OK, the caverns were beautiful, and there is a lot more on that below. But we've had a couple of interesting hours since our cavern visit.
First, the wind blew all night long, necessitating that Tom crawl up on the roof of the RV this morning and untangle the antenna from the antenna wires. Second it was a gorgeous morning, although windy, when we entered the caverns for our tour. When we came out of the caverns, however, we smelled a distinct odor that we've encountered a couple of times before on our RV trips. No, not skunk, THAT we get in Corrales all the time. This was forest fire smoke, again! We must be a jinx or something, because this is now the third forest fire that has impacted our RV travels.
It has become a pretty serious fire, around 20,000 acres, and only about 7% contained. It is burning about 20 miles west of us, so we are not in any immediate danger, but it's those pesky embers in the wind that could wreak havoc. The camp hosts came around to notify us that we are on an evacuation warning. They asked for our cell numbers in case they have to call us to tell us to evacuate the campground overnight. Tom asked what the host's gut instinct was, and she replied, "well, I already see bits of ash coming down". We are prepared to leave with five minutes notice, but hope to make it through the night in place, even though it does smell quite smoky. The winds are still blowing quite strong, which is bad for fighting the fire, but it does keep the smoke from settling on us full time--the smoke tends to blow in and blow out again. If the winds change direction or settle down we could clear the air. But yes, I think everything is going to smell like smoke for a couple of days.
We were scheduled to be here another day and a half, but we will leave in the morning unless they call us earlier. This will put us on the road on the least windy day this week. That is a really good thing for driving, especially as the stretch of I-10 between Lordsburg, NM and Willcox, AZ is completely closed in both directions. It's been closed for five hours and counting today, with no expectation of when it will be safe to re-open. This is the same stretch that Tom's brother Jim was stuck on early last month, also due to strong winds creating so much blowing dust the visibility was reduced to 0 feet. So....tomorrow we head to the hot part of the desert a day early, but it should be less windy, with no fires, and we will have a pool to keep cool in.
And, now for the promised Cavern review.
It really was a wonderful tour, and is something we both highly recommend if you find yourself down in this neck of the woods. First, a little history.
Randy Tufts was a geology major at the University of Arizona. He introduced his roommate, Gary Tenen, to amateur spelunking, or cave exploration. Randy had been shown a sinkhole when he was a teenaager in the mountains near Whetstone, Arizona. The sinkhole is about 12 feet deep and 8 feet across, but had long been written off as nothing more than a sinkhole full of rocks and debris. Since the age of 18, Randy been hoping to discover a new cave, and had practiced squirming through tight spaces in order to go spelunking. A common practice tool is a wire coat hangar, which a caver can somehow manage to squeeze through with enough practice. That is a 10" diameter circle, which I am not even going to think about trying. There are practice holes of slightly larger sizes in the Visitor Center if you are so inclined, but neither of us wanted to make fools of ourselves in front of the school kids sliding through with ease.
Randy and Gary often explored the Whetstone Mountains because some small caves were in the area, and the geologic conditions seemed ripe. In November 1974, having struck out at yet another promising lead, Randy decided to show Gary the sinkhole Randy had seen as a teenager. When they got there, they discovered a blowhole; warm, moist, batshit-smelling air coming out of a 10" crack. They knew they had found a cave, and one big enough to support bats living in it.
After wriggling through the crack, which required removing shirts to minimize size, as well as exhaling, they found tunnels filled with amazing, ancient cave formations. Deep mud pits without tracks told them they were the first to enter the cave. Glistening walls told them this was a rare living cave, with formations still growing. Over the next few years they mapped miles of cave and found more elaborate rooms. Remarkably, they kept the discovery a secret to keep the cave pristine and undamaged.
Four years later, they let the property owners in on the secret. The Kartchner family patriarch, on being told of the discovery, said that he often thought that area had sounded hollow when he rode horses over the top. After 14 years, realizing the cave could not stay secret for much longer, a secret negotiation with the state of Arizona was reached to purchase the property and develop it in a manner that would protect it from vandals while still maintaining the living cave. The negotiation was so secret that the state did not even know the location of the property; the state was shown the cave by bringing the head negotiator for the state to a town 25 miles away, blindfolding him, driving him to the location and then leading him up the mountain and into the (now only slightly enlarged) entry before removing the blindfold. But that was enough to seal the deal. And in 1998 the first part of the cave opened to public viewing.
The state park now takes great pains to minimize human impact. Only 15-20 people enter at a time. No more than 500 people are permitted per day. There are two air locks to maintain cavern humidity. To enter you walk through a mist tunnel that helps to minimize shedding of hair and skin, and you are not allowed to bring in cameras, phones, purses or bags of any kind, no food or water. It almost goes without saying that there is no touching of anything, and if someone accidentally bumps into a rock wall or steps over the boundary, the area is flagged for the cleaning crew to decontaminate that night to remove oils or bacteria. Now, if you caught the part about no cameras, then you will know I did not take the pictures below, but they are pretty much exactly what we saw.
Here is map showing the main rooms of the cavern along with the new, modern paved trail entry as well as the original sinkhole entry.
The picture below is of some of the many soda straw formations. This sort of formation tends to only grow to 5 feet or so before breaking off, but there is one in this cavern over 21 feet long. It is very fragile, even moving when people walk by, so that part of the cave is not part of the tour. In this cave the soda straws grow at a rate of a little less than 1 mm per year, meaning the largest one in the cave is over 8000 years old.
This photo is from the Throne room, and that large formation was dubbed Kubla Kahn, from the poem Xanadu. Xanadu was the code name given to the cave by Gary and Randy. Take note of the human at the base; this formation is over 70 feet tall.
The formation below was probably my favorite one on the tour. It shows many different types, but I thought together it all looked like a very large pipe organ.
Lastly, here is a picture of the very pretty flowstone and drapery formations
Well, that was much too long of a report, so I'm off to cook dinner (pork noodle stir fry) right after this posts.
No comments:
Post a Comment