Lechuguilla Debriefing: Lechuguilla Cave is the fifth longest cave in the world at over 120 miles of known passages and potential for over twice that to be found. It is also one of the deepest caves in the US (over 1000 feet deep) and is wildly considered to be the most beautiful cave in the world in terms of formations and crystals. The cave is extremely well-protected so that the delicate formations and rare microbes and minerals within the cave are preserved- only about 50 lucky cavers and scientists get to enter a year. The only way you can enter the cave is if you are actively working on a science project in the cave, or exploring and mapping new passages (what we did). Lechuguilla was featured in the cave segment of the BBC special Planet Earth. Some photos by Chris, Gael or Jen.
Day 1: I apologize to start with something long and potentially boring, but here's the route we took into the cave: Entrance Series (down a rope into a pit and through a fancy airlock) -> Liberty Bell (named for bell-shaped formation) -> Boulder Falls (160 foot rope drop) -> Glacier Bay (cool gypsum glacier) -> Windy City (wind-sculpted formations) -> Sugarland (sparkly gypsum) -> The Rift (backbone of the cave) -> Freak-Out Traverse (lots of exposure) -> Apricot Pit (series of 5 ropes and a traverse) -> Mega Maze (maze of large rooms) -> Low Tide Room (named for bathtub ring around room) -> High Tide Room (below the Low Tide Room, huh?) -> Emperor's Throne Room (nice room with colorful emperor or buddha-shaped formation in its center) -> GA7 Pool (only drinking water until camp) -> Nirvana (good name for this amazingly-decorated passage) -> The Great Beyond (large room) -> Rusticles (iron stalactites) -> Giant Chicklets Room (white flowstone-covered boulders) -> Moby Dick Room (named for enormous white whale-shaped rock) -> Aragonitemare (climb up 290 feet of ropes and rebelays, awesome!) -> Land of Enchantment (more pretties) -> China Shop (beautiful! but think of yourself as an elephant in a china shop, nerve-wracking!) -> Good Place Not to Fall Traverse (self-explanatory I think) -> Land of Fire & Ice (pretty) -> Eastern Rift -> Silver Bullet (awkward climbs) -> Tilt-A-Whirl (annoying traverse) -> The Final Insult (really annoying 10 foot crawl where you have to push your heavy pack through) -> Grand Guatelupe Junction (major junction in a huge passage) -> Far East Camp!!!
I made it to camp! Ten hours travel from the entrance where I took my last pee as a free man for a full week. It will be bottles from here on out. I'm not as wiped as I expected to be, I even feel like I could do it again after a solid meal. The route was way easier than the Bulmer Camp II trip I did in NZ. It was also pretty hard to get lost as there is a near-constant trail marked with flagging and major junctions are labeled. There were almost no places where packs needed to be removed; most of the route was walking or scrambling through spacious, scenic passages. It was kind of like underground backpacking. The air lock at the entrance protects the fragile cave from outside influence, which preserves the cave the way it was found (it was dug open by cavers). Glacier Bay was really cool- it looked just like a real glacier. Apricot Pit sucked and I imagine it will only be worse on going up on the way out. The Aragonitemare was awesome- a series of 5 ropes with some hanging rebelays (where you get to the top of a rope and have to hang on an anchor attached to the rock until you transfer onto the next rope) for a total of 290 feet of vertical. The whole thing has beautiful aragonite trees on the walls and is nice and sporty. This route was explored from the bottom, which means two bold people climbed it to set the ropes for all the others. A very impressive feat. And this climb is the gateway to all of the Far East part of the cave. Once on top is the China Shop- WHOA!! Crystal overload. Travel through this section is really slow as you contort to avoid breaking the over-abundant crystals surrounding you. One of the most nicely decorated passages I have ever seen. The rest of the way was kind of nuisancy- more pretty stuff to avoid and awkward climbs and traverses. Beautiful stuff everywhere in this cave- great care is needed about 40% of the time. The temperature and humidity in this cave is unreal (68 degrees F and 99.9% humidity)- way hotter than any cave I have been in. I wore a wicking t-shirt and shorts- a compromise between getting scratched up and overheating. Far East Camp consists of a room with small sloping flat spots to sleep in. I have the highest spot, up a slope in an alcove. A cave inside a cave. My sleeping area is about 3 feet by 5.5 feet. Drinking water is obtained from a pool in the Lost Pecos River (more a series of pools than a river), about a 5 minute walk from camp. We fill our water containers with a designated pitcher, making sure our hands only touch the pitcher handle so that no human contact is made with the pool to avoid contamination. (The number of rules and precautions in this cave is insane). The designated "toilet" area is a 1 minute walk the other direction from camp. Here urine is stored in double- bagged Ziploc bags until the last day when we dump it in a designated spot. During the "day," while away from camp, we pee in plastic bottles which are then emptied into the plastic storage bags while back at camp. "Burritos" (solids) are securely stashed in the toilet area and are packed out when we leave the cave. In this fashion, human impact in this underground wilderness is limited.
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| Far East Camp (I slept where the bright light is) |
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| Getting water |
"Day" 2: AM: Seems to be a slow "morning" as the two co-leaders figure out what exactly we are doing today. I slept OK. Woke up cold several times. My pillow of freeze-dried food kept migrating as well.
PM: Not sure if I mentioned it before but I don't think I have ever sweated this much in my life. Strenuous activity in 68 degrees F and 99.9% humidity is harder on the body than I would have guessed. Today we went to the Outback via Grand Guatelupe Junction, Gorilla Shit Pit, Ruby Chamber and Wild Black Yonder. We surveyed 3 boneyard leads for about 200 feet of new passage. We worked pretty hard for a little bit of survey. Lechuguilla has these crazy interconnected maze passages (a cross between stacked pancakes and swiss cheese) referred to as boneyard. Sometimes tight, miserable boneyard passages break into enormous crystal-filled chambers and extensive walking passage so no hole is left unchecked. Parts of the cave are covered in a greasy mud known as corrosion residue (AKA C.R. or gorilla shit) formed from reaction of the rock with sulfuric acid. Gorilla Shit Pit was pretty crazy- vertical boneyard that drops into a slippery sloping pancake passage which then drops into a large room. It takes 4 ropes to get down/up. I learned that when eating freeze-dried food it is best to imagine the food it is supposed to taste like. I kind of wish I brought a book. So far lots of down time in camp. The thing about camping in a cave is there is no morning. It's a very natural thing to go to sleep when it's dark but waking up in the dark is more unnatural. "Morning" therefore is an alarm clock or another caver's light once they have awoken.
"Day" 3: Followed the same route as yesterday to the Wild Black Yonder then went to ZZ Bottom -> Mt. Vernon -> Le Grange Hall -> Tushka -> Nor'easter -> Northern Lights -> Mt. Washington
A solid day (although slow at times)! Another late start, lots of stops peak passing, annoying climb (Mt. Vernon) and one of us losing multiple items down a hole. Mt. Vernon was pretty unpleasant- a 40 foot climb in a very tight inclined slot with lots of loose rocks. I pushed a survey team through a miserable inclined passage that looped back to one of the rooms we were just in. Then after much time wasting we went to check out the Nor'easter passage and Mt. Washington, which were both fantastic. Sparkly snowy white gypsum everywhere, ornate gypsum flowers, natural crystal chandeliers and great spar crystals. The passage sparkled just like snow at night and I kept thinking I should feel cold. The Nor'easter breaks into a huge room (Mt. Washington) with a 180' high ceiling. This place deserves a better name like Polar Palace or Hallway of Mirrors, but alas, it was not I who found it. The discoverers pushed past several very tight hopeless passages to find it, which should stand as proof that everything is worth pushing, no matter how grim. Mt. Washington has a large hole in the ceiling, which some daring cavers are hoping to get to by doing a 130 foot overhanging bolt climb. Although the effort to do such a thing is huge, the potential for new passages is enormous; this climb could be the next Aragonitemare, opening miles of cave to explore.
"Day" 4: Today was declared an easy "day." Half of us went back down to the Wild Black Yonder to clean up some blunders in past surveys. We fixed some errors including some in the backbone survey of this whole section of cave. Then we tried to find one last blunder but couldn't find it in the boneyard maze. We tried a different way that involved a traverse over a 40 foot deep rift but no one would follow me. I then went tiki touring near camp down the Boundary Waters trail to take some photos of hydromagnesite balloons and bubbly orange flowstone. People are starting to give away food because they overestimated and don't want to carry it out.
"Day" 5: A good one! -> Wild Black Yonder -> Flake Lake -> Purple People Eater -> Independence Hall -> Grapes of Wrath -> Coral Seas
Today we had to bring clean clothes and aqua socks because we had to go through clean, incredibly delicate formation areas. To get to our destination we had to do 6 clothes/gloves/shoe changes. I saw (and walked across) bubbly flowstone in colors I never would have dreamt- purples, maroons, and oranges. Entire rooms with crinkly (in appearance but also sound) hydromagnesite. These outrageous chambers are what make Lechuguilla so infamous. We climbed up a passage that was really miserable because it was so fragile and decorated (and the crystal formations we stepped on were often very sharp). I surveyed in aqua socks and boxers (my attire for most of the "day"), which equaled lots of scrapes, scratches and bruises. The pretty stuff is really the most exhuasting part of the cave because it requires a large amount of effort to avoid formations by strenuous contortions, unnatural movements and lots of awareness of personal dimensions. Both leads we surveyed were beautiful and delicate, but didn't go very far. The entrance to the second lead involved crossing a natural bridge of unknown stability and delicately traversing a ledge with fragile formations over a 30 foot drop. I've never seen such beautiful flowstone passages in my whole life. I think I also broke more things today than collectively in my life to date.
"Day" 6: More little surveys under Wild Black Yonder, but nothing too exciting. We ended up connecting into a large sloping room for 300+ feet of survey (good for this cave trip). I got some good food people were giving away. Excited for tomorrow and sunlight and showers and beds. One more night.
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| Checking the survey |
Day 7: Out! The 2 Canadians and I made it out of the cave in great time (~7.5 hours). The Aragonitemare was really enjoyable going down, but the trade-off was that going up Apricot Pit was horrible. Upon making it to the surface, we were bombarded by such novel concepts as wind, sun, green, blue, smells and life. What joy it was to see the sun, to feel the cool desert breeze and finally be rid of the 99.9% humidity. We all noticed the desert scene before us was surprisingly green and couldn't decide whether it had rained while we were underground or whether our sensory systems had become hypersensitive to green because it was so absent from our last week. Then we drove to the research cabin and took a shower. A shower! Oh my god it was amazing. I showered until the pool at my feet finally turned clear. Then we walked down the hill to the Carlsbad Caverns entrance to watch the bats fly out at dusk. Two hundred winged creatures funneling out of a dark void in the earth and drawing out, like cotton into yarn, into long black wispy clouds that snake across the darkening sky, rise over the escarpment and descend down towards the plains of Texas below for their nightly feast. This spectacle is seemingly endless. Once clean, all 8 of us went out for a grand dinner. It was a great trip made all the better by a great group of diverse cavers.
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| Happy faces in the airlock, about to go back to the surface |
