Juggling my pocketbook, the camera and an audio speaker for tour information, I followed Andy out of the Visitor Center at Carlsbad Caverns, through the parking lot and down the hill to the Natural Entrance."You picked the unlucky job," I said to Ranger Will. "You must be freezing."
He grinned. Dressed in a light park ranger jacket, he braved the 20-degree morning cheerfully. "I'm from Wyoming," he said. "This is nothing."
I wrapped my scarf tighter. "I hope it's warmer down there." I nodded toward the gaping hole in the side of the hill and the huge amphitheater in front of it."Year round, 56 degrees," he said, "and you are the second couple of the day, but before you head into the cave, I have to give you the orientation spiel."
Andy and I showed our admission tickets and listened carefully to the rules.
The one-mile Natural Entrance Tour followed the traditional explorers' route down 750 feet into the earth along a steep, self-guided group of switchbacks to the Main Corridor. For 90 minutes we read about discoverer Jim White, a 16-year old local cowboy, who thought the mass of departing bats was a cloud of smoke and set out to explore its origin. The audio speaker told about Devil's Spring, Green Lake Overlook and the Boneyard, a complex maze of highly dissolved limestone rock that looked like Swiss cheese. The path circled down around Iceberg Rock, a single 200,000-ton boulder that fell from the cave ceiling thousands of years ago. Ranger Will was right. The comfortable 56-degrees felt warm as we strolled up and down along the path, reading, listening, looking, gaping in awe at the incredible majesty and intricate beauty of this underground world.
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| Calcite crystals bejewel the cave walls. |
Sulfuric acid... created when rainwater seeped downward through cracks and faults in the limestone and mixed together underground with hydrogen-sulfide-rich water from oil and gas fields to the south and east.
Sulfuric acid... a simple chemical that dissolved limestone and opened up the fractures and faults into the large chambers of today.
Just the time frame seemed inconceivable:
250 million years to create a limestone reef, bury it under pressure of an inland ocean, uplift the mountains and dissolve away the chambers; 500,000 years to decorate the bedrock, a drop at a time, with billions and billions of calcite crystals to build stalactites, stalagmites, columns, draperies, flowstone, cave pearls, lily pads, popcorn and helictites. Beautiful beyond imagining!
"Let's just keep going," said Andy when we reached the second self-guided tour, the Big Room Route. The mile-long, 8.2-acre loop circled the Big Room for another 90 minutes. As large as 14 football fields, the Big Room included Bottomless Pit, Giant Dome, Rock of Ages, Painted Grotto and Chinese Theater, with many formations named by White himself. I couldn't put the camera down, but focusing challenged every shot between the white gypsum and calcite crystals, the occasional pools of water, the different kinds of lighting including every bulb imaginable, the midnight recesses of total blackness and the uneven surfaces.
"Let's just keep going," said Andy when we reached the second self-guided tour, the Big Room Route. The mile-long, 8.2-acre loop circled the Big Room for another 90 minutes. As large as 14 football fields, the Big Room included Bottomless Pit, Giant Dome, Rock of Ages, Painted Grotto and Chinese Theater, with many formations named by White himself. I couldn't put the camera down, but focusing challenged every shot between the white gypsum and calcite crystals, the occasional pools of water, the different kinds of lighting including every bulb imaginable, the midnight recesses of total blackness and the uneven surfaces.
But this alien world was beautiful beyond description. "Please, please, speak in whispers," Ranger Will had requested at the entrance. "Voices carry a quarter mile in the cave."
I wanted to whisper in awe.
"It's like a church," said Andy. "God's place.""A cathedral," I added.
We understood a little of the wonder and awe Jim White must have felt when he discovered Carlsbad around 1898 and his eagerness to show the cave to others. But few believed the improbable tales of such magnificence. That too we understood. White never gave up. With foolhardy courage, he explored. He sponsored all-day tours, complete with home-cooked dinner, a stay overnight, and breakfast. His wife even packed lunches. It wasn't until 1915 when 14 black and white pictures photographed by Ray V. Davis were published in town that things began to happen.By 1923, Inspector Robert Holley of the Department of Interior traveled from Washington, D.C. to confirm reports. Later that year President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed Carlsbad Caverns a National Monument with White as its first chief ranger. By 1930, Congress elevated the status to National Park. Since 1995, Carlsbad, now 46,766 acres with 100 other caves, proudly boasts the designation World Heritage Site. It is truly a crown jewel.
With two hours before our guided tour, we stopped for coffee in the Visitor Center restaurant: roasted pinyon pine nut blend. "And I'll bet the beans are harvested in New Mexico," I told Andy. I was right.
"We have 90 minutes before the guided tour," he said. "Let's drive the loop road. It's less than ten miles, so we should have plenty of time to get back and check in at the entry point for the cave tour."
The Walnut Canyon Desert Drive, a 9.5-mile scenic loop, followed the top of the Guadalupe escarpment west and then descended onto the floor of upper Walnut Canyon, heading east to the park entrance road. For more than a thousand years until about 1875, Mescalero Apaches lived here and in the pits along this cliff they roasted agave and sotol hearts to make them edible. We read the brochure and looked for evidence of each description about features of the Chihuahuan Desert. The almost 47,000 acres of Carlsbad Caverns National Park are located in the northern tip of this desert. To the southeast stretched the plain of the Delaware Basin.
To the southwest extended the backbone of the Guadalupe Mountains, ending with the plunging cliffs of El Capitan. I read to Andy about cliff formation and how it contributed to the caves. "Geologists have determined that in Permian times, some 250 million years ago, this landscape was beneath an arm of the Permian Sea which covered 10,000 square miles." Little did we realize the condition of the road until we couldn't turn around. Ahead, the one lane, deeply rutted and washed out, followed a dry wash of gravel and sand. Stopping several times to remove boulders that blocked the wash, we held our breaths for Little Red. With Andy's careful maneuvering at ten miles per hour, the trusty Saturn made it through without scraping bottom or getting stuck. But we didn't have a minute to spare.
At 2 p.m. we reported to the base of the elevator shaft as directed for the Kings Palace Guided Tour, a ranger led one-mile walk for 90 minutes through four highly decorated scenic chambers. Ranger Annette guided our group of 20 to the deepest portion of the cavern with paved trails, 830 feet beneath the desert surface, and back up 80 feet to the elevators. She pointed out helictites, draperies, columns and soda straws. Once everyone was seated on the stone benches, she turned off the artificial lights to demonstrate total blackness of the natural cave environment. As she and accompanying Ranger Joanne ushered us back toward the Big Room, Ranger Annette reminded us of the responsibilities we hold as citizens of the world to respect and protect the fragile creations we find in nature.
More than anything, in a place of unspeakable beauty, Andy and I found silence together. For the last half hour we walked through this world of remarkable enchantment, without noise or disturbance. Just before closing here in this crown jewel of a cave, with only a few people far behind us and out of sight, we walked alone. In the solitude, we heard only the occasional drip of water percolating down to build new formations, drop by drop.
The Walnut Canyon Desert Drive, a 9.5-mile scenic loop, followed the top of the Guadalupe escarpment west and then descended onto the floor of upper Walnut Canyon, heading east to the park entrance road. For more than a thousand years until about 1875, Mescalero Apaches lived here and in the pits along this cliff they roasted agave and sotol hearts to make them edible. We read the brochure and looked for evidence of each description about features of the Chihuahuan Desert. The almost 47,000 acres of Carlsbad Caverns National Park are located in the northern tip of this desert. To the southeast stretched the plain of the Delaware Basin.
To the southwest extended the backbone of the Guadalupe Mountains, ending with the plunging cliffs of El Capitan. I read to Andy about cliff formation and how it contributed to the caves. "Geologists have determined that in Permian times, some 250 million years ago, this landscape was beneath an arm of the Permian Sea which covered 10,000 square miles." Little did we realize the condition of the road until we couldn't turn around. Ahead, the one lane, deeply rutted and washed out, followed a dry wash of gravel and sand. Stopping several times to remove boulders that blocked the wash, we held our breaths for Little Red. With Andy's careful maneuvering at ten miles per hour, the trusty Saturn made it through without scraping bottom or getting stuck. But we didn't have a minute to spare.
At 2 p.m. we reported to the base of the elevator shaft as directed for the Kings Palace Guided Tour, a ranger led one-mile walk for 90 minutes through four highly decorated scenic chambers. Ranger Annette guided our group of 20 to the deepest portion of the cavern with paved trails, 830 feet beneath the desert surface, and back up 80 feet to the elevators. She pointed out helictites, draperies, columns and soda straws. Once everyone was seated on the stone benches, she turned off the artificial lights to demonstrate total blackness of the natural cave environment. As she and accompanying Ranger Joanne ushered us back toward the Big Room, Ranger Annette reminded us of the responsibilities we hold as citizens of the world to respect and protect the fragile creations we find in nature.More than anything, in a place of unspeakable beauty, Andy and I found silence together. For the last half hour we walked through this world of remarkable enchantment, without noise or disturbance. Just before closing here in this crown jewel of a cave, with only a few people far behind us and out of sight, we walked alone. In the solitude, we heard only the occasional drip of water percolating down to build new formations, drop by drop.
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