Caving

Good afternoon! Hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend so far. Yesterday we had the opportunity to go caving at El Malpais National Monument. It was something completely new to us and out of ordinary, but so worth the trip.

One thing I absolutely love about New Mexico is the variety of scenery you can find going from one part of the state to the other. With this, it also offers varying experiences and a ton of different monuments or wilderness areas to explore. We certainly took advantage this yesterday at the lava tubes.

I've been wanting to explore the lava tubes for a couple of years now, and this weekend finally opened up the opportunity. I'd venture to say almost the entirety of El Malpais National Monument is volcanic rock, so to get to the tubes, though marked by "trail" you're climbing over the rocks themselves. It's a pretty surreal experience to be completely surrounded by the black. It reminds me a bit of White Sands in that you feel like you're in a completely different world.

We finally made it to the entrance and you're immediately greeted with boulders that you have to climb through to get to the caves. We intended to check out the big skylight cave first (pictured at the top), but somehow we unknowingly got our directions crossed. Instead, we explored the smaller cave (twice). At least we got our practice in! Once we finally figured out where we were, we then ventured back over the boulders to the other side to go check out the big skylight cave. It was pretty incredible. Such a unique experience. You quite literally can't see a thing, so headlights are a requirement. There's also something to be said for how cool it really gets. It can be 90 something degrees outside, but 40 degrees in the cave-with all of the bouldering we had been doing, the 40 degrees felt pretty amazing! 

An example of some of the boulders we climbed. These also had some really phenomenal coloring on them. I wish the quality here was better. It doesn't look at all like it did in person.

Some moss growing in the cave

Again, some really cool coloring that doesn't resemble the live version.

Another example of some of the rocks we had to climb. While the bouldering wasn't what I would call difficult, it also wasn't easy. I'd say as long as you have some hiking experience under your belt you should be perfectly fine getting to the caves. 

When all was said and done we spent probably a few hours exploring between the bouldering and the caves themselves. Before we headed back home we made a pit-stop at the Sandstone Bluffs for what made for a great lasting impression of El Malpais. 

If you are a local, it's only about an hour and a half from Albuquerque, I highly recommend a day trip out. Saturday's they also do a program for the bat viewings. We were sad to miss this. If you have time El Morro National Monument is also out that way and worth a stop as well.