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Kids to the Guad's ,
2006
There have been rumors
for years that cavers are crazy and the following trip report might just add to that
belief....
Around January 6th
2006, a good caving friend of mine called and asked if I would like to go to Carlsbad
New Mexico with him on Jan.28th & 29th to do Carlsbad Caverns "Hall of the
White Giant", and "Spider Cave" which I have already done before.
I was a little confused at first because we had already planned a trip to the "Guads".
to do some wild caving for ten days at the end of February.
I asked what he was
talking about and he reminded me that he had set a quick trip up for some people
to do before our trip because they had complained about not being invited on our
trip in Feb. But, as it turns out they ended up backing out on the trip, so
that is why I got the call. My kids have begged me for years to take them to the
"Guads" after looking at all my previous trip photos, so this would be
a great opportunity.... except that I was going for ten days at the end of Feb. and
being a carpenter, which means seasonal work or seasonal income. this was not exactly
the best time financially. Plus, doing the trip meant taking off work and school
for the kids, from Thursday until Monday. So after thinking about it and making the
mistake of talking about it in front of the kids it was decided that we would go.
The group ended up
being my friends from the So. Cal. grotto Allen Hager and John Woods, my brother
Micah, my son Michael, daughter Courtney and myself. Which would fill the trips six
spots (we thought). It turned out that they changed the group size to eight. So Thursday
the 26th of Jan. finally came and off we headed for Allen's house in El Monte CA.
We made much better time getting there than we had planned, so we ended up waiting
around to eat and let the So. Cal. traffic die down a little (does it ever?). After
some good pre-caving pizza we hit the road at about 8:00pm and swung by John's house
to pick him up and started the drive straight through to Carlsbad. We arrived at
Carlsbad Caverns at 12:30pm our time and took the kids through the natural entrance
and around the big room and being how the biggest room in a cave the kids the have
ever previously seen is Moaning Cavern, they were very impressed. After spending
some time at the cave we contacted our good friend and host for the weekend,
Dr. Louise Hose. She is currently running the National Cave Karst Research program
there in Carlsbad and is kind enough to let us stay with her when we are in the area.
After getting in touch with her, we decided to go have Mexican food for dinner before
finally stopping for the day. The food was good, but the rest was even better. The
following morning started with us having breakfast at Denny's and then heading back
to Carlsbad to take some pictures before our off trail tour to "Hall of the
White Giant"
Our tour started at
1:00pm, and while picking up our tickets we found out that there were two additional
people going with us, as I mentioned earlier, we thought the tours maxed out at six
people.... not eight. The two others who would join us were from Colorado (Scott
and Gary) and neither had not done much caving and what they had was
not wild caving. So after the usual tourist speech by the guides we were on
our way. The start of the tour is off of the main tourist trail near the natural
entrance (If I told you where I would have to kill you!) The hole you go through
is kind of a pancake that immediately corkscrews to the right and is not tight by
any experienced cavers view, but remember we were not all experienced cavers and
it showed rather quickly with the second of the two (Gary) freaking out immediately
and he almost knocked Courtney and I off the small ledge we were standing on as he
rapidly backed down the rocks. If we had been near any real exposure, I would
have had to tackle him to keep him from falling. After things calmed down Gary
decided that caving was not for him and he would enjoy the "Big room" while
waiting for Scott and our group to return.
Scott turned out to
be a good guy and good caver and we all had a great trip. After finishing our trip
we came back out to the main trail and found that all the lights were off in the
cave because they were shutting down for the day. The walk out was really neat and
as we all walked out using only one persons Tikka lamp and sometimes where the railing
was solid no lights at all, gave us a great feel for what Jim White must have experienced
with just a lantern to negotiate that enormous cave. We ended the day by
having dinner in town and then retreated to Louise's for showers and sleep.
Sunday morning we packed
up our gear and Louise and her friend Larry made us a great pancake breakfast. Louise
and Larry offered us plane rides over the guads mtn. range. Allen and I jumped at
the offer and John volunteered to drive the kids to another small cave in the area.
We agreed to meet at the airport afterwards at 11:30am which would give us plenty
of time to be at Carlsbad for our 1:00pm Spider cave tour. After some great flying
and very humorous moments of almost losing our great breakfast we were back on the
ground to meet John and the kids. As we met our guides for Spider Cave we noticed
that Scott was back for more caving, but Gary had decided to not join us. The Spider
tour was great as usual and having a strong group of cavers we were done a little
early so we headed to town to get some food before saying our goodbyes and hitting
the road for home.
It was a great trip,
but very tiring! We had over 40hrs of driving time just to get there and back plus
the drive to the cave everyday and all for about seven hours of caving. The
trip home went smoothly with us Northern Cal. people home by 2:30pm Monday.
For a commercial cave Carlsbad Caverns off trail tour to Hall of the White Giant
and Spider Cave are really like wild caving, and I think they're very worth
seeing.
Mike White
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