Passport to the Parks: Meet Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Since the first US National Park was established in 1872, sixty-two others have popped up, ranging from cacti-covered corners of the desert to huge swathes of Alaskan wilderness to colorful coral reefs in Florida. 

Each one does things a little differently, and this series is our chance to break them down. Today, we’re meeting Carlsbad Caverns National Park! 

This is one of my favorite US National Parks and one of the most unique. Off in the corner of New Mexico, right across the border from Texas, the Chihuahuan Desert suddenly opens up to a vast network of caves that plunge over 1,000 feet (300 m) into the earth. If the Empire State Building sat at the bottom of the Carlsbad Caverns, the spire would poke up out of the sand like a groundhog.

While the surface is sunny, parched, and dotted with yucca, the caverns are cool, damp, and dark. Leaving the sun-scorched desert behind and descending into their depths feels like crossing a border into another world.

So let’s start spelunking!

Quick Facts about Carlsbad Caverns National Park:

• Established: 1930
• Size: 73 square miles (189.3 km²)
• Location: Southeastern New Mexico
• Closest town: Carlsbad, New Mexico (20 minutes away by car)
• Closest airports: Cavern City Air Terminal is the closest, but Hobbs (HOB) is often cheaper. International visitors should consider landing at ABQ in Albuquerque (4.5 hours drive) or at ELP in El Paso, Texas (2.5 hours drive). 
• Best time to visit: Spring or autumn
• Biggest highlight: The largest single-room cavern in the country, plus bat flights!

Before we make our descent into the stalagmite-covered depths, let’s take a moment to look around up top. The park is located at the northern edge of the Guadalupe Mountains, so the desert lowlands give way to canyons and peaks as you drive towards the visitor center.

There are several trails looping around the surface, including the Guadalupe Ridge Trail, which goes on for 100 miles across rocky desert cliffs and down through Carlsbad’s neighboring park — Guadalupe Mountains NP, across the state line in Texas. We’ll talk more about those mountains when we cover that park, but for now, just know that it’s peaceful, quiet, and covered in pinyons and junipers.

These surface trails can be brutal during the summer months, but fortunately, the caverns aren’t subject to the New Mexico sun and stay a cool 56°F (13°C) no matter the weather above. So now that we’re all dusty and sweaty, let’s get ready to dive down into the earth!

Cavern entry runs on timeslot reservations, which you should book ahead of time at recreation.gov for a nominal fee. Otherwise, you’ll just have to walk into the visitor center and hope the standby line isn’t too bad that day. 

When it’s your turn, there are two ways you can enter the caverns. You can take the elevator and zoom 67 stories down to the bottom in under a minute, or you can take this ramp, appropriately nicknamed “the Road to Hell”:

^{“Walking route into Carlsbad Caverns” by Tim Adams, CC BY 2.0} 

If you’re able, I highly recommend taking the long way and descending into the underworld on foot. It’s a strange feeling to watch the patch of sunlight at the entrance shrink smaller and smaller overhead as you begin to comprehend the sheer size of the space you’re in. This is not a crawl space — you could comfortably fit a Boeing 787 inside the larger chambers.

Fortunately, you don’t worry too much about getting lost. While the caverns are massive and mazelike, all you have to do is follow the paved, rail-lined path that guides you through the darkness like it’s beckoning you into fairyland. 

It’s notoriously difficult to capture the beauty of the caverns with a camera, so as eye-catching as the photos are, know that they’re a fraction of the effect you get in person.

Head deeper and deeper, under dripping stalactites, past bat dens, and over subterranean ponds. A little over a mile later, you’ll reach the bottom, where you can catch up with the folks who took the elevator. Down here, there’s an underground gift shop, a lunchroom, a bathroom, and plenty of places to sit and give your knees a break.

^{“Carlsbad Caverns National Park” by apasciuto, CC BY 2.0} 

From here, you’ll most likely continue down the path to the largest room of the caverns, predictably named the Big Room. For most folks who haven’t booked a guided tour (more about those later), this is the main attraction.

You’ll walk the Big Room Loop, which is another 1.25 miles (2 km), roughly the same as the ramp path. You won’t need much guidance here — just take your time soaking up the strange, lunar landscapes that surround you. As you might have noticed, everything here has a fun name, so keep your eyes peeled for the Doll’s Theater, the Temple of the Sun, and the Bottomless Pit. 

Of particular note is the old, broken-down rope ladder that’s been left tied to one of the passages since the 1920s. It’s a sobering reminder of how difficult it used to be to see caverns like this, back before elevators and paved ramps.

^{“Carlsbad Caverns” by bensonk42, CC BY 2.0} 

Once you’ve had your fill of the Big Room, you’ve seen pretty much everything in the caverns that is open to the public! Your only add-on options come in the form of two ranger-led tours. These tours used to be an everyday occurrence with a simple sign-up process, but due to government cutbacks, they can be tricky to get these days. 

The first, the Lower Cave tour, currently operates only on Wednesdays and offers an opportunity to dive deeper into the caverns. You’ll don a helmet with a headlamp and crawl through crevices and down ladders, 1920s-style. It’s a much less casual experience than perusing the Big Room, but if you’ve ever thought cave exploration might be up your alley, it’s a good place to start. 

The other tour is the ever-popular King’s Palace tour, which brings you into an additional chamber of the caverns. To snag a ticket for that one, you have to be quick and lucky. Get to the visitor’s center well before they open, wait in line, and hope they have enough staffing to take you that day. If you’re successful, you’ll get to see some of the most striking rock formations in the park.

When you’re ready to head topside, you’re welcome to hike back up that long ramp, but most folks simply hop in the elevator. Just make sure you don’t miss the last elevator at 4:45pm, or that mile-long uphill trek will be your only way out of the cave.

Now that you’re back on the surface, there’s still one more thing to see… or about half a million things, I should say! Hundreds of thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats live in the Carlsbad Caverns. If you’re there during the right time of year (April-October, with a peak in late summer), you can sit in the amphitheater and watch as they all flutter out of the cave entrance in a squeaky frenzy, swarming right over your head and off into the sunset.

If that’s not the perfect way to end a day, I don’t know what is :-)

Let me know which parks you’d like to hear about next! I’m focusing on US National Parks to start, but I’m open to any and all national park suggestions from around the world. Maybe next time we’ll go kayaking in Alaska, or swim with sea turtles in Hawaii…