Carlsbad Caverns: Subterranean visit offers visual thrills, natural wonders

CARLSBAD CAVERNS, N.M. — Visions of Dante's descent or Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" fill the mind with each advancing step closer to the darkness below.

Ingress into this subterranean realm is along an occasionally steep, one-mile paved decline from the cavern's natural entrance. Minimal lighting, intended more to highlight than illuminate, along with metal handrails running its length, provide visual thrills, while protecting against any white-knuckle detours.

Such wasn't the case nearly a century ago when a strapping, young cowboy, claiming discovery of the cave as a 16-year-old, fired up some kerosene lanterns and started conducting tours into the underground labyrinth.

Merely entering the cavern in those days was a profile in courage, requiring that visitors muster sufficient gumption to make a 170-foot drop in a large bucket originally installed for harvesting bat guano.

After that, movement around was often — literally — by the seat of your pants. Sometimes it required using rickety ladders (still visible in some parts of the cave), or impromptu steps built by stacking sacks filled with bat dung.

Despite the cave's lack of amenities and remote location in the parched desert Southwest, its notoriety and popularity grew, finally drawing the attention of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which declared it a national monument in 1923. Jim Larkin White, the youthful cowboy turned spelunker, was named its first chief ranger. A National Geographic Society expedition the following year boosted awareness even more, leading to Carlsbad Caverns being elevated to National Park status in 1930.

Today, the less adventurous, or those dealing with physical limitations, can forgo the natural entrance trail by descending 755 feet into the bowels of the cave via four high-speed elevators. They are also the preferred mode for most visitors returning topside.

Only a few paces from the elevator shafts stands a snack bar, which over the years has been a cavern fixture in numerous incarnations. Various proprietors have tried trading on the uniqueness of people grabbing a bite to eat hundreds of feet beneath the Earth's surface, which maintains a constant temperature of 56 degrees and about 90 percent humidity.

Manmade improvements aside, the main draw will always be the beauty and breadth lying deep within the subterrane.

Discussing its sheer size and scope begs for a Thesaurus. Words such as "gigantic," or "enormous" come up lacking. Even squishing both words together to make "ginormous" feels like descriptive limits are being tested.