Sunny & hot, clouding over later
228 miles
I got up at 8.10, and availed myself of the motel's inclusive breakfast before leaving. I took the interstate initially but owing to confusing signage missed my intended turn, and I went on a slight detour again, but I was soon leaving town on the main road to the east.
This was a long and empty road across the plains of western Texas, and unusual for single carriageway roads of my experience in having a 70mph speed limit. The only interruption to my progress was another border patrol point -- this time I had my passport to hand.
Around ninety miles out from El Paso, the road crossed a salt flat, glistening slightly off-white in the sun. A few miles further on, the road turned to the northeast and started climbing to cross the Guadalupe Mountains range. I stopped at a scenic viewpoint on the ascent, then continued a little further to Pine Springs, the turning for Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
I called in at the small visitor centre and took a look at the exhibits describing the natural history of the park. Compared to the likes of Yellowstone and Yosemite, the park has no really major attractions, and with its remote location it receives few visitors. However, it is an area of high Chihuahuan desert among several mountain peaks, the highest being Guadalupe Peak at 2667m (8751ft), and offers some excellent hiking opportunities.
With no visitor facilities such as food or lodging available at Pine Springs (no more than a few scattered buildings), I decided to pick up some information on the park in order to plan a return visit a day or two later, and to push on that day towards Carlsbad, 60 miles to the northeast across the New Mexico border.
I stopped at White's City, at the turnoff for Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This was a small place but evidently geared up to receiving tourists, with a filling station, a shop, a hotel, a museum and a couple of restaurants. I went into a self-service restaurant, finding it near-deserted but willing to serve me a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich to keep me going. I then looked in at the hotel opposite to enquire about rates but decided it was quite expensive and that I could do much better in Carlsbad.
The town of Carlsbad was a further sixteen miles away, and in typical fashion had a long motel strip stretching out from the centre along the road from White's City. I found a Motel 6 offering rooms for thirty dollars a night plus tax, and checked into one of them before heading back to White's City and taking the road up to the caverns.
On the way up I passed a sign stating that last entry was at 3.30pm, under half an hour from the current time. I resolved not to hang about, and went straight to the visitor centre. I purchased a ticket for $8.00 which gave me access to the cave on self-guided tours for the next three days, then went over to the lift area for briefing by a park ranger on the rules of the cave. I mentioned that I had been to Wind and Jewel Caves in South Dakota the previous year and so was already familiar with ``cave etiquette''.
The caves are situated amid the limestone formations of the Guadalupe Mountains, the remains of an ancient reef which overlook the flat plains of the area. Most limestone caves form from the action of carbonic acid, but in this area, hydrogen sulphide released by bacteria in oil deposits deep underground mixed with groundwaters to form sulphuric acid in existing cracks in the rocks. This dissolved the rocks to form many cave systems among the mountains, and left behind many gypsum deposits, the most spectacular of which are found in the recently-discovered Lechuguilla Cave. The entrance to Lechuguilla lies within the Park, taking the form of a narrow hole at the bottom of a pit in a remote canyon. The difficult entrance and delicate, unique formations mean that it is accessible only to experienced cavers under permit, who have so far explored over a hundred miles of passages.
Carlsbad Caverns, however, has been known for hundreds if not thousands of years. There is evidence of prehistoric dwellers around the cave's large natural entrance, and it was well-known to early white settlers in the region due to the vast numbers of bats which depart the cave every summer evening and return just before dawn. The first to explore the cave in detail was Jim White, a local cowboy, who first entered around 1898 and the cave subsequently dominated the remainder of his life. Nearby White's City was named in his honour.
In the early years, the cave was exploited commercially not for tourism but for the rich deposits of bat guano, a good fertiliser. White meanwhile used the system of guano buckets to take early visitors down. After the cave as declared a National Monument in 1923, much work was done to make the system more visitor-friendly, with elevators being added in 1931 to make the 229m (750ft) trip from the visitor centre to the entrance to the cave's so-called Big Room.
I made the same journey myself, though on more modern elevators, and found myself in a relatively bare area of cave which had been devoted to visitor facilities, including a cafeteria, shops and restrooms. It was but a short walk from here to the Big Room entrance, taking me into one of the largest caverns in the world. On paper the dimensions are staggering, over 1200m long, 191m wide and up to 78m high (4000, 625 and 255ft), but this was nothing compared to the breathtaking interior.
Everywhere were amazing formations -- vast pillars rising from the floor, ``chandeliers'' of stalactites hanging from the ceiling, smaller formations at almost every turn. Many bore fanciful names: the Lion's Tail, the Sword of Damocles, Chinese Hat, Totem Pole. There was Fairyland, an area of small pillars covered in cave ``popcorn''; a crystal-clear pool of water named Mirror Lake (and a sign which read properly in reflection to illustrate its property); Bottomless Pit (actually 42m deep). The largest pillars had names of their own: Temple of the Sun, Rock of Ages, Big Dome, Crystal Spring Dome.
Halfway around the Big Room was a shortcut, primarily intended to allow the less mobile to bypass the more undulating and more distant parts of the route. However, much to my disappointment, a ranger had roped off the route ahead of me and was forcing people to take the shortcut -- the further portions were already closed. Or were they -- there was no-one to stop me going across the shortcut and going against the flow on the path on the other side. I got over halfway round before I met another ranger on his way round clearing people out and turning out the lights behind him. I resolved to make another trip down the following day.
I still managed to see a great deal of the Big Room, enough to conclude that I wanted to spend more time here. I continued back towards the lift area, passing a natural window in the walls allowed one to look through at a veritable forest of tiny ``soda straw'' stalactites named Doll's Theater. I was later shocked to read that considerable irreparable damage to this had been caused by the throwing of an orange by some mindless visitor.
On the way back up in the lift, the ranger told us a tale of someone who strayed off the trail in 2000 and managed to get locked in overnight. Back on the surface I made some enquiries to confirm that the bats would be around after sunset and was assured that they would, though the official bat-viewing programme had not yet started for the year.
I took a walk outside to the cave's natural entrance, around which a large amphitheatre had been constructed for the benefit of those coming to watch. From here a short nature trail took one around a selection of plantlife from the Chihuahuan desert, most of which is in Mexico but the northern reaches pass through Texas and into southern New Mexico and Arizona. Several large birds of prey could be seen soaring over the mountainside, and I spent some time watching them in the distance.
I then drove down to White's City and took a look in the shop before crossing the road in search of dinner. I dined in the Velvet Garter, somewhat posher than the neighbouring place I had been at lunchtime, having a salad followed by chicken and broccoli alfredo pasta. I was keeping an eye on my watch, wanting to be back up at the cave entrance for sunset.
I returned to find the amphitheatre already quite busy, and with a ranger present giving an informal talk while it was still light, explaining what we were soon to see. She explained that the bats were predominantly Mexican free-tailed bats, and inhabited a large and smelly side cavern off to the side of the main trail down into the caverns. The species is common all over caves in the southwestern USA and in Mexico in summer months, and winters further south. The creatures typically weigh 10-15 grams and have wingspans of around 0.3m; their birth-weight is typically a quarter of the mother's weight. Their chief food is insects, often at high in the skies -- a nursing female will often consume more than her own weight in a single night.
Estimates of the population in the caverns have varied wildly over the years. The ranger speculated that early estimates of a population of several million was a result of people watching the nightly flux of bats and saying "wow, there must be millions!" Modern estimates consider the area of the cave roof covered by bats and the surface density of the creatures (up to three hundred per square foot), and put the population at around half a million.
While it was still light, there was considerable activity in the mouth of the cave, but this was from a substantial population of cave swallows which inhabit the comparatively well-lit entrance. As darkness fell, the first bats appeared, rapidly heading up out of the cave and across the night sky. At first there were just a few, then over the next few minutes the rate increased massively until there was a seemingly never-ending swarm of them leaving the cave and speeding off for a night's hunting. A high-pitched clicking sound was audible as a result of their echo location -- to any creature tuned to ultrasound the effect be deafening.
I stayed for some time and the flow of bats still showed no sign of subsiding, although the crowds of humans were thinning considerably. Eventually I decided it was time to face the drive down the mountainside in the dark, with the aid of headlights rather than echo location, and return to Carlsbad. Back at the motel I watched a little television while taking a look at the cave photographs on my laptop, before retiring to bed.