Canyon de Chelly

Sculpted sandstone at Canyon de Chelly
National Monument, Arizona.

Canyon de Chelly, a moderate-sized national monument in the northeast corner of Arizona, was not one of my planned destinations through the Southwest this spring, but it made sense to stop given my route from New Mexico to southern Utah. It was a brief stop, but a treat!

The monument is within the Navajo Nation, a large Native American reservation that stretches from the Grand Canyon to the Four Corners region. The Tribe and the Park Service have joint management responsibility for the monument, and that specific arrangement is manifest in some of the not-so-ordinary arrangements for an NPS site (more on that in a bit).

The monument is accessible from the small town of Chinle on US route 191 and this is essentially where the canyon begins. It deepens to the east, branching into several canyons. There are north and south rim drives but I only had time to observe the canyon from the south rim and make a few stops before heading to southern Utah.

Maps of Canyon de Chelly National Monument. At left: Map of Canyon de Chelly's location in northeast Arizona in the Four Corners region by Shannon1, cropped and arrow added to original map, CC BY-SA 4.0 license. At right: General map of the monument by the National Park Service, public domain.

At the end of the south rim road is a viewpoint of Spider Rock, a picturesque pair of red rock spires that tower hundreds of feet above the canyon floor. At the lookout point there are some wonderful panoramas of the winding canyon and vegetation growing below.

Spider Rock, Canyon de Chelly National Monument.

At only one location in the monument are visitors allowed to walk unguided into the canyon, and that is the short trail to White House. The trail begins on the mesa and then descends pretty steeply into the canyon. Several plots of land are visible on the canyon floor – these farmed areas are privately owned by members of the Navajo Nation.

Once one has descended several hundred feet into the canyon, it is only a short distance more to the White House, which are ancient ruins set in the base of a towering rock cliff. The ruins are similar to those found at Mesa Verde and Bandelier and were constructed centuries before the Navajo people entered the area. In fact, the Canyon has apparently been inhabited by humans for some 5000 years.

Two views of the White House at Canyon de Chelly. The upper level has original remains of Ancient Puebloan dwellings while the structures on the canyon floor below have apparently been restored recently.

Near the White House, several Navajo artisans had set up tables on the dusty canyon floor and were selling jewelry and pottery. This vending was apparently one of the unique arrangements between the Park Service and the Tribe. The other is that guided tours throughout other areas of the canyon are offered by Navajo Nation members. I spoke with one artisan for a bit and purchased a small seed pot from her which was engraved with her name on the bottom and “CDC”, the abbreviation for the monument. She resided in Chinle but her family owned a plot of land in the canyon.    

Some petroglyphs near the White House.

Carlsbad Caverns backcountry

One of the best ways to experience the National Parks is in the backcountry, off the beaten path. There is a time and place for the more curated nature experience, the “park” component of the National Park System, and frankly is the only way of engaging with some of the most iconic geologic features of the parks. At Carlsbad Caverns for example, it seems unlikely one could ever tour the caverns without running into a fair number of people. Similarly, if the grandeur of Yosemite Valley is to be experienced, it usually has to be shared with the crowds that assemble beneath its most iconic features.

Rattlesnake Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, April 2018.

Yet the backcountry of many national parks offers another treasure: solitude. It is a commodity in increasingly short supply in today’s noisy and hyperactive world, and one that seems to be vastly underappreciated given how few park visitors are willing to get off the paved trails and away from the visitor centers.

During my spring trip through the Southwest I was fortunate to backcountry camp at White Sands and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, and later on, at Bryce Canyon in southern Utah. The latter two parks offered an opportunity for a night of complete solitude where I was likely the only person out in the wilderness within miles. At Carlsbad Cavers I hiked into Rattlesnake Canyon from a dirt loop road winds through Chihuahuan Desert habitat west of the entrance to the caverns.

Unopened flowers of ocotillo, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, April 2018.

Texas walnut growing in a dry wash.

The region around Rattlesnake Canyon is a collection of rounded mesas dissected by winding canyons, not unlike the topography I remember from the southern part of Mesa Verde National Park. Ocotillo, prickly pear cacti, and shrubs grew throughout the dry slopes. It wasn’t as colorful as the Sonoran Desert vegetation I observed just days before in Saguaro National Park, but the blooming ocotillo added some vibrant color to the desert scrub.

At the bottom of the valleys were water would be more frequently available (no water was to be seen at all during my visit) small trees – Texas walnut (Juglans microcarpa) grew. One of the more interesting plants to catch my attention, growing throughout the park, was “sotol”, an interesting yet forbidding plant that grows in basal rosettes of pointed leaves like some species of Yucca. The long slender leaves bear sharp hooks which are very adept at catching clothes.

Sotol is formally Dasilirion wheeleri, and a member of the Asparagaceae family. Yucca, which it resembles in overall growth form is actually in a different plant family, the Agavaceae. Interestingly sotol has been used to produce both beer-like and distilled alcoholic drinks. Fibers of the plant were also useful to the Ancient Puebloan people of the Chihuahuan Desert.

Sotol, Carlsbad Caverns NP, April 2018.

Barbary sheep near the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This species is non-native
and was introduced into the area from northern Africa.

Carlsbad Caverns

I’ve been in two very spectacular caves before in the western US: Lehman Cave at Great Basin National Park, and Oregon Caves National Monument. Both had ornate features of various shapes such as stalactites and drapery, precipitated inside the caves slowly over countless years. However Carlsbad Caverns, by its palatial size and seemingly endless collection of geological treasures, is in a league of its own. 

The extensive caverns hundreds of feet below the surface are the main attraction of this smaller national park in southern New Mexico. The park rests on the rim of an ancient limestone reef from the Permian Era (251-299 mya) that once encircled a shallow sea in southern New Mexico and northern Texas. (Guadalupe Mountains National Park in northwest Texas is part of this same reef system.) That limestone setting provided the geologic and chemical ingredients for cave formation.

Map of the ancient Permian limestone reef system that includes present day Carlsbad Caverns at left (source) and the natural entrance to the caverns at right.

I took the self-guided tour to view the publicly-accessible caverns, entering at the “natural entrance” and spent over three hours underground, amazed at the size, variety, and sheer number of formations. These formations included stalactites, stalagmites, columns, drapery, and other features, each given different names. 

Stalactites and stalagmites.

The “Big Room” is immense and itself can take well over an hour to view at a leisurely pace. There were several pools underground too and I was particularly drawn to these including one called “Mirror Lake”. Drops of water falling from above kept sending ripples through the pool. Of course naturally all of these features would be hidden to the human eye in complete darkness, but the Park Service carefully uses dim lights throughout the cave system to highlight features.

Features in the Big Room.

The main caverns are apparently only one of over a hundred caves that have been discovered so far in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Discovery and mapping of caves continues. There is more to the park than the caverns themselves – as amazing as they are – and in the next blog post I’ll feature some of what I observed while backpacking into the park’s wilderness.

This large column has been named "Rock of Ages".

Other types of formations in the caverns. At right is a formation termed "popcorn", although this type more reminds me of a coral reef.

Formations reflected in the water at "Mirror Lake".

Another pool with formations. The faint green color is due to algae, which apparently will grow eventually hundreds of feet below ground if a dim light source is available.

An area termed the "Boneyard" by earlier explorers.

A ladder from earlier exploration in the 1920s (left) and a view of Lower Cave from the main caverns (right).

More stalactites.

Perhaps some 800 feet directly below the Visitor's Center there is almost an underground city where there are bathrooms, vendors and this mail drop. Elevators lead to the surface. Though I walked in via the natural entrance gradually descending into the caves, I took an elevator up (here photographed at 250 ft below ground).