Christmastime at Carlsbad Caverns National Park

A Quiet December Day Exploring The Cavern’s Underground Wonders

Last December, my girlfriend Craig and I headed south out of Santa Fe on highway 285 to Carlsbad Caverns National Park with plans to spend a full day exploring Carlsbad’s underground wonders before continuing on to visit Guadalupe National Park and Chamizol National Monument in El Paso.  All three parks are easy to fit into a four day loop out of Santa Fe. 

You see, I like caves. Recently we’ve been underground in marble caves (Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve), pristine limestone caves (Kartchner Caverns State Park in AZ), and lava tube caves (Lava Beds National Monument in California).  And in my college days I spent several summers exploring obscure lava tube caves in central Oregon.  This caving thing is a long standing interest.  So when a trip to Carlsbad Caverns National Park became a reality, I not only relished another stamp in my NPS passport, but I got to check out a cave that totally boggled my mind.

Little did I know that the highway to Carlsbad went right by the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico.  We had to stop and check it out.  I cannot imagine that we are alone in the universe.  There are just too many galaxies for us to be the only living creatures in all of space.  Now whether we have had visitors from those far-flung galaxies is another question and one that is really quite fun to contemplate.  Science fiction writers and Hollywood producers certainly stoke our imagination with their versions of alien visitation.  But after spending time reading about the mysterious goings on in/around Roswell in July 1947, you have to wonder if aliens have visited earth.  The museum presents interviews with dozens of military personnel that were involved in the “Roswell lncident.”  Some claim they saw alien bodies, others saw pieces of what they claimed was a space ship.  No one knows the full story, but it is certainly something the government wants to keep a secret.  

With aliens on our mind, we rolled into the town of Carlsbad in time for dinner at Yellow Brix, a small and inviting bistro with a good selection of local beers.  I like hops, so ordered a very tasty Elevated IPA from Albuquerque’s La Cumbre Brewing Company.  At dinner, a small brochure on our table pitched nightly cruises down the Pecos River to view the Christmas lights.  With nothing else on our evening dance card, we made a reservation for the 40 minute Christmas On The Pecos boat ride.  This was a great call as we settled into a chilly but totally entertaining trip to view the extravagant holiday lighting displays on the lawns of private homes and businesses fronting the river.   The Park Service even had their own lighting display!!  After a restful night dreaming of Christmas lights and cold beer, it was time to go cave exploring.

The Park is about 25 miles from the town of Carlsbad and since we planned to spend all day underground, we booked two nights at the local Hampton Inn.  It was just too cold to camp out.  And December is a really good month to visit Carlsbad as the crowds are almost non-existent and hotel rates are pretty reasonable.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to visit in the summer when, on the Fourth of July weekend for example, as many as 5,000 people can be in the Caverns.  In the winter, daily visitation is in the low hundreds.  

Our morning drive up the 7 mile twisty park road to the Visitor Center and cave entrance was shrouded in fog.  We had no idea of the elevation we gained or the view to be had until later in the afternoon when we emerged from underground.  The fog had burned off and we found ourselves on a ridge with an expansive view of the Chihuahuan Desert below.  It was near freezing with a light dusting of snow when we arrived and it warmed up to almost 50 by the afternoon.  But the outside temperature wasn't a concern as it is a balmy 56 underground and a light jacket and good walking shoes were all we needed.

The caves of Carlsbad lie on a 400 mile long, 250 million year old reef left behind from an ancient inland sea.  As the land lifted up to create what would become the Guadalupe Mountains (Guadalupe Mountains National Park is just 31 miles further down the road), sulphuric acid was created when rain water migrated down through cracks in the limestone reef and mixed with hydrogen-sulfide enriched water pushing up through underground oil and gas deposits. The sulfuric acid dissolved the limestone and created the huge caverns that are now Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  The stalagmites, stalactites, soda straws, draperies, columns, popcorn and other formations have all been created in the past half a million years as surface water, enriched with calcium bicarbonate, seeps down through the earth and drips into the much older cave, leaving calcite formations behind.  While much of the cave is inactive, there are places where surface water, taking about 9 months to seep through to the caverns, is still creating formations.  

Ancient drawings on the stone walls near the entrance tell us that Native Americans knew about the cave for at least 1,000 years before a local cowboy, Jim White, began exploring the caverns.  In 1915, White brought a photographer into the caves and the pictures created quite a sensation.  In 1923, the Interior Department sent someone to see what the buzz was about and later that year on October 25, President Calvin Coolidge used the Antiquities Act to create Carlsbad Caverns National Monument. Congress made it a National Park on May 14, 1930.  Early on, Jim White lowered visitors into the cave in a large bucket also used to mine the cave’s extensive bat guano deposits.  A ladder was installed in 1925 and the first elevator was operational by 1932.  By 1937, the park had received its millionth visitor!!  

We began at the Visitor Center where we made reservations for the guided walk through the Kings Palace which took us into the deepest part of the cave and some of the most spectacular formations.  Reservations for Kings Palace are a must.  There are 119 caves identified in the park of which Carlsbad Caverns is one of two available to the public, and by far the most visited.  The other is Slaughter Cave, which also requires a reservation for the once-a-day Ranger led hike with flashlights and no paved trails.  

Our plan was to explore the self-guided part of the cave first and finish up our day on the ranger led walk through the Kings Palace.  A short trail from the visitor center drops you into the cave’s entrance trail and a one-mile descent to the Big Room.  This is a steady downhill walk beginning at the huge hole in the ground that first caught Jim White’s attention as he sat and watched “millions of bats” flying out in the early evening.  They were so thick, he initially thought it might be a volcano erupting.  The path is paved, there are good interpretative signs throughout the caverns and the lighting, recently upgraded to LED, is very tasteful and helps the caverns come alive.  

If you don’t want to walk down, or back up at the end of your cave explorations, there are elevators to take you to and from the surface.  In the summer months, the wait for the elevators can be as much as three hours.  

At the bottom of the entrance trail, 755 feet below the surface, I was surprised to find a well-designed rest area with t-shirts and post cards and a small food concession.  Yes, we bought a t-shirt!!!  There are also some of the coolest rest rooms I’ve ever used – carved into the side of the cave. 

The self-guided tour of the Big Room is a one mile path through some of the most famous formations: Rock Of Ages, Giant Dome, Temple Of The Sun, and the Painted Grotto.  We spent a good 90 minutes on this route, reading the signs, trying to take good photos and being amazed at the sheer size of this cave.  Then we queued up for our ranger led walk through the Kings Palace.

Starting in the underground rest area, the Kings Palace tour takes you down to 830 feet below the surface and through four amazing chambers.  This area was once open as a self-guided trail, but the close proximity of delicate formations was too much of a temptation for some visitors.  They just couldn’t keep their hands off.  To stop the destruction in the Kings Palace, access is now only available on a ranger-led hike.  But if it hadn’t been for Toni, our ranger, we would have missed out on some great stories.  We learned that you cannot bring your own food into the caverns because inadvertently-dropped food attracts raccoons.  At the peak, over 300 raccoons infested the cave, all drawn by food crumbs dropped by visitors on the access trail.  Once those 300 were cleaned out, the Park Service had no desire to have the caves re-infested.  Hence the no food policy.  You can buy concession food so long as you eat it in their designated area.

We also learned from Toni that recent science has discovered LOTS of microbes living in the cave.  Originally, the studies were expected to show that nothing lived underground in the dark, but that was soon dispelled as unique microbe communities are literally found in each major chamber in the cave.   

And we got to experience the cave in the dark when Toni shut out the lights.  Blind Descent, one of my favorite Nevada Barr books, (mystery novels based in national parks), takes place at Carlsbad.  Her protagonist, park ranger Anna Pigeon, finds herself deep in the caves and she loses her light.  Barr’s written descriptions of being without light in the cave gave me the willies and now I experienced it first-hand.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose your light so far underground.  You’d probably turn into a fossil.  Fortunately Toni turned the lights back on and we ended our guided walk back at the rest area.  Having spent most of the day underground, we opted for the speedy elevator back to the surface.

Not all of Carlsbad is underground.  In 1978, Congress designated 33,000 acres of the park as Wilderness.  This Chihuahuan Desert landscape is fairly easy to explore on some of the 50 plus miles of identified trails in the park.  Much of the trail system is marked only with rock cairns, so you need to be familiar with backcountry travel.  We chose to leave the caverns on the 9.5 mile scenic drive through this beautiful desert and were treated to six mule deer, a totally disinterested raccoon, and flock of white-crowned sparrows.

Back in the town of Carlsbad, as we kicked back with a cold adult beverage, Craig and I marveled at the sheer size of the caves and the formations we’d discovered that day.  Carlsbad is one of the largest limestone caves in the world and we are so blessed that it is protected and open for visitors like us.  The one thing we missed were the bats.  They only inhabit the cave from early spring to October.  So, bummer, I guess we’ll have to come back again.

Devils Tower National Monument: Of Motorcycles and Prairie Dogs

This iconic monolith rises from the Black Hills and its towering columns have mesmerized people for thousands of years.

We rolled through the entrance station at Devils Tower National Monument on a sunny Sunday afternoon with a thousand Harley Davidsons.  It was the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and we found ourselves sharing our Black Hills national park experience with more bikers than you can imagine. 

I had no clue what to expect in the Black Hills.  I know it was gold strikes in the 1870s that caused the U.S. Government to default on its treaty promises that the Black Hills would forever remain Sioux land.  I know there are mountains that lend themselves to massive sculptures at both Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse.  And I had heard of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally (I just didn’t know when it occurred).  But I didn’t know what to expect from the landscape or the geography. I was pleasantly surprised by the miles of rolling grasslands, forests of ponderosa pine, herds of bison and picturesque craggy mountain tops that greeted us as we explored the narrow roadways that climbed up canyons and ran along ridgetops all through the Black Hills.

My girlfriend Craig and I started this trip in Abbottsford, British Columbia where we picked up a new teardrop shaped travel trailer which will be our home on the road as we pursue visiting all 417 National Park sites.  As we worked our way east hiking the Big Hole National Battlefield in Montana, scoping bison in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley and envisioning what it was like at the battle of Little Bighorn, the number of motorcycles we encountered on the highway increased almost exponentially.  We had no idea our plans to explore the national parks of Montana and the Black Hills coincided with the Sturgis rally.

Devils Tower is on the western edge of the Black Hills and is a bit of an anomaly.  There really is nothing else like it.  About 50 million years ago, a surge of molten rock intruded up from the earth’s core into the surrounding sedimentary rock.  It did not break the earth’s crust which allowed it to cool very slowly and form into the very large columns you see today.  Over the ensuing millions of years, the surrounding softer sedimentary rock eroded away leaving a giant rock monolith rising 867 feet above the surrounding landscape.  Or at least that’s one theory.  Others think it might be actually be an old volcanic plug.  

The Kiowa believe that a very large bear clawed the columns as he chased seven sisters up a tree stump that rose up and turned into the rock tower.  The sisters turned into the Pleiades.  Regardless of your favorite origin story, what we see today is a geologic wonder that has mesmerized humans since eyes first gazed upon the Tower.

Known as Bear Lodge to the Kiowa, it was named Devils Tower in 1875 by Army Colonel Richard Dodge when he was in the area trying to confirm reports of gold in neighboring hills.  In his trip report, Dodge noted that “the Indians call the shaft “Bad God’s Tower,” which he morphed into Devils Tower.  

On July 4, 1893 it was climbed for the first time by two local ranchers using a wooden stake ladder wedged into the cracks.  Remnants of the ladder have been restored by the Park Service and can be seen today from the Tower Trail.  Since then some 220 routes have been pioneered up the tower’s rock faces and over 5,000 climbers a year are challenged by these world class routes.  Yet in June every year, in deference to the sacredness of the tower to Native Americans, a voluntary ban on climbing is suggested so local tribes can ceremonially observe their connection to the tower without the intrusion of climbers.

We didn’t climb, but we saw several parties inching their way up as we hiked our way around the tower on a trail system that we accessed from the campground.  The campground is non-reservation and we easily got a site in early afternoon along the backside of B Loop in an oxbow of the Belle Fourche River.  Towering cottonwood trees gave us plenty of shade and the site was drive-through so I didn’t have to embarrass myself by trying to back up my new trailer!

A bit about the new trailer.  It is made in Quebec by Safari Condo, a small family owned business that makes about six or seven trailers a week.  Not a big operation.  The model I got is the Alto 1713.  It is 17 feet long with a retractable roof so it tows as a low profile teardrop, but once in camp the roof raises so you can stand up in it.  It comes with an almost king sized bed, a toilet, outdoor shower, small table with bench seats, and a stove, sink and refrigerator.  Being tent campers, we have yet to cook inside preferring to do all the food preparation outside on our historic two burner stove.  And the toilet we’ve turned into a closet.  But the benefits of a fridge cannot be overstated.  Cold beer without draining the ice chest is a dream!! 

With the Alto set up, we headed towards the tower across what’s known as prairie dog town, an aptly named piece of real estate filled with barking prairie dogs.  They are very cute and photogenic and caused quite the jam up along the road – both bikers and cars.  Once through the prairie dogs we headed up to the Red Beds trail, a 2.8 mile loop that takes you to the visitor center and around the monument back to the campground.  There is also a 1.3 mile paved Tower Trail that starts at the visitor center and loops around the base of the tower.  This is by far the monument’s most popular walk.  

I was glad we walked to the Tower Trail as the parking lot was crammed with motorcycles.  They were very well behaved motorcycles, but loud nonetheless. Craig and I did the Tower Trail and then completed the larger Red Beds loop around the monument to get back to the campground in time for cocktails and sunset.

We have President Teddy Roosevelt to thank for Devils Tower.   It was the very first use of the Antiquities Act back in 1906, making it the very first National Monument.  Ironic that our current president likes to compare himself with Roosevelt, yet Trump has a disdain for the Antiquities Act.  If only he’d figure out the power there is in presidential proclamations creating new monuments.  That seems like something that would feed his ego. 

But back to Devils Tower.  We spent about 24 hours in the monument, staying one night.  That was plenty of time to hike the trails and see the monument lit by both morning and evening sun.  And it gave us time to ponder if Teddy Roosevelt would have ridden a Harley.