Carlsbad Caverns National Park
| Introduction | Entrance | Cave Tour | Walnut Creek Drive | Natural Entrance / Bat Flight |
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| Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Click to go directly to the slideshow... |
Introduction
About 250 million years ago, this entire area was the bottom of an inland sea. In this sea was a reef, made primarily of sea shells, calcite, sponges, etc.70 million years ago (give or take a few million), the area began to rise because of that pesky Pacific techtonic plate, pushing up the North American plate. That caused the water to drain and cracks to form in the reef. The reef formed part of the Guadelupe mountains, including the mountain the Cavern is contained in.
Over millions of years, acidic water (carbon dioxide is easily aborbed into rain water creating carbonic acid) made its way into the interior of the mountain through the cracks formed during the uplift. It not only created the cave, but as the water worked it's way through the mountain, it become saturated with the minerals it dissolved, and left a deposit as it dripped down or out of a surface in the cooler areas deeper in the mountain. This is how some of the spectacular formations in the cave were made. Drop by drop. Billions of drops.
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| Cropped map Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Click on the map for a larger view. |
Of course, that also means Carlsbad Caverns isn't the only cave in the area. There are others known, some off limits, some you need special permission and advance training. But there are probably others, some secret, some still undetected in the Guadalupe Mountain Range and Chihuahuan Desert.
I was on my Desert Southwest Trip (which was really code for my Tombstone/Disneyland/Death Valley trip), and was plotting my route to Tombstone, when I came across Carlsbad Caverns.
Well, I've heard about this place since I was a kid. No brainer to stop in...
It was my first time in the desert, and I was amazed at how different it was. The biggest, was there were no bushes. Lot of cactus, but no bushes...
I think it's interesting that the floor of the cave is only 50 feet above the plains, 800 feet below. It's like the cave is a hollow section inside the mountain.
There's a natural entrance to the cave, a path with dozens of switchbacks that takes you down 750 feet to the cave floor. (Traditionally, 10 feet to a floor, or equivilant to a 75 story building). At least it's goes down. You can walk up it too, but that sounds too painful to think about.
Of course, if that sounds too difficult, there's an elevator, lol.
My video camera was having all sorts of problems down in the cave (too dark), so I used my still camera. Probably a good choice.
As I mentioned before, there's a natural entrance to the cave. It decends 750 feet to the cavern. (It goes further down, but the cavern is at 750.0
At 200 feet down, there's an area that's off limits, called the Bat Cave. No, Bruce doesn't live there, it's the home to about a half-million Mexican Free-tailed bats. Every evening from spring to fall, these bats leave the cave and fly to the Black and Pecos rivers to feed and gather food for their young.
That's how the earliest settlers in the 1880's found the cave, by following this nightly bat flight. It's something to see....
Trip Report: Sep 2005.
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