Slaughter Canyon Cave 02/21/20

Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad, New Mexico

“It’s no good, it’s no good!”  says the buyer; then off he goes and boasts about his purchase.  ~ Proverbs 20:14

Another cold, blustery and cloudy day!  But at least the rain is gone.

We had a cave tour scheduled for today, so we left on our long drive to Carlsbad Caverns, and watched as the outdoor thermometer on the Jeep plummeted to 30 degrees by the time we reached the Visitor Center!  And the wind was screaming!  I didn’t dress for that.  I dressed for the caves.  Even though Blaine had told me about a “500-foot, half-hour assent to the cave entrance”.  I knew it’d be cold, but I didn’t expect it to be that cold!  And I didn’t factor in the fact that others would be hiking with us, which meant a much slower pace.

Fortunately, by the time we arrived to where the tour trailhead began, it’d warmed up some, so I was fine.

There were rules for this tour.  Some we knew; like the fact that they inspect you for suitable footwear, and you had to wear freshly laundered clothes.  But some we didn’t.  Like the fact that we had to drive our own vehicles 45-minutes in a caravan to get to the starting point.  One guy evidently didn’t have enough gas, so we all had to wait a few minutes for him to drive to town and fill up.  We met him there (apparently at a pre-arranged spot told to him by the Park Ranger) on our way to the cave, and he fell in line behind us.

The other thing we didn’t know?  Much of the trail was very narrow, filled with loose rocks and right on the edge of the mountain.  I would think people would want to know that, because if you’re afraid of that sort of thing, it would make the hike very difficult or impossible.  But we all made it – all 14 of us.  Plus two Park Rangers and two trainees.

It’s called the Slaughter Canyon Cave and is a moderately strenuous adventure tour. This tour will take you into an underground wilderness without electricity, paved walkways, or modern conveniences. The cave trails are narrow, uneven, and very slippery. In this wild cave, darkness is broken only by the flashlights and headlamps of rangers and tour members. Highlights of the tour may include the 89-foot high Monarch, one of the world’s tallest columns; the Christmas Tree, a sparkling, crystal-decorated column; and the Chinese Wall, a delicate, ankle-high rimstone dam. Old bat guano mining excavations attest to the human history and impact in the cave. 

So says the Park’s website.

The headlamps we were required to wear, were very much necessary (as were the gloves and good-tread boots), because it’s considered a ‘wild’ cave which means there’ve been no improvements made to it.  You walk around on taped-off paths directly on the cave floor (no smooth paved paths) in the dark, where no light penetrates.  And the gloves are to keep our body oils off the cave (in case you accidently touch something), thus helping to preserve it.

Once we all reached the cave entrance, our lead Ranger, Alex, told us how the cave was discovered.  A man name Tom Tucker (no idea if he was little or could sing) was a sheep rancher.  One day, he went to round up his sheep and couldn’t find them.  In his search, he heard them bleating and thought they were on the mountain, so he climbed up and looked all around, and then he thought he heard them back down below him, so he returned to the flatland.  No sheep.  He heard them again up high, so up he went once again.  This time he found them – – inside the cave.  😊  That was in July, 1937. 

At that time, the cave was filled with bat guano, an important fertilizer at the time (some organic farmers still prize it).  In the years that followed, miners brought their tools and machinery into the cave to harvest, but discovered that the guano in this cave was too old (I think I read or heard somewhere, 45,000 years old?) and had lost much of the nutrients that made it good fertilizer, so the project was scrapped.

And this wasn’t the only tale Alex shared with us.  Though he was really quiet, and seemed almost introverted, he managed to tell pretty good stories.  Especially when we were all sitting in the darkest of darkness near the Christmas Tree.  We’ll get to that eventually.  😊

Before entering the cave, all coats, backpacks, hiking sticks, food and water were confiscated by the Rangers and tucked away in a large bin just inside the cave entrance.

And then we were in, and it wasn’t long before the light entering from the cave entrance was swallowed up in the deep darkness.

We marched through the cave, single file, with brief grouping stops to listen to Alex teach us something, or make an announcement about where we were headed and how to walk through the area.

This tour was full of amazing sights!  Thousands years old bat guano and bones, a Christmas Tree, a goblin (named Klansman many years ago), a “petrified” stalactite, a Chinese wall, the Monarch, old remnants from the mining days, cave crickets, and more.  And we got to climb an area of slick flowstone with a rope!

Come wander around in the dark with us!  It’s an incredible experience!