1-2 foot apart on the cave floor. There
were red and white sections of tape that marked dangerous areas. We used the “cave communication
system” to pass the word down the line concerning areas that were more slippery
than usual or things we should watch for and step over. There were no lights outside of the LED lamps on
our foreheads. And there were plenty of
tight spaces, bridges and rock falls to scramble over. At one point, there was a hands and knees
crawl through a tunnel about 15-20 feet long.
Awesome.Some of the more interesting sights were a couple of dead bats – one which was inside one of the stalagmites and easy to see when illuminated by a flashlight – a dead cave worm and dead cave cricket at the edge of a body of water we were crossing by bridge, and a huge area of cave pearls which are apparently unique to the cave and very rare. Tess and Tish kept things hopping and after about 2 hours mucking around, we returned to the gear room to turn everything back in.
After that, we were tired.
On a tip, we returned to Carlsbad to eat at Mi Casita – a mom and pop
Mexican food restaurant that was a perfect end to a fun day.
