Trip Report: Fort Stanton Cave / Lincoln Caverns, 17 Oct 2004

For young cavers just getting started, Lincoln Caverns was a spectacular place to visit.

Shown here is Karl in his caving coveralls. Not helping his resemblance to an escaped prisoner, "will cave for food" was written on the back of the coveralls. Excepting this photograph, Karl took all of these photos. He got into cave photography well before David did, thus providing the oldest available digital photos of NMT Caving club trips. Some old film photos exist and there are plans to scan and post them as time allows.

A rare photograph of David.

There are several pool rims though the pools have long sense dried up. This is one of the smaller ones.

Karl wrung the most he could out of his Sony DSC-P73. Sadly, this was in the days of generally expensive flash cards, a camera requiring the pesky and annoyingly expensive Sony Memory Stick, and Karl being on a student budget. Result: most these photos were not even taken at the maximum resolution of the camera due to storage limitations!

Natural collapses sometimes destroy the formations.

In this case the natural collapses broke up a large slab of flowstone, exposing the various layers within. No, you can not date a formation simply by counting layers. The color is formed by impurities deposited along with the base material. These depend on the water and mineral sources which do not have a simple connection to the seasons far above.

This flowstone formed on top of a layer of mud. It looks a lot like wax from a candle oozing down across the floor, but it is actually solid rock. Finding solid rock clearly deposited on top of mud is one of the many remarkable things that can be found caving.

This formation seems to be a combination of cave popcorn, a stalagmite, a pool deposit, and cave velvet. David called it a cave rutabaga for lack of a better name, though that certainly is not an approved description.

The primary purpose of this trip was to document the condition of the aragonite bushes and look for any evidence of missing formations. We found lots of aragonite trees but no evidence that any were missing.

The best of the aragonite bushes, which measures in at a few inches. Lechugilla cavers laugh at the Fort Stanton aragonite bushes, with good reason.

At the end of Lincoln Caverns is Tiger Tail Room, named for its banded stalactites. These stalactites have a series of dark circular bands presumably caused by changing water levels. After the grander formations in the rest of Lincoln Caverns these are do not feel quite so impresive, but they are still worth visiting if you ever have the chance.

Some of the other stalactites in Tiger Tail Room are also quite nice. Though, at a few inches to a foot in length, their small size is a bit of a let down.

After the relative splendor of Lincoln Caverns, even the hidden selenite grass is just not nearly impressive. Though it is nice in its own unique way.