The ShoreXplorers: Carlsbad Caverns Is Every Bit As Magnificent As People Say It Is!

Soda Straw formations

So fine and delicate

There are two ways that you can descend in to Carlsbad Caverns (National Park). You can walk down through the Natural Entrance zig zagging down 750 feet (almost 75 stories) over the course of a mile, or you can take the elevator down. There is one way out of the caverns, by elevator back up. And while you are in the caverns, you hike through an enormous chamber loaded with glorious and incredible stone formations. If anyone has ever told you that Carlsbad was amazing, they were right. Take it from two veteran cavern visitors; we spent almost 4 hours hiking in this cavern.

Looking back at the Visitors Center, on the way to the Natural Entrance

Natural Entrance path

Amphitheater - that dark spot at the top of the picture is the cave opening

We chose to hike through the Natural Entrance. We had arrived by car driving to the top of a range of the Guadalupe Mountains. The terrain was rugged dessert, with limestone cliffs. After showing our National Parks pass and renting audio guides at the Visitors Center, we walked down a path through the desert to an amphitheater where they watch the bats leave the cave in the summer. Below the theater the cave entrance opens as a huge, dark maw. Slowly you descend into the darkness, switching back and forth across the steep sides of the opening. Your eyes become more and more accustomed to the dark. The park rangers have chosen not to light this part of the hike (except for 1 or 2 short tunnels created to continue the course of the path) so that wild animals will not be attracted to explore the caverns as well.

Natural Entrance path

It gets darker and darker

The increasing gloom also puts you in mind of what it must have been like when Jim White, the first explorer of the caverns, and early visitors experienced. Jim White found the caverns as a 16-year old cowboy when he saw what he thought was a cloud of smoke out in the distance. It was bats leaving the cave, and his first descent started a lifelong passion for the cave, concluding with his being made the first chief park ranger in 1924. Early visitors were lowered into the caverns by guano bucket. Then a wooden staircase was built for visitors to walk down (and back up) 750 feet. The current paths have been in place since the 1950s.

As you reach the “twilight zone” between light and dark you start seeing fantastic rock formations. At the bottom of the descent there are rest rooms, a snack bar, and gift shop. From here you start the 1 ¼ mile walk through an absolutely enormous limestone chamber called the Big Room. The Big Room is 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide and 255 feet high at its highest point. It is heavily decorated with stalagmites, stalactites, soda straws, draperies, columns, flowstone, popcorn and other interesting formations.

This is said to look like the baleen in a whales mouth

Some of the formations like the Hall of Giants and Mirror Lake are pretty famous. What was impressive to us were the thousands of delicate soda straws hanging from the ceilings, and the popcorn like formations which was everywhere.

The path is paved and has railings

Popcorn everywhere

Given that the caverns are below desert, it is surprising that some of the formations are still wet and being formed. It takes months for a drop of rain from the surface to soak its way into the cavern. The Chihuahuan Desert gets 10-inches of rain a year.

Some of the original entrance stairs

The whole area is part of the Guadalupe Mountains, which is also a neighboring National Park. 265 million years ago, West Texas and Southeast New Mexico was covered by an inland sea. A reef of sponge and algae formed at one end. Tectonic uplift lifted this reef into what is known today as the Guadalupe Mountains. The activity caused cracks and fissures which grew through chemical reactions eroding the limestone inside the mountains, and building these formations. The mountain range is loaded with caverns. Guadalupe Mountains National Park is rich with fossils from the early reef. The fossils also exit in the Caverns, you can’t see them because they are covered with formations. We also made a brief stop at Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

Hall of Giants

Flow stone

We have visited many caves in many states, Luray Caverns in Virginia has fancy formations, Mammoth Cave is long and has few formations, Wind Cave in South Dakota is memorable because it was Marina’s first cave experience, Tom Sawyer Cave in Missouri is tied to Mark Twain, as well as other interesting caves. Carlsbad Caverns is beautiful, and immense and so worth the visit. Here are more photos...