Exploring Carlsbad Caverns

For the true cave expert Carlsbad Caverns is both a blessing and an example of what not to do when you manage a cave. For us, it was fantastic.
There are two ways to see the cave, on a guided ranger tour which is not to expensive and the way we chose, self guided. At this time of the year there are no crowds, and the caves are a constant 56 degrees year round. On the day that we went, the caves were warmer than the outside air.

The drive into the cavern area is really beautiful for it’s spectacular views of the valley floor, but this area was one of the many casualties of this summers fires and the damage can be seen everywhere throughout the park. You can also see from the photo that the land begins to replenishes itself very fast. The visitors area and cave entrance was saved through some controlled burns, so the cave experience is intact.

We started our own tour by taking the elevator down 750 feet to the bottom where you find a 1.5 mile hike around what is known as the Big Room. Well named as it is the largest cave chamber in North America. It is amazing to see but as you walk the self guided tour you realize that most of the cave is dead, with very little new formations in creation. There are still some spectacular things to see like the Bottomless pit, Giant Dome, Rock of Ages and Painted Grotto. A nice feature when visiting Carlsbad is that you can take all the pictures you want (good for us, bad for the cave) but it is impossible to capture the scale of what you see with a camera.

Our favorite things was in the afternoon, we walked the natural entrance route. This is the entrance used by the early explorers and also the place in the summer months where visitors can watch the evening exodus of thousands of Mexican free-tail bats leaving the cave to feast on insects.

The decent is steep with many switch-backs but it is a true cave experience as you leave the natural light entering the cavern through the trunk passage or main corridor. The smells as you first enter the cave are of bats guano and as you get deeper and the light starts to fade, you see clouds of mist from the humid cave rising up to the opening to greet the dry dessert air. Highlights include Green Lake, Devils Spring, the Boneyard and Iceberg Rock, a 200,000-ton bolder that fell from the ceiling thousands of years ago.