El Malpais ("The Badlands") is a national park West of Albuquerque near Grants, NM. Stephen and I visited the Sandstone Bluffs Overlook and La Ventana Natural Arch on the Eastern edge of the park on our 2015 Thanksgiving trip. As Liz was planning her trip to Abq, she ran across a 2014 New York Times article by Michael Behanav titled "Into a Lava-Lined Underworld Near Albuquerque," about the author's exploration of some of the caves in El Malpais. She forwarded me the article and I started researching the trip!
I discovered that you need a permit to explore the caves because the park service is trying to slow the progress of White Nose Syndrome in bats. The fungal disease has reached the middle of the country and is projected to reach New Mexico within three years. The park service is hoping to extend that period by asking all visitors to the caves to disinfect their gear if they have been in any caves in the Eastern part of the U.S. Various hiking and caving guides also recommended that cavers wear helmets, gloves, and sturdy shoes and carry three light sources per person. I called ahead to the visitor center to make sure we could get a permit, and we mapped out our proposed route. On Friday night, we gathered gloves and helmets and flashlights and discussed what we would wear (layers, as the caves are approximately 47 degrees year-round). In the morning we packed a cooler and a backpack and headed out in the truck. It takes about an hour and a half to get to the visitor center near Grants, but we stopped on the way for spare batteries and extra snacks and water. We had no problem getting our permit. Liz disinfected her shoes since she had been to Howe Caverns. Unfortunately, our first planned stop at Junction Cave was nixed when the ranger told us it was closed to protect hibernating bats. I don't know why they didn't tell me that when I called and specifically said we wanted to go to Junction and Big Skylight on Saturday, March 12! Fortunately, it was easy to recalculate our route, and I think it turned out for the best. The ranger warned us that the road to Big Skylight was rough and sometimes impassable, but we had planned ahead and taken the Silver Beauty (and the best driver!) so we were confident it wouldn't be a problem.
Soon after we reached the dirt road, our beautiful day turned to blowing snow! We were incredulous.
Does snow count as the road being "wet?" The truck said it was still 53 degrees out at almost 8,000 ft elevation, so I was thinking "yes." But the road was no match for Stephen driving the SB in 4WD.
The snow came and went, changing from hard pellets to huge soft fluffy flakes, then suddenly the sun would come out and we'd feel like we were in NM again. We started driving past the lava fields and Liz jumped out of the truck several times to take pictures of the preternatural landscape.
It was 8 miles to the trail head. Stephen figured we were averaging about 10 mph over the rutted, soft red dirt road, so it took a while. There were various side-roads and I was a bit anxious about finding the trail, but Liz was a good navigator. I was very happy to find this important building at the trail head because the landscape was not conducive to "ducking behind a tree."
Look! Our nice sunny day came back! The whole day the weather was so weird, cycling from snow to sunshine. I hadn't even thought to check the weather on Saturday morning. It's always so nice...
I made Liz smell the ponderosa pine. The bark smells like vanilla.
The trail to Big Skylight cave is only a half mile, but the terrain is quite rugged. The volcanic rock is light and loose, and there are foot-sized holes everywhere so you really need to pay attention to every step. The trail is marked only by cairns placed 20 to 50 feet apart. The trail guide said not to leave a cairn until you spotted the next one. Since they are made from the same black volcanic rock that is everywhere in the lava fields, it turned into a "Where's Waldo" situation. And since you really need to watch your step whenever you're moving, we had to stop a lot. It was very windy, and I got cold whenever I wasn't on the go. But the landscape was so mesmerizing! It was like nothing I have seen before, and not at all what I pictured from the descriptions I read.
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| Here are some of the smaller pieces of volcanic rock, with my foot for scale. |
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| There is a cairn a few feet to my right in this shot. |
There are several cairns in the photo above. Can you pick them out?
We found a sign to Big Skylight!
This was our first glimpse of the cave. The guide says, "Big Skylight is immense; its massive size has to be seen to be appreciated. It contains more than just a picturesque window to the world above; the cave includes perfectly preserved lava benches, a pahoehoe flow floor, and delicate "moon milk" minerals. There is a moss garden under the skylight. There is no established trail through the caves. Scrambling over large, unstable boulders is required. Caving and hiking in remote areas are inherently dangerous. Loose footing, difficult terrain, disorientation, extreme heat and cold, and falls are common risks. Cave ceilings can be low and cause serious head injury." The guide also said that getting down into Big Skylight was tricky, but to look for a route down to the cave from the edge, just south of where the trail crosses a natural lava bridge over the trench.
Liz and I were having no luck finding the way down into the trench. But when Stephen, who had lagged behind to take pictures (he's the Official Blog Photographer) caught up, he looked at the cave map and found the way down. I'm not sure I ever would have found it! Stephen started down first since he's the tallest. Liz and I slid and jumped and I was so glad we had good gloves because we really needed to grab whatever hand-holds we could find.
I passed Stephen while he was taking pictures and got down into the trench first. The entrance to the cave is behind me. The skylight lights up the entrance.
Liz crawled into every crevasse she could find! I saw some BIG spiderwebs and decided I didn't want to meet whoever made them.
Wherever there was water dripping, there was ice underfoot. We spotted some upside-down icicles as well.
As soon as we turned the corner past the skylight, it was completely dark. We turned on our headlamps and got out our flashlights. For a few minutes there was complete silence as we took it all in. The cave is still huge in this area. Stephen said he thought it was 60 feet high. The cave is long, and it snakes around, but it is one long route with no side tunnels and therefore no way to get lost. I asked that we stick together regardless. Occasionally we were out of sight lines because we kept having to climb over piles of rocks and down into trenches and valleys, but we were always within speaking distance.
I was carrying the backpack with the water, snacks, and extra batteries. I stopped and waited for Liz so she could get a drink.
After some climbing through the darkened cave, I thought I saw a faint light ahead. It turned out to be a small skylight, through which we caught a glimpse of sunshine.
The discovery of a bone in the cave freaked me out. Liz said it was planted there to mess with me. I finally decided that a bird of prey had entered the cave and dropped part of her lunch.
The cave started to narrow and the ceiling got lower as we neared the end. This is the first place I thought we really needed the helmets, although Stephen said he had scuffed his a few times prior to that. Liz and I climbed into the very last area large enough for both of us so we could say we'd been to the end.
On the way out, we tried different routes, noticing the changes in the types of rock, the beautiful colors, weird shapes, etc.
Here's the pahoehoe lava, with Liz's foot for scale:
I reached the skylight area and sat down to soak up some sun. It was cold in the cave!
Liz stayed off the moss, but we needed her in the moss picture.
Fooling around on the shelf.
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| Our Official Blog Photographer. He doesn't get to be in many of the pictures! |
Here we are climbing back out of the trench. It was very windy at the top. It was past lunch time, so we made our way back to the trail head where we ate in the cab of the truck to stay warm. There was another truck at the trail head carrying two guys and a dog, but they must have skipped the cave because we never saw them on the trail and we were the only people in the cave.
One cave turned out to be enough for one day, given that we still had a long drive ahead. It was an amazing adventure and I would do it again in a heartbeat!
