Carlsbad Caverns and Gaudalupe Mountains National Parks

 Today is catch up on blog day.  Sitting staring at desert and this mountain.

Not bad.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico

We walked down 750 feet to the “Big Room”.  The funny story about the “Big Room”, is I expected to come around a switchback at one point and see a big open space with a larger than life “display”.   This mainly comes from other experiences I have had at Caverns (i.e. Luray Caverns).  Turns out that once we were at the bottom the “Big Room” was about a 15-20 loop of soooo many formations. 

Some interesting facts about the Caverns:

**They can’t have too much light in the beginning portion of the cavern, as it will attract animals from outside the cavern who will then not be able to find their way out.  

**There is a bat viewing in the summer.  You can sit in the amphitheater at dusk and watch the bats fly out from the cavern.

**From the 1930s to the 1950s the way in and out was a series of ladders like the one pictured here. (Today there is an elevator.  We took the natural entrance down and the elevator up)

**In the Cavern there is a vast network of dark passages and secret rooms just beyond our reach.  In 1985 a small team of cavers used helium balloons to lift a climbing rope high into the dome.  With patience, ingenuity and a bit of luck, they snagged a lofty stalagmite after several tries.  Their ascent revealed a large passage above the Big Room they name Spirit World.  In 2014, cavers climbed into a higher level and named it Halloween Hall.  Who knows what the next cavers will find.

**The amount and rate of dripping water and the evaporation rate determines whether the stalagmite is short and fat or tall and thin.

**Humans being humans and their impacts on the cavern:

In the 1930s there was an idea to blast a tunnel through  a wall of the cavern for automobile tours. Fortunately that did not come to fruition.

When they put the elevator shaft in, it caused the cavern to dry out.  Airlocks installed in the 1970s rebalanced the caverns natural humidity.  

Building atop the cavern caused groundwater contamination.  A recent renovation addressed this concern.

Here are some pictures:

This is the entrance to the Cavern and a look at the switchbacks that took about 40 minutes to travel down 750 feet.  

The brownish formation is called a drape.  As the water enters the cavern and evaporates, calcite deposits grow.  With a sloped ceiling, the angle creates a whole different type of cave formation.  The surface tension allows the water to cling to the sloped ceiling.  Calcite deposits along winding trails pave a path for ripples and folds to build like supple cloth.

A small idea of what the Big Room looks like

We named this one Gnome with a beard or the Grinch

Cave popcorn was very prevalent.  These look like cauliflower to me.  The popcorn is considered a delicate formation that needs two ingredients to form, air and a thin film of water.  When the water flows over the bumpy surface, it evaporates fast on the bumps.  This leaves a thin mineral layer behind.  Layer by layer, knobs grow out from the wet surface.  If you cut a knob of cave popcorn in half, you will see concentric rings, like layers of an onion.  (They did not say whether it had anything to do with age like a tree’s rings)

This particular formation was called the lions tail.

A couple other photos:

Guadalupe Mountains

We did a 7+ mile hike at Guadalupe Mountains, McKittrick Canyon.  This was recommended by the Ranger because you could see various types of areas on one hike, from desert to more lush.  It was a beautiful day and I thoroughly enjoyed the nice long hike.

                                                    View as we started the trail.

There were several trees that had little or no bark and appeared to be different color trunks, purple, orange and tan.

The trail went by this house, which was owned by a geologist who came to the area and fell in love with it.  He later donated the land to the park.  

We stopped at the house for a snack and sat out on the porch.  This is the view.  You can see how it could grab someone’s attention.

This was called the Grotto.  It looked like the Caverns only above ground.  Wind and water are amazing rock architects.

The final stop on the trail was this Hunters cabin.  Here we refueled a little more with another spectacular view.

There were several cave like openings during the hike.  Dave tried to capture one here.  I always wonder what animals live there now and whether Native Americans lived there in the past.

Our next stop is White Sands National Park, New Mexico.

Til next time.