Carlsbad Caverns Big Room: Everything You Need to Know | New Mexico

Hello everyone and welcome back to That Adventure Life. If it's your first time here I'm Dustin and I'm Vy and we are coming to you today from Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. We finished each other's sentences how cute. So today we're going to show you the self-guided tour of the big room. So you know they have a big cave like a giant cave that you've seen pictures with that little zigzag walkway that go inside the big room. That's the one. You can go in there by a self-guided tour. So we're gonna show you how to do that. First of all you need to get before we even start this you need to get your registrations or you need to pretty much reserve it. Say registration or reservation. Reservation oh my god yes. You haven't had any caffeine yet Reservations so you can do that online which I highly highly highly recommend but for some reason you forgot you didn't have time or if you're traveling and you have no idea you can actually go inside the visitor center and they have a ticket booth area where you line up and you can get your reservation from there. You do have to pay depends on whether you have the American the beautiful pass or not so the prices varies. If you need like breaked out info you can go on our blog the link is in the descriptions we'll have more of that. Yeah if you're getting the tickets the day of I think it's a good idea to get here early too just to make sure you get a spot because you know it's a really popular attraction and I'm sure it sells out pretty quickly. Yeah so we'll see you guys down in the big room. Once you have your tickets there are two ways to get down to the big room. The first and fastest way is by taking the elevator but the most popular way which also happens to be our favorite is to start at the natural entrance. If you plan on doing the natural entrance just know that you'll be hiking about two and a half miles and descending 750 feet underground. Some other important information to know is that plain water is the only drink that you can take with you into the caverns. There is a drink fountain and a limited snack bar at the underground rest area near the elevators inside the big room but the food and drinks purchased there must be consumed on the spot and cannot be taken into the caverns. The snack bar is only open on Fridays Saturdays and Sundays. Candy tobacco vaping products and gum are not allowed inside the caverns. We highly recommend wearing comfortable shoes that give you a lot of grip. The trail inside the caverns is pretty steep at times and there were some spots where it was wet as well. As much as we love wearing sandals we don't recommend bringing them into the caverns. You should definitely bring a jacket. The average cave temperature is 56 degrees with 90% humidity year round. You are going to be in there for a while and it gets pretty cold. It is very dark inside the caverns so you need to bring a flashlight. The darkness also means that it is going to be very hard to take photos and video. Our GoPros were definitely struggling in this video but cameras are allowed and they even allow flash but you are not allowed to use flash if you're there during the bat flight and the last thing that you need to know is not to bring any items into this cave that have been in other caves recently. Doing so could spread white nose syndrome which is something that will injure or kill the hibernating bats inside the caverns. From the visitor center you'll be taking this short trail that is just under two tenths of a mile long to this gazebo. Here you will be getting a quick briefing on what to do and what not to do while inside the caverns before heading over to the amphitheater. If you're here during bat flight season which unfortunately we weren't you're going to be in for quite a show here. Even though we didn't get to see the bats the swallows were doing their best to show us pretty much what it would look like. And here we have that windy sidewalk that is a very popular photo op. They let visitors enter in groups so if you want this shot all to yourself you're gonna have to wait out the crowds. One cool thing about exploring the caverns is that even though you came in through the natural entrance you can take the elevator back out. As you will see over the course of this video this trail gets very steep at times and that would be one heck of a hike back up to the surface. From the second we set foot in the natural entrance we were amazed at all the unique formations on the ceilings walls and floor. But little did we know that this was nothing compared to some of the formations that we would see deeper in the caverns. Along the way you should see numbers on the railing like this. These numbers correspond to a handheld audio guide that you can rent inside the visitor center for five dollars. As you work your way further into the caverns you can type the number into the device to learn fascinating facts about the formations. It is available in multiple languages including English, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Mandarin. And there's also a children's version. At this point the trail has curved around and dropped below the natural entrance. We will not be seeing the sky for several hours. If you need to use the restroom it is a good idea to use the one in the visitor center before you start. There aren't going to be any other restrooms available until you get to the other side of the big room by the elevators. On the park's website it says that it should take you about an hour to get down to the big room. But if you enjoy taking in the sights and taking photos like we do it's probably going to take you quite a bit longer. In fact we ended up doing the king's palace tour which you can see next week. Between that, the natural entrance, and the big room we were underground for almost eight hours. One of the things that we really enjoyed inside the caverns was looking at all of the named formations. This one was called the whale's mouth. After you pass it the trail is going to drop off very sharply through a series of switchbacks. This trail is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible but there are large portions of the big room that are. You just have to take the elevator down to access them. We have now reached an area known as devil's den and the formations are becoming much more impressive. V and I have seen lots of photos of Carlsbad caverns over the years and unfortunately they and even this video just can't quite do it justice. It may be hard to tell while watching this on a screen but some of the chambers on the way to the big room are absolutely massive. We have now reached an area known as the green lake room and even though we had been descending for what felt like an eternity the trail was still going to be dropping quite a bit. It's down here where you will find not only the beginning of the king's palace tour that you'll see in the next video but you will also find another relic from the park's past. This wooden staircase was built sometime around the park's opening in 1925 and that was the way that you would climb down and then back up and out of the caverns. I'm not sure how many stairs you had to climb to get out but it seems like one heck of a leg workout. We are now quickly approaching our destination which is the big room. Along the way we would still be passing by one more impressive feature which is the boneyard. As I mentioned before photography down here can be very tricky. You need cameras that don't mind shooting at higher ISO values. One of the things that makes it especially tricky is that tripods are not allowed in the caverns so you're gonna have to be shooting handheld. If you're interested in learning how to take photos in tricky lighting conditions leave a comment below and I'll make a video about it. We are now officially in the big room and let me tell you the name is fitting. This is the fifth largest single cave chamber in North America and the 28th largest in the entire world. It measures a very impressive 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide and 225 feet tall at its highest point. Once again the park's website says that the hiking time for the big room is one and a half hours but I can almost guarantee that you're gonna want to be there a whole lot longer. With all the unique textures that you will see on the formations down here you may be tempted to try to touch them. It's a really fragile ecosystem down here and the oil in our skin can damage these formations. The good thing is that there is a small sample rock in the visitor center near the elevator so you can touch that one and get it out of your system. The loop around the big room is about a mile and a quarter long. If that seems like a little bit much for you there is a shortcut that reduces it down to about six tenths of a mile. However if you can do the entire loop we highly recommend it because there are some really interesting formations on the back side of the loop. One of the things that we found really interesting about being in the big room is how respectful all of the visitors were. Everyone was talking very softly and almost treating it like a library. With the exception of the occasional crying child it was so quiet and peaceful inside the caverns and it seemed to get more quiet the further that you went in. Something else that we really enjoyed about our time in the cave system is how they lit it. I'm not sure if it's just because we're photographers and we're constantly dealing with light but we really appreciated the strategic placement of the lights along the trail. They did a really great job of illuminating all these spirals and columns and draperies along the way. And they even lit up this sign which can be much more easily read in the reflection of the water. As we wound our way along the twisting path we couldn't help but think about what it must have been like for those first explorers. Not only were you climbing down sketchy ladders like this but you were doing it with only the light of your lantern. Just a small heads up after you pass that mirror lake the trail is once again not wheelchair accessible and it's once again non-accessible near a formation that you'll see at the end of the trail called the Rock of Ages. The good thing is that even with those two portions of the trail cut out there is still a ton of amazing stuff to see down here. The backside of the big room trail has some really wild formations. Not only do you have the stone lily pads but you also have the crystal spring dome which is the largest active stalagmite in the caverns. And if that's not enough we also have the Rock of Ages that I talked about earlier. There is so much to see back here that we completely lost track of time and once we checked our phones and saw what time it was we realized that we were going to have to race to the exit to get on the last elevator out for the day. Rushing through here is easier said than done though and I couldn't help but stop and record a couple last minute clips of the doll theater and Chinese theater. Overall this was an absolutely amazing experience and I can definitely say that it blew our expectations out of the water. We would love to come back here again and would definitely put this on our list of must-visit places. If you're planning a trip to New Mexico you should also check out White Sands National Park. You can see that video by clicking in the upper corner right now. And be sure to stay tuned for next week when we do the guided tour of King's Palace. If you enjoyed this video be sure to like, comment, and subscribe. And for all the information about visiting Carlsbad Caverns National Park as well as other awesome New Mexico adventures head on over to thatadventurelife.com