Thunder and Lightning and Bats, Oh My!

Today we visited Carlsbad Caverns. We wanted to do the Lower Cave Wild Tour, however it was sold out so we ended up exploring the Big Room ourselves, then doing a lantern lit tour through the Natural Entrance with a Ranger guide.  Below are some of the photos from the Big Room.  We used a long exposure so we wouldn't have to use the flash.

A ladder left by the National Geographic's 1924 Expedition of the caves.

This, too, was a long exposure and we had to stand still for like 20 seconds to get it.

It was neat to experience the cave by candle light, much the way that Jim White, the first non-Native American Indian to find and explore the cave, did. If you've never been there the natural entrance is a little over a mile deep and descends 800 feet, about half that at the very mouth of the cave. Now there is a paved path and handrails, but before that it was just a steep drop off. So Jim White built himself a make shift ladder and a lantern made out of a coffee can and kerosene and went in, alone. “What a nut job!” I thought, and then our guide told us he was 16 years old at the time, and then I thought, “well, that explains quite a lot.”

Jim White was working as a rancher near the caves and noticed each evening a black cloud off in the distance. He decided one night to follow the "smoke" and discovered the natural entrance of the cavern.

"I thought it was a volcano," Jim mused, "but, then, I'd never seen a volcano-nor never before had I seen bats swarm, for that matter. During my life on the range I'd seen plenty of prairie whirlwinds-but, this thing didn't move: it remained in one spot, spinning its way upward. I watched it for perhaps a half-hour-until my curiosity got the better of me. Then I began investigating."  Thus the explorer began the most romantic tale of adventure this chronicler has ever heard.

"That is, until this particular day. I had sat for perhaps an hour watching bats fly out. I couldn't estimate the number, but I knew that it must run into millions. The more I thought of it the more I realized that any hole in the ground which could house such a gigantic army of bats must be a whale of a big cave. I crept between cactus until I lay on the brink of the chasm, and looked down. During all the years I'd known of the place, I'd never taken the trouble to do this. There was no bottom in sight! I shall never forget the feeling of aweness it gave me."

"I piled up some dead cactus and built a bonfire. When it was burning good, I took a flaming stalk and pushed it off into the hole. Down, down, down it went until at last the flame went out. Finally I saw the glowing embers strike and sprinkle on the rocks below. As nearly as I could estimate, the drop must have been two hundred feet. I kicked the remainder of the bonfire into the hole, and watched it fall. This seemed to frighten the bats, and for several minutes they ceased their flight. However, as soon as the embers died out, the bats swarmed forth as before."

From Jim White's Own Story

We picnicked and saw a beautiful rainbow above the park:

The calm before the storm...

 
 We stayed around to the watch the bats exit the cave too, but had to evacuate about 15 minutes into the flight because of lightning in the area.  I guess they didn't want an encore performance... (Okay, I like the NOAA data at the end of the article).

This time of year there are about half a million bats in the cave because in addition to the colony that lives there all summer there are migrating bats who stop at Carlsbad on their way South. The bats fly up out of the natural entrance clockwise, and when they reach the mouth of the cave they all head South.  It's a pretty amazing phenomenon.  I've never seen so many bats. Unfortunately, they don't allow any type of recording devices so I have no photos of my own to show but here is one I shamelessly lifted: