Carlsbad Caverns is known worldwide for its colorful underground formations. Growing up, it was one of the “far away” places I really wanted to see. There was just this mystery to it and I thought caves were cool. Well the mystery is mostly gone, but I’m still thinking it’s very cool. It’s hard to describe, so I’ll just recommend that you find a way to go yourself.
We visited Carlsbad Caverns in November 2019
Getting There
Carlsbad Caverns is pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, more precisely, just outside Whites City in the lower southeastern corner of New Mexico. Fortunately, Guadalupe Mountains NP is practically its neighbor, sitting only 30 miles away, just across the Texas border. From El Paso, you head (north)east and you’ll hit Guadalupe Mountains first, then Carlsbad. It’s an easy drive. From Albuquerque, it’s about 300 miles south east to Carlsbad. When we visited, we had to limit ourselves to a single day as a November snowstorm was approaching and Eddie isn’t made for freezing temperatures. So we put in a full day of walking and saw everything we could.
Natural Entrance
and The Big Room
I still have to look up the difference between stalactites (the ones going down from the roof) and stalagmites (the ones going up from the ground) and you’ll see plenty of both here. Plus there’s columns where the stalagmites and stalactites connect and something wonderful called cave bacon. Those are features that are undulating like a strip of cooked bacon. They’re not that amazing, just the idea of bacon down there below is almost intoxicating. There are two ways to get into the cave, either via the elevator which takes you directly down 750 feet to the Big Room or via the Natural Entrance which requires a 1.25 mile walk from the cave’s opening to the Big Room. We did both in our day. One thing to mention is that there is an excellent audio tour that gives you info as you self-guide through both the Natural Entrance Trail and the Big Room. The Big Room is the largest single cave chamber in North America. It’s about a mile and a quarter just to walk its perimeter. Some of the best formations are visible in the Big Room including the Devil’s Spring, Iceberg Rock, Whale’s Mouth, and the Bottomless Pit. Plus there is the Rock of Ages which is a neat formation that actually got its name from someone who sang the tune in front of it while on a tour. And it stuck. Ever since we started our quest, Rainy and I like to send postcards from various parks to our friends and families. At Carlsbad, down in the Big Room, there’s actually a mailbox/post office where you can get a special cancellation stamp noting the location 750′ below the surface as you mail it.
Ranger Led
Tours
In addition to the excellent self guided audio tours, there are several ranger led tours to choose from (note all guided tours are closed as of February 2025 due to staffing shortages). Some of these tours require participants to crawl through some tiny spaces. We chose the more tame King’s Palace Tour which took us to the deepest publicly accessible part of the cave and to four beautiful chambers. It was about 90 minutes long and included the ranger turning off all the lights so we could experience pretty much absolute total darkness. Nobody freaked out which was nice. Overall it was a good tour and a nice addition to the self-guided ones. Every night during the summer and early fall, around sunset, the thousands of bats that live in the cave would exit through the Natural Entrance flying in a giant wave just over the heads of visitors seated in the amphitheater. It’s a highlight for many visitors. Unfortunately, all the bats had left for the winter by the time we visited in November. But it’s something to strive for.
Carlsbad Caverns’ reputation as a must see National Park is well deserved. If you go, be sure to do at least one tour and bring your walking shoes. Ideally, you can be there for sunset and see the bats exit the cave. We missed that, but hope to return and catch that for ourselves someday.