Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico

Nature Trail
Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
11/04/2024	1 miles	27 minutes	90'	2.4 mph	697.6 miles
Old Guano Trail
Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
11/04/2024	6.5 miles	2 hours 46 minutes	384'	2.4 mph	704.1 miles

Parking: 

• n/a

Map:

• Gaia GPS app

Directions:

• n/a

In the morning, we drove from Alamogordo to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. We walked around the exhibits at the visitor center and asked them for a hiking trail map, but they didn't have any. I guess most people just visit the actual caverns. You can actually buy a National Geographic map for the park, but the park doesn't have a lot of trails, and some of the trails were closed. The ranger told us about a nature trail, so we started there and did a loop. We stopped at a cave opening that was fenced off. It smelled like bat guano, which used to be removed for fertilizer. At the visitor center, I bought a cute bat sticker that says, "Guano Happens".

We returned to our car and prepped for the Old Guano Trail to White City. Yeah, for Gaia showing us trails! Wow - the wind! The forecast was for 25 mph winds with 37 mph gusts. November is the start of wind season. The trail was mostly flat. We skipped the descent down to White City and stopped to have a snack before turning around. We did feel like we were being blown around on the trail. We talked to a ranger, and it doesn't sound like too many people hike this trail.

Back at the visitor center, we saw there was a ranger led bat program at 4:45pm. How exciting! We thought it was past bat season. Well, technically it is but they still have 10's of thousands of bats instead of 100's of thousands of bats. I brought my sleeping bag with me for the bat viewing because it gets very cold at night in the desert. The ranger talked about bats for around 30 minutes until the bats started flying out of the cave. It started out as a few, then thousands. It was very cool - a bucket list item for sure. No photos of the bats. as they ask that you power down all electronic devices (bats don't like them).

Uh oh...on the drive to Carlsbad Caverns we started seeing snow.
None of us packed winter boots or microspikes.

View from the car starting to look drier.

Cold and windy, but at least no snow.

We started out with the nature trail, a short loop.

Visitor center and admin buildings.

Cave opening. It smells like bat guano.

We returned to our car, and then decided to do the Old Guano Trail.
It starts off at the nature trail loop trailhead too.

Cholla

Lunch in the middle of the trail.

Fossils (I asked about them when we visited Guadalupe National Park).

NM has great sunrises and sunsets.
View from the visitor center parking lot.