Guadalupe Room

Hi Gang,

Last night I finally got to go into the 'Guadalupe Room'. It's an off trail cave tour, which is NOT available to the general public. It does follow the route of the 'Hall of the White Giant' cave tour which is available to the public on Saturday afternoons. Here's a link for those of you who are curious: www.nps.gov/cave.planyourvisit/hall_white_giant.htm

However, this trip continues past the 'White Giant' to the 2nd largest room in the cave (second to the big room). This area is still an active part of the cave, and it's very physically challenging. You climb over breakdown, crawl on your belly, corkscrew through rocks, you have to carefully navigate large cracks, crevices with drops you don't want to fall in to! You slide down an area of muddy clay (and later have to negotiate your slippery way back up it). I'll be honest, my back, shoulders, and legs are all sore this morning, but it was worth every minute.

There are no electric lights, only the lights from our helmuts and flashlights help us find our way. The trail is marked with orange plastic tape and at times is only a foot or so wide, other times it's non-existant. The beauty in the area is breath taking, with stalagmites, stalactites (which are often only inches from your head), columns, flowstone, various colors in the rocks, and an entire room of soda straws.

We continued to the Canary room, having to change our hiking boots for aqua socks to protect the resource (the cave floor). The canary room has odd shaped formations. One of them being a canary, another a woodpecker, and a thin column the width of a soda straw, but about ten feet long. My fellow rangers took pictures, I'll share them with you once they post them.

It was truly an awesome trip. Although not available to the public, if your interested, book the Hall of the White Giant tour. You'll have to book several weeks (sometimes months) in advance. Only a limited number of visitors are allowed because of the sensitivity of the area. If that's too much for you, there is the 'King's Palace' tour which is available daily and only requires a one mile walk and a variety of other cave tours which vary in intensity!

Come on out and visit while we're still out here.

Miss you all,

Love,
VAL & JOHN