Carlsbad Caverns and
Bottomless Lakes, NM
March 23, 2015
Bottomless Lakes, NM
March 23, 2015
Carlsbad Caverns National Park was high up on my list of places to see, I could't wait to finally visit! The park is just a short drive from Guadalupe Mountains, so after a really nasty night in the Guadalupe back country we packed up camp and hiked out. It had been incredibly cold and windy and neither of had slept much. The hike out was easy, but the wind was relentless.
When we got to the park we explored the visitor center and got our tickets for the self guided tour of the caverns. We decided to hike through the natural entrance and walk all the way down into the cavern, getting the full experience that way.
We were both shocked at the sheer size of the cavern, it was mind bending. The hike into the cavern is steep and slippery, and the first section is not particularly scenic, but we enjoyed the otherworldly experience of hiking into the earth. Once you reach the bottom of the cavern you enter the Big Room, that is where things get crazy. Carlsbad is a dry cavern, so most of the features in the cavern are not activly growing. There are a few pools and drips, and a couple of activly growing formations.
After finishing our cavern tour we took the elevator from the bottom of cavern 750 feet back to the surface. That was a really cool experience, the elevator shaft is drilled into solid rock. Back on the surface, we drove to Bottomless Lakes State Park to find camping. The park is built around a series of collapsed caverns that have filled with water and become lakes. It was a surprisingly cool place! The only down side was the ammount of litter in the lakes, it was pretty gross. The campground was really nice though, they even had free wifi and showers!!
Bottomless Lakes also gave us our best sunset of the whole trip!
