The comfort of Carlsbad Caverns

I remembered every curve of the park canyon drive. You have to earn the drive to Carlsbad Caverns, topping out at a mesa atop

Leaving White’s City (still not in any form a city), one enters Carlsbad Caverns National Park and the road winds through a picturesque desert canyon. I had driven it several times, albeit not in almost a decade. 

My Czech friend had to contend with her friends believing she was in Karlovy Vary, a Czech town whose name translates as Carlsbad. We were not in Czech lands, but in the New Mexican desert, where a flock of sunset bats gave away the location of a deep cave with the largest cavern chamber in North America. The system had changed, as Carlsbad requires a reservation for a cave self-guided tour (essentially just money for a third-party vendor). 

No one rode down with us but the elevator operator, who handled a cart of pie slices for the café 700 feet below the visitor center. The elevators whisked us down, its speed only given away by the popping of our ears. 

The entrance offers little hope of an underground wilderness, as the first sight out of the elevator is the snack bar and restrooms. But the Big Room quickly takes over and envelopes all visitors in its geologic delights. If the visitor center changed, the cave had not, even if I barely remembered most of the features in Carlsbad’s Big Room. 

The memory I had for the park drive did not translate to the landscape below. Large enough to fit multiple U.S. Capitol buildings, the Big Room immediately put Carlsbad in a different category than Wind Cave and Mammoth Cave. I never came close to bumping my head. 

Also, anyone could enter Carlsbad through its natural entrance, but the one-mile journey to 700 feet below the surface seemed more reasonable in an elevator. 

Carlsbad might be the most fantastic NPS cave I know. The combination of geologic features from bulbous stalagmites to a roof of needle-like stalactites, and continuous drip of water, ponds with stone lily pads, and numerous columns that have connected stalactites and stalagmites across geologic eras. 

The real geologic fun begins with the Lion’s Tail, an unmistakable formation branching down from the Big Room ceiling. Don’t bother trying to catch it; you couldn’t possibly leap that high. 

The Hall of Giants and Fairyland formed a sweet spot in the middle of the Big Room. The popcorn formations enveloped an entire section of the Big Room’s floor, looking like an army of small figures. 

Time in these cave sites in a cave always bring a memory of the majestic music from Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf lights the cave and reveals the wonders of a forgotten underground city ("There's a wonder and no mistake," Samwise says). But the city of Carlsbad Caverns was carved by geologic eras of dripping water, not living beings. 

But they were dwarfed by the area’s other occupants. Massive formations along their edge resembled crude figures, elder gods awaiting their return to the surface. I took a glance down into the lower cave overlook, a crowded spot on the paved tour. It gives perspective to the Big Room. As large as it is, the cave goes much deeper. 

I admit the lighting placed in the cave might be perfect for viewing the formations; it stays ambient and does not light the cave formations more than it has to. I asked a man not to shine a headlamp in my eyes, and he apologized. I told him not to apologize, just to remember that everyone’s eyes were more sensitive in this setting. As long as you let your eyes adjust, the headlamp was not necessary. 

Back in the ambient dark, I came upon my favorite water-created rocks. The small ponds with lily pad formations are unparalleled. The aging of rock in caves makes me rethink what we consider life. The cave changes too slowly for us to see, those slow drips from the ceiling taking millions of years to sculpt this unlikely place. 

With a self-guided tour, Carlsbad could not flip all its switches like Mammoth Cave or Wind Cave, so there was no chance to experience total dark in the Big Room. In the end, I was just glad to see the Big Room again and roam 700 feet below the Chihuahuan Desert.