Southwest Caves

We visited both Carlsbad and Kartchner Caves while in the Southwest. The major difference between them as I understand it is that one is "living" and the other is "dead". Carlsbad was the first one we saw and I really liked the fact that we could walk into the cave and gradually get into its deepest part. It's not really a world that I love, but it is certainly interesting and an incredible amount of work has been done to make it accessible to humans. The descent into the cave was about a mile long and we walked another one to two miles while at the bottom. All of this is wheelchair accessible. I'd love to be able to see the bats fly out of the cave from May through October!

Kartchner, the "living" cave is quite similar, but it is still building deposits and was also a truly unusual world. To visit this one, you must be guided and they have some pretty strict rules. Again, there's been a remarkable amount of work done to make the cave accessible but most of the cave remains "untouched" and continues to grow. The fact that two university students discovered it in the mid 70's and managed to keep it quiet is pretty amazing. They didn't want it to be exploited and neither did the people who owned the property where the caves are located. Even though thousands visit the caves each year, the human damage is actually quite minimal. It was interesting to compare the two caves, but I was probably more awed by Carlsbad. Was that because it was my first cave experience? I also liked being able to see it at my own pace and watch the changes as we made the descent into the earth.