Carlsbad Caverns

We have been talking about going to Southern NM for awhile now and finally found the right time. We flew from SD to El Paso, rented a car and set out to explore. Our first stop was Carlsbad Caverns. There are lots of hotels to choose from in Carlsbad, NM but we stayed at The Caverns Inn in White City, just ½ mile from the road to the Caverns.

Turns out going here in early January was a great choice. There weren’t very many people and the weather was incredible, 75 degrees on this day! During the summer, they limit the guests to 25k/day but on this day there were less than 2k.

These are some of the deepest, largest and most unique caverns ever discovered, and they’ve been protected by the NPS since 1923. Until you descend into the depths, it’s hard to comprehend the massiveness of these caves. The actor Will Rogers described the cavern system as a “Grand Canyon with a roof over it.”​

Entering the Cavern

The Big Room, North America’s largest explorable single cave chamber is a limestone chamber that’s 255 feet high. Stalactites, many as long as 60 feet, drip from its ceiling. Spectacular stalagmites, some six stories tall, rise from the floor. Delicate “soda straw” formations, cave pools, shimmering “popcorn” structures and brilliant speleothems add to the spectacle. “Some of the formations can be 150 to 200 feet tall. They even seem taller than that when you’re standing there looking at them.

Unlike most national parks, Carlsbad Caverns requires advanced reservations for entry; make sure you book before your arrival because they can’t be made on-site. Reservations cost $1, and they’re limited to a 60-minute window based on the time you choose.

The cavern system, naturally, ranks as the park’s main attraction. You should spend as much time as you can underground exploring it. You can enter the caverns in one of two ways. Via an elevator or walking down the 1¼-mile path through the Natural Entrance. By far, walking down is the best way (and riding the elevator back up at the end of your visit.)This will give you a much clearer sense of the cave system’s massiveness. You’ll descend roughly 800 feet as the sunlight slowly disappears. Once you’re inside, it’s full of spectacular rock formations of all shapes and sizes. Keep your eye out for an artifact: a decades-old rope ladder that explorers used in 1924 to enter the cave.

Cavern Highlights

The various rock formations are generally all stalagmites or stalactites, and the Big Room has more than its fair share. Highlights include the Hall of Giants (a series of roughly 60-foot-high domes. These are built up from water droplets depositing minerals in the same spot over eons.) The Bottomless Pit (a 140-foot-deep hole.) Crystal Spring Dome, one of the park’s largest active stalagmites at 21 fee. You’ll see water flowing down the sides of the white rock into a pool below. It’s hard to explain how impressive walking through the Big Room is; you just have to see (and experience) it for yourself.

If you visit late April through October, you can experience the Bat Flight. More than 400,000 Brazilian free-tailed bats emerging from the caverns nightly, hungry and in search of insects. If you’re an early riser you can watch them return between 4-6am.

History of the Cavern

Native Americans have known about the cave for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.The Mescalero Apache called this area Jadnut?udebiga (Home of the Bat) while the Zuni Pueblo named it Asho:sti an alaluckwa (Bat Cave). If you look carefully around the cave entrance you’ll find multiple mescal cooking pits and even a cave painting.The Mescalero Apache, Zuni Pueblo, and other groups were well acquainted with this piece of the Chihuahuan Desert. While there is no evidence these native peoples explored deep into the cave, they were certainly aware of its existence.

 The first credited cave exploration happened in the cave in 1898. Sixteen year-old cowboy, Jim White, was rounding up cattle one evening. He thought he spotted smoke from a wildfire off in the distance. As Jim approached the smoke, he noticed he wasn’t seeing smoke. He was watching bats. Thousands-upon-thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats. Jim finally stopped at the mouth of the cave completely mesmerized by the spectacle of flying mammals filling the air above him. He spent the rest of is life exploring the caverns. The small town near the turn off is named after him, White City. To read Jim’s whole story visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Larkin_White

Check out more of our New Mexico adventures here: https://48houradventures.com/category/new-mexico/