Carlsbad Caverns and the road to Big Bend National Park

Our drive from Alamogordo took us through the Lincoln National Forest, up and over the Sacremento Mountains to a height of over 9,000 feet and through towns called High Roll and Cloudcroft, which boasts a couple of ski lifts and a beginner ski conveyor belt. 

Read more: Carlsbad Caverns and the road to Big Bend National Park

Although a small ski area, it would be very pretty among the forest trees when the ground, houses and chalets were covered in snow.  We also passed this amazing railway bridge. Trains regularly carried passengers from Alamogordo to Cloudcroft from 1899 until the last train on 12 September, 1947. It climbed 26 miles and 4,000 feet and was one of several bridges on the journey. The last one remaining, it was restored in 2009-10.

We spent the night in Artesia and then drove the hour to Carlsbad Cavern National Park, in the Chihuahuan Desert of the Guadalupe Mountains.  On the drive up to the cavern we were lucky to see a herd of barbary sheep that now call the park home.  Although they were brought from Mexico last century, they have a symbiotic relationship with other flora and fauna so have been left alone to inhabit the park.

For such large animals, the speed and dexterity they used to maneuver their way up the cliff face was amazing. The bottom right sheep was standing on this ledge, about half way up the cliff and I could not see how he got there or which way he’d go to get up or down.

We had pre-booked our self-guided tour into the Caverns for 9.30am, so after the obligatory perusal of the extensive gift shop we got our tickets and were asked “are you walking or taking the lift?”  To which I immediately replied, “There’s a lift?  No, walking.”  Much to Peter’s dismay.  Obviously, we were walking.  With directions explained, we headed out the doors and up the path to the amphitheater and the mouth of the cave.  That in itself was amazing!  The cave entrance was massive and flying in and out were hundreds of tiny swallows.  

In the third picture you can just see the lights that dimly illuminate the path as it wends its way underground.

The first few hundred feet of the cave is also home to thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats that winter in Mexico and migrate to the cave in spring, until October.  About the size of your palm, they fly out at dusk every night in search of insects and consume over half their body weight each night!  The have a dusk viewing of the bats flying in their thousands from the amphitheater each night but we were told it’s hit and miss this early in the season.  We decided not to go back for the bats flight, which was a good call because we heard none flew out.

Our brochure informed us that the self-guided tour would take about 1 ½ hours.  We also knew we were going down a reasonable distance into the cave because there was a lift.  The path down to the entry was like the Corkscrew in Adelaide, Lombard Street in San Francisco, or the Trollwegen in Norway.  So, backwards and forwards we snaked down the very steep path until the light faded and eventually, we were in a dimly lit antechamber.  When our eyes adjusted to the light, we could see the path continuing to snake backwards and forwards until it was too dark.  We were going down a long way! 

I’m pretty sure I’d already said WOW! more than once by this time and for over 2 ½ hours I couldn’t tell you how many times I said it.  I could list very many words I could have uttered, awe-inspiring, astounding, mind-blowing and breathtaking spring to mind.  None do the unbelievable grandeur of this cavern justice.  Nor do our photos. None show the sheer size of the caverns, or the size or extent of the formations. The brochure isn’t exaggerating when it states, “it is an incomparable realm of gigantic subterranean chambers, fantastic cave formations, and extraordinary features”.  The scale and size are unmatched to anything we’ve experienced, and it is the largest system of caverns in continental America. 

So let me WOW you with some facts and a small selection of the over 300 photos we took.

Many of these columns were more than several storeys tall and with circumferences more than a couple of cars!

The above two pictures give something of an idea of the path down and sheer size of the caverns

This diagram gives some idea of the scale of the caverns

There were some small spaces to negotiate

And some large ones

The discovery of many caves we’ve visited, happened by accident. In 1898, sixteen-year-old Jim White stumbled across this cavern entrance while herding sheep.  He noticed a grey haze in the distance and upon investigation, saw the bats flying out of the entrance.  He returned with a kerosene lantern to explore and this began a decades long fascination with the exploration and promotion of the cave. 

Lucrative as fertilizer, a company mined the bat droppings (guano) until 1946 and Jim was so awestruck by his discoveries that in 1915, he encouraged photographer Ray Davis to descend with him and take pictures.  Their publication encouraged a booming tourist trade where the descent in and out of the cave was via a guano bucket!  In 1923, word reached Washington and it was declared a “natural monument”.  Jim continued to explore and promote the cave throughout his life but it wasn’t until 1995 that it was designated a World Heritage Site.

We took the Natural Entrance Route which is 1.25 miles from the cave entrance and descends over 750 feet, (equal to a 75-storey building) via very steep, hairpin paths, through a main corridor that culminates at the lunchroom (yes, there’s a café, tables and chairs, vending machines and a small gift shop down there).  Jim took a single kerosene lantern and fashioned a ladder from wire, rope and tree branches.  The path was so steep, by the time we’d spent 2 ½ hours attempting to take it all in and taking over 200 photos, our toes were sore from sliding forward in our shoes!  We can see why Jim was obsessed with his exploration.

As is customary in caves, many of the features have been imagined as something and named, so we travelled through Bat Cave, and Devil’s Spring, saw Green Lake Overlook, the Boneyard, and Iceberg Rock, a single 200,000 ton boulder that fell from the ceiling thousands of years ago.  

The left image shows some of the massive fallen rocks and the right, the cement path that takes you under a gap left by fallen rocks.

Apparently the most asked question of the park rangers about the cave is, will any more rocks fall?  And it’s certainly something we wondered, considering how much evidence of fallen rocks there were.  The answer is no.  As the cave was forming, many thousands of rocks fell from the ceiling and now litter the floor, but the ceilings are now dome shaped, providing the perfect structure for withholding the weight of the ground above and with little evidence of loose rocks left to fall.  There are also geological formations we’d not seen in any cave before.

Aside from the sheer size of the caverns, there are the usual stalactites (from the ceiling) and stalagmites (from the floor), the draperies or bacon, columns and flowstone.  But there are unique formations like cave pearls, lily pads and rimstone dams that formed due to water pools, helictites, Swiss cheese rocks and Pop Corn.

These show some of these formations

The self-guided trail is a further 1.25 miles in addition to the distance down from the Natural Entrance and meanders its way around the “Big Room.”  This includes features called Painted Grotto, Crystal Spring Dome, Mirror Lake and Temple of the Sun. By the time we reached the start of the Big Room, we were pretty much wowed out.  There was so much to see and take in that we decided to head out via the lift, see some of the other geological features outside the Cavern and come back in the morning to finish our tour.

The temperature inside the cavern remains at a steady 56 degrees F (12 C).  Outside, it had warmed up to above 30 degrees.  We’d been told about Rattlesnake Springs, a small oasis in the desert that was worth visiting so we travelled the few miles to the area.

A natural spring that Indians and settlers used, in 1934 it became the predominant water supply for the national park via small man-made canals.  Now, the area has a small lawned area with picnic tables and is shaded by large cottonwood trees.  The spring is a large, rectangular pool of such clear, crystal water you could be peering through glass.  It’s home to fish, turtles and a myriad of birds, butterflies and dragonflies.

Our camp for the night was only a few miles away in a BLM area.  Basically, a gravel carpark with not a hint of shade so we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting outside Joey, enjoying the breeze and chatting with the occasional tourist that ventured to the spring.  Luckily for us, we had a conversation with a fellow who had done the Caverns Kings Palace Tour the previous day.  The Caverns are so large that the self-guided tour is only a part of the cavern system available to explore.  We had tried to book this tour and Slaughter Canyon Cave, which is more spelunking, with head lamps and climbing up and down ladders, but both were booked out until mid-May.  He told us that each morning at 8am they allocate an additional 14 tickets to each of the 2 Kings Palace Tours.  He queued the previous day from 7.15am and managed to get a ticket.

Excellent, we thought.  So, the following morning we were parked in the car park by 6.30am.  We were the first in the queue at 7am and got our tickets at 8am when the office opened.  Our day had panned out nicely.  First into the cavern via the lift to complete the Big Room loop we had missed the day before, which took another 2 ½ hours and then at 12 noon, the 1 ½ hour Kings Palace tour.

The Big Room loop rivalled, if that were possible, the Natural Entrance Route.  All those words extolling magnificence, but especially wow, were uttered many more times over!  More amazing features loomed all around us – the Bottomless Pit, Giant Dome, Rock of Ages and Painted grotto, to name a few.  The time went incredibly quickly, we took the lift to the surface, had morning tea, then went back down the lift to meet for the Kings Palace Tour.

Our guided tour took us a further 100 feet lower, about 830 feet below the surface, that comprised descending the equivalent of an 8-storey building, and then climbing back up that same 8 stories.  We visited three magnificent rooms, the Papoose room (being the smallest), Queen Chamber, and the Green Lake Room.  We have visited several caves, in Australia, Japan and here in America during our last visit, so we’ve experienced the obligatory “lamplight” to see what it was like for the first visitors and explorers to the cave, and short blackouts where you cannot see your hand an inch in front of your face.  Our guide left us in the dark for a couple of minutes, which, although you can sense the person sitting next to you, was really an eerie feeling.  We also found that we were so engrossed in the magnificence of the cave, that we were almost unaware of the 8-storey descent and ascent.

This is considered a dry cave, however there are several crystal clear pools and occasional drips from the stalactites.

We caught the lift back to the surface and after a late lunch, headed out of the park towards Alpine and our next destination, Big Bend National Park.

Another of those surprising American towns, Alpine also has a vibrant wall mural culture and some very clever artists. This was was one of our first drizzly mornings but it was well worth the walk.

Previously known as Osborne, then Murphyville, it became Alpine in 1888 because it better described the town. While it was a railway town, in 1920 the Sul Ross Teachers’ college was founded and it is now a State University.

Here we are with some of the iconic singers and musicians of the 20th century. How many can you name?

Almost every street was adorned with a mural or some form of artwork. the Bottle House’s pillars were all mosaics and even the train carriage wasn’t left blank.

So many of the towns we drive through provide something unique, quirky or surprising and our next stop, Terlingua was no exception. To say Alpine and Terlingua were chalk and cheese, would be an understatement. It’s close to Big Bend National Park and in the Chihuahuan Desert, which is evident from the increasingly drier terrain.

Terlingua is a “Ghost Town” so of course we had to stop. Big Bend National Park is on the Rio Grande River which forms part of a natural border between the US and Mexico in this region. Consequently, much of the history of the area comes from early Mexican settlers. The town began as a Cinnabar mine in the early 1900s but the mine was abandoned when the mercury market crashed. There are only a few buildings left from the mining era including the trading company which is full of weird and wonderful touristy things to buy and the Starlight Theatre. Now, Terlingua’s claim to fame is the annual Casi Terlingua International Chili Championship which began in 1967 and holds eight “world class food contests”, Chili, Anything BUT Chili, Margaritas, Salsas, Buffalo Hot Wings and Beans.

The single room gaol is still standing and the stools at the trading company were unique!

The other popular tourist attraction in Terlingua is the cemetery. From 1903, this was the final resting place for many of the miners who died from mercury poisoning or accidents and the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919. Each year, Mexicans celebrate the Day of the Dead and people come from the surrounding area and transform the cemetery with flower garlands, candles and streamers. The graves also have regular visitors who leave small trinket offerings and many coins.

Since 1975, an increasing number of sturdy settlers have moved back to Terlingua and provide food, camping, outdoor activities and hire equipment like canoes for use in Big Bend National Park and our last true desert Park.