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).

Brilliant White Sands

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico.

White Sands National Monument in southern New Mexico was stunning and exceeded my expectations. It will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of my trip through the Southwest this spring, made so in large measure because I was able to camp in the backcountry overnight.

The dunes are a brilliant white color due to being composed of gypsum (selenite) sand. They are remarkably cool to the touch, which is counter-intuitive for anyone who has spent time on a sandy beach in the warm sun. Because the sand was so cool and soft I was able to do some hiking in bare feet. The mineral composition of the sand (selenite is a hydrated mineral) and the relatively high water table in the dunes apparently help keep it cool.

The dunes are extensive, covering close to 300 square miles in a valley east of the San Andreas Mountains in southern New Mexico. A US military missile testing range is the Monument’s neighbor on three of its four sides, and sometimes the Monument closes because of missile activity.

Like coastal beach dunes, some of the gypsum dunes at White Sands had a modest cover of vegetation, while others were barren. Plants were more apt to be found in flat interdune areas that may provide longer-term stability from the vagaries of shifting sand. The most attractive flowering plant was sand verbena, with hemispherical clusters of light purple flowers. The only animal life I really saw was two species of beetles, though the Park Service made a point to illustrate that populations of animals (mammals, reptiles) inhabiting the dunes had adapted to become lighter in color than nearby populations which live in habitats with darker substrates.

Some dune vegetation, including a Yucca (or similar species), small trees that may be cottonwoods (Populus), and purple-flowered sand verbena.

 

Dune beetles.

Sunset over the dunes.

White Sands is a photographer’s dream, at least for the style of photography I am interested in. From the macro to landscape scales there were alluring subjects, curves, and shadows all around. I found the most compelling time for photography to be perhaps an hour or two before sunset and an hour or two after sunrise. During this period when the sun was low on the horizon, it cast beautiful shadows over the dunes and seemed to provide an ideal level of contrast. The white sand in the shadows in the early morning often appeared purple to me.

One feature of the dunes that I found particularly attractive was the parallel ripples, typically no more than a few centimeters in height over the dune surface. There are analogous undulations in coastal sand caused by water, and the ripples in the middle of this desert brought to mind the fact that air (wind) is like a fluid, acting to shape the substrate below it by its direction and strength of flow.

White Sands is certainly a park I would visit again, hopefully in the same fashion as this trip: sleeping under the moon and stars in a dunefield of sublime beauty.

Animal tracks.

Different ripple patterns on the surface of the dunes.

Shadows cast at a dune crest.

An interdune area with rougher texture, I suppose composed of selenite crystals.

Looking south over the dune field with the early morning sun casting shadows to the west.

My campsite and hiking barefoot in the dunes.

Bandelier National Monument

Bandelier is a small gem located in the mountains northwest of Santa Fe in northern New Mexico. It is close to Los Alamos National Labs and the Valle Caldera. The park preserves both archaeological features of the Ancestral Pueblo people (much like Mesa Verde), and a mountainous landscape of forest and high desert savannah.

Cave dwellings at Bandelier. A few are open to visitors via ladders. Ar right: view from a cave dwelling with the ruins of a settlement in Frijoles Valley visible below the forest.

Starting at the visitors center, I took the main trail to see the ruins of the village and the cave dwellings that the former inhabitants carved into the soft sandstone rocks that line the northeast side of Frijoles Valley. Unlike Mesa Verde, visitors to the park are allowed to enter some of the dwellings without special tickets. I climbed into a few of the tight chambers with their natural rock windows and blackened ceilings from ancient fires. The people who used to inhabit Bandelier also used stone bricks and mortar to build living structures and kivas (ceremonial chambers) adjacent to the cliffs or on the valley floor.

View of Frijoles Valley from a sandstone alcove where the ruins of a ceremonial Kiva were located. Inset at right is a NPS diagram of the layout of the kiva.

Box elder with developing fruits.

I continued hiking up Frijoles Canyon beyond the archaeological attractions into the Bandelier Wilderness. Frijoles Creek, a very narrow creek, ran with cool water. The valley from the visitors center up into the wilderness was well forested, mainly by ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa; needles in bunches of three) and box elder, a broadleaf tree that produces winged samara fruits like maples. There were other tree species too including gambel oak (their lobed leaves  are shaped like the valley oaks that I am used to in California), Douglas fir, narrow-leaf cottonwood, and maybe species of Salix and Tamarix. 

The valley had a number of blooming species of plants too including a lovely shrub (western chokecherry, Prunus virginiana). Each plant had numerous inflorescences several inches long with dozens of fragrant white flowers. Another very attractive species growing in forest areas was a member of the pea family (golden pea, Thermopsis rhombifolia), having spikes of yellow-flowers (suggesting a species of lupine), but leaves with three main leaflets (unlike other lupines that I am familiar with where there are typically many leaflets). In the more open grasslands, an attractive aster, with golden and red ray flowers could be found.

Reference

Blackwell LR. 2006. Great Basin Wildflowers. The Globe Perquot Press, Guilford, CN

The very fragrant and beautiful flowers of Prunus virginiana.

Frijoles Creek.

Left: Ruins of a village built at the base of the cliff wall. The parallel series of holes in the sandstone cliff are where wooden beams used to extend over the buildings. Right: Natural sandstone sculpture and valley ruins.