Mike's Southwest Travels: Slaughter Canyon

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Slaughter Canyon

September 24, 2005

Location:  Guadalupe Mountains area, near Carlsbad, New Mexico

The Slaughter Canyon cave tour is available by reservation only.  To the right somewhere is Ogle Cave requiring a 400' vertical drop rappel to the bottom.  That tour requires a permit and a lack of sanity.  We'll stick with Slaughter Canyon for now.  It's named after a Sgt. Slaughter, by the way, though probably not that wrestler guy. 

Here's some of my tour group:  a Boy Scout troop, a couple of attractive women, and a couple of old geezers.  I appreciated the old guys, since they made me look relatively young.  The young woman in the center endeared herself to me by brushing a bee off my back.

Here we are heading up the path.  Barely visible in the center are Stadler and Waldrof struggling to keep up with us young folk.  On a completely unrelated note, I'd like to thank those well-prepared Boy Scouts for administering CPR to me no less than five times during our trek.

Note the smoothest of the path.  Goats wouldn't use this.  Anyway after this somewhat frightening trek, we entered the cave and saw some tremendous works of nature.

Here Nature has made a scale model of The Great Wall of China out of white calcite.  It's about 6" high.

The Monarch pillar.  89' High, second tallest in the park, third tallest in the world.

"This is the ahem structure," said the ranger.  "It's called the Clansman," I said loudly enough for everyone to hear.  It's not my fault that the guys who named it weren't politically correct.

The Christmas Tree structure.

   

   

Here's some more views of the cave.

The ceiling 200' above.

A future column in the making, a couple hundred years from now.

There's also a large guano pit in the cave. There were two large walls covered with the stuff.  There are little bat bones embedded all the way through it.  Scientists have actually reconstructed a whole new, previously unknown species of bat from them.  Here's a tip: black guano is the good quality stuff and red guano is the lower quality.  One shudders to imagine under what circumstances one might need to know that.

Some of the floors are covered in a guano/clay mixture, which has the consistency of grease.  One of the old guys took a lengthy slide down a pit on it.  Thankfully, he sprang back up immediately.  "I'm okay!” he shouted, “I meant to do that!"

Why is it that when people found these caves full of bat crap, their first thought was, "What a great money-making opportunity," and then went broke attempting to do so?  Anyway, there was a mine in the cave and even a tram up to it for the workers.  A teenage boy used to scale the narrow, treacherous path every morning to start it.  He's still alive today… and still bitter about the experience.

And here's the view from the exit.  A great afternoon, well spent.

Mike's Southwest Travels: Smith Spring

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Smith Spring

September 28, 2005

Location:  Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Excerpt from: Smith Spring
Another easy hike, this time starting at Frijole Ranch, gently climbs 400 ft/122 m through desert scrub to Smith Spring. This peaceful oasis at the foot of the Guadalupe Mountains is resplendent with maidenhair ferns, pine, madrone, alligator juniper, oak and bigtooth maple. Although you have only walked just over a mile, you feel far from civilization: dappled sunlight filters through the green canopy and the only sounds are water softly running over weathered rocks and the faint hum of busy insects. Loop back via a second oasis, Manzanita Spring, for a total distance of 2.3 miles/3.7 km. Trailhead: Turn off US 62/180 1.5 miles north of Headquarters visitor center onto the 0.75-mile gravel road to Frijole Ranch.

For an extensive history of the Frijole Ranch, click here: The Frijole Ranch - Pioneer Legacy of the Guadalupes.  For my completely made-up history, read on.

Here's some gear from an Indian killed at the Spring, whilst trespassing on land he erroneously thought was his, just because him and all his ancestors lived there.

Here's the saddle of the man of the who shot the Indian.

Here's the antlers of the last Smith Spring elk, also shot by the man who owned the saddle who shot Indian, who trespassed on the land he thought was his and ancestors, which all lay in the house that Jack built.  (If you don't know that nursery rhyme, then that didn't make any sense.  If you do, then it probably still didn't.)

Here's where they detail the relationship between the Frijole Ranch, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, the Beta Reticulans, Kennedy's assassination, and of course, the Shriners.  It's all just like I thought.

Manzanita Spring is just down the trail.  What a great time for a nice dip in the pool.  Except, of course, it's "endangered" water.  Keep out!  By the way, that's El Captain in the background.

Like the blurb says, it is an easy hike.  Unless you had just walked for a total of about six miles over at nearby McKittrick Canyon on the same day.  When I started this hike, I peered into the distance and thought to myself, Oh please, let the spring be closer than that little clump of trees to left, up the mountain.  They weren't, and they don't tell that it's mostly uphill.

   

I don't know what the name of this small mountain is on the trail.  I would have named it "Teat Peak."

 

Here's a gully on the trail.  It runs about 180' deep and there are boulders all over the place.

   

Of course, much like McKittrick Creek and Manzanita Spring, no swimming allowed at Smith Spring either.  Nothing like 100-degrees with humidity, hot and exhausted with your shirt off, gasping for breath and staring at a cold, clear pool of water.  It took all my willpower not to defy the park service.

Here's a lovely fern-covered waterfall.

 

A plaque gives you the history of the spring.  Guardrails surround the trail to keep people from destroying the fragile ecology of the spring.  But you can easily hop over them to get the good pictures.

At the Spring, I saw bluebirds, squirrels, and fish.   I didn't see any frijoles though.  I think they were hunted to extinction in this area.  When will Man learn?

I took a quiet nap on a rock bench and snapped this picture.  Rocks never felt so comfortable.  A cool breeze beneath the trees, while listening to the babbling brook, revived my spirits.  You know, it was almost worth the near death experience.

Mike's Southwest Travels: The Ruby Mine

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The Ruby Mine

December 3, 2005

   

Location: West face of the Organ Mountains,

Las Cruces, New Mexico

Are you ready for some real adventure?  Welcome to the Ruby-Hayner Mine.  I have a plan, a big plan.  I need only a few materials to enact it.  Bah Bah Ha Ha!!!  Err... How much of that did you hear?  Maybe I've been out in the sun too long.  Anyway, let's take a trip to dangerous, old abandoned mine.

An old Hoist—It just needs a little oil and it will work fine. I put it in the back of my truck.

 

The rock wall remains of the mine offices.

Oops.  I cropped out that ominous-looking sign over the mine that cryptically said, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter."

Shaft #3

Feldspar can still be found in abundance at the mine.

Here we experience our first genuine hardship and loss of the trip.  My cell phone fell down shaft to the left.  Luckily, it belonged to the bank, so I experienced no personal loss, but I could not call for that pizza I planned on having delivered when I exited the mine.

Shaft #1

 

I kept having the feeling that someone was following me.  Oh wait, that's my shadow.  Good thing I didn't shoot first and ask questions later.

Here I am hanging for dear life on to rock.  Oh, the adventure.

This place didn’t go out of business for lack of minerals.

Shaft #4

Bad smell

   

Undaunted, we enter Shaft #3, the opening chamber.  Damn!  No orcs yet.

150’ down.  Note how safe this all looks.

Here's a 45-degree shaft into the heart of the mine.  It was sorely tempting me.  Discretion won over valor this time.  

Two boulders lodged into hole

Back of Shaft #3

Amazingly, I actually found my phone.  Ironically, I would lose it for good down another mine shaft on another day.

After a stern lecture from the bank president's secretary (who actually secretly runs the bank and does adventurous stuff like rappelling into caves), I got a cool new phone out of the deal.  Neat!  I should lose more of the bank's stuff. 

120’ into the back of the shaft

Wall of crystal, lots of holes, I may start mining it myself.

   

We’ve made it out alive. And the scoffers scoffed at me.

On the way back, I was serenaded by a hippie singing and playing guitar outside of his van... wearing only underwear... and smoking a joint.  There's no point to me recounting this, other than the amusing mental image.  Yes, I should have taken a picture.

Meanwhile, 'A' Mountain beacons to me.  Somewhere on top, there’s a fluoride mine with my name on it.  I will have my crystal resonator.