Carlsbad Caverns are cool indeed

CARLSBAD CAVERNS NATIONAL PARK, N.M. — Rangers sit visitors on stone benches at the huge mouth of Carlsbad Caverns National Park and warn them: Don't touch the formations. Stay on the trails. No gum or food in the cave. No running. No shouting.

Then tourists begin trekking into the famed limestone caverns on a rock-lined switchback trail, dropping from the brightness and heat of the Chihuahuan desert into a dim cave that remains a constant 56 degrees.

The drop of some 750 feet in about a mile bottoms out at the 14-acre Big Room, marked by formations bearing picturesque names such as Rock of Ages or Painted Grotto; a ceiling that soars 200 feet into the darkness overhead; and vertigo-causing glimpses into even deeper parts of the 4 million-year-old cave.

New Mexico's favorite tourist attraction, after a few years of declining visitors, is booming again.

The number of visitors in the first three months of 2002 increased 15.6 percent over the same period last year. In February, the park temporarily ran out of brochures in English, although they still had Spanish-language editions. Many motels surrounding the park filled up over Memorial Day weekend, the holiday that heralds Carlsbad Cavern's expanded summer hours.

The U.S. Postal Service just unveiled a 23-cent postcard with an image of the caverns' Giant Dome, the tallest formation in the Big Room. The column — 62 feet tall and 100 feet around at its base — is in the Big Room's Hall of Giants.

Carlsbad — carved out of limestone by the slow drip of acidic water — became a national monument in 1923 and a national park seven years later.

Early visitors faced a strenuous, all-day trip over dirt trails and steep wooden stairways that climbed and descended the equivalent of an 83-story building in about five miles.

The wooden staircase built in 1925 at the caverns' natural entrance eliminated the need for visitors to be hoisted into the cave in large buckets once used to mine bat guano.

Today, people can walk in the natural entrance some 1 1/4 miles to the Big Room or descend in a high-speed elevator for the 1 1/4-mile Big Room tour, the highlight of the main cave.

"We tell people right up front, it's long and steep and you need to be in moderately good physical condition" for the natural entrance, park spokeswoman Bridget Eisfeldt says. "If you have bad knees or anything like that, it's a pretty good walk."