It was the first time a crew had been allowed to take a crane into the cave and important to make the most of it. It took three hours to set up the crane, mainly because the operators had to be careful not to touch any of the crystals, but it enabled the camera to get smooth moving shots, which brought the location to life.
The featured producer is Huw Cordy. The narrator is David Attenborough. Main content. You must enable JavaScript to play content. Release date: 01 April This clip is from. Planet Earth — Caves. Borehole was discovered, and lots of it which had early explorers chasing down extensive passages without properly surveying where they went.
When the discovery of the rooms full of crystal formations happened, including the chandelier ballroom, this was one of the most significant discoveries in American caving history which led to the regulation of lech trips approved by organizations and the evolution of access within Lechuguilla today.
I flew into El Paso on a Saturday and had to rent a car in order to get out to Carlsbad and drive back the following Thursday night so I can get to work in time on Friday. John, jennifer, and Johanna calibrating distos in Lechuguilla The extra expense of a rental and the fact that I am scraping my time off to make this trip work was well worth the effort as we are about to spend almost a week in the Chandelier Ballroom and Maze section of Lechuguilla.
We exchange living quarters and discuss where we will be sleeping for the night so we can try to get an early morning start into the cave. Aragonite in Lechuguilla The following day we collect ourselves after a massive breakfast and meet Erin in the Admin building to go over the proposal and go over a presentation on the regulations of survey and expectations of each participant within the team collective.
After signing a bunch of documents, mark felt like he was closing on a house and I was ready to get into the cave! Gypsum Forst work Formations in Lechuguilla. Johanna, Jennifer, and John led the first team to the Big Sky camp and headed in an hour before we made it to the 80ft entrance drop of Lechuguilla.
The cave is clocked in with a temperature of 68 degrees and percent humidity which gave this cave a really hot atmosphere, especially for someone like me who sweats like I have an allergy to water. Johanna Kovarik in the Chandelier Maze, Lechuguilla. Before left the admin building, we all weighed our packs to see what we had in tow and I weighed in at 44 lbs with 4 days of food, a gallon of water, sleeping materials and camera equipment.
I put the Petzl transport to the test with hard cased dry boxes inside and that pack performed really well. Jennifer Foote in the upper mouses delight Breccia gypsum matrix, Lechuguilla. We hike into the sunny desert hills and made our way over to the entrance of Lechuguilla.
This is an 80ft entrance pit with a small nuisance drop that will take you to the heavily gated and fortified entrance of Lechuguilla. Unknown mummified bat, Lechuguilla.
Once the door is open the wind picks up and goes from a clam condition to a gale force wind! We get down into the cave and the walking passage with a bit of climbing was encountered until we got to a series of flow stone, slopped drops.
These drops took us to the ft boulder falls pit which is mostly free air and a decently sized room. Continuing down this passage took us to Glacier bay which was a really big room some interesting fluted holes in the ground that went through the massive gypsum mound.
Mark wenner and Pat Kambesis in a new section of the mouses delight in Lechuguilla. The gypsum bedding was still brown so it didn't really feel like we were on anything other than typical cave passage and so far, the cave reminded me of a TAG multi drop cave.
Once we got down into the voids, we followed a series of traverses that slowed our pace down a bit. We worked our way through the fissures and came back into walking passage that took us to the EF survey. Blowfish formation, Chandelier Maze, Lechuguilla. I went ahead and wanted to get set up in Lake LeBarge but as I was going down the walking passage, I noticed the cave changing form. It went from a fun TAG multi drop like cave and transformed into a crystallized and glittering crystal mystique.
Walking down the passage reviled selenite crystals with signs of a wind pattern as they were bent in a talonesque outward directional pattern. Jennifer Foote in the breccia matrix of the mouses delight maze.
Continuing down the walking passage the walls started to get white like snow and some of the flowstone formations were colorful with reds and orange like colors. Eventually I made it to the drop series which were slopping declines on rope that took me to an opening and eventually to a series of pools where the last rap was over a flowstone and the shore of Lake LeBarge.
Lake LeBarge is a pristine and a crystal clear pond of water and the only way around the pond is a tiny traverse around the ledge. Jennifer Foote in the labyrinth of the mouses delight above the Chandelier Maze, Lechuguilla. This turns into a solid flowstone passage and tall Aragonite bushes on the rocks that lay in the foregrounds.
I got some shots here so I wouldn't have to get any shots on the way back and I wanted to get a few shots of Pat Kambesis and Mark Wenner coming down the drops. This room opened up into a white gypsum coated corridor that appeared to be around 40ft in height and 40ft in length. We took a break here and headed down the corridor until we got to a section where two passages broke off left and right. We headed down the right hand passage and found ourselves in passages completely encapsulated in white gypsum crystal.
It looked as if a massive snow tunnel that was dug out! We didn't have to use a lot of power in our lights which was a big plus for us.
However, in the s cavers heard wind roaring up from the rubble-choked floor of the cave. Although there was no obvious route, different people concluded that cave passages lay below the rubble. A group of Colorado cavers gained permission from the National Park Service and began digging in The breakthrough, into large walking passages, occurred on May 26, Since , explorers have mapped over miles km of passages and have pushed the depth of the cave to 1, feet m.
As of July , Lechuguilla is one of the ten longest caves in the world one of the four longest in the United States and the second deepest limestone cave in the country. Cavers, drawn by unexplored passage and never-before-seen beauty, come from around the world to explore and map the cave. Lechuguilla Cave offered even more than just its extreme size. Cavers were greeted by large amounts of gypsum and lemon-yellow sulfur deposits.
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