It all begins with water and rock.
As water seeks its level, it becomes acidic.
And when it flows over limestone, it etches a path into the rock.
Given eons of time, water will burrow and carve,
with incredible force, the veins and arteries of planet Earth
So the underworld of caves is born.
And after torrents have done their work,
patient drops do more wonders in a million years or so.
Look now on a landscape no one dreamed existed just a few years ago.
Here are bizarre and fantastic treasures that stun the eye
and strain the imagination.
Here is discovery and danger.
Here is adventure.
In New Mexico, members of a National Geographic Society expedition
explore the world's newest and most exotic major cave.
They are following one of man's most ancient imperatives
to see and understand the unknown.
Join us now as we embark on
an extraordinary journey deep into the earth
to confront MYSTERIES UNDERGROUND.
In the Guadalupe Mountains of southern New Mexico,
an awesome giant has lain hidden for a million years.
Sometimes, in the desert silence,
the monster could be heard breathing.
The sound came from a yawning chasm in the rocks.
In 1986 a trio of weekend explorers broke through a layer of rubble
and discovered a new cave only a few miles
from famous Carlsbad Cavern.
Although the cave entrance lay inside Carlsbad Caverns National Park,
park officials allowed qualified cavers to explore it.
One of them was Rick Bridges, an oil and gas prospector.
Now Bridges leads a hand-picked team of experts,
like rock climber Dave Jones, on the 25th expedition to Lechuguilla.
You got the survey gear, Anne?
Research geologist kiym Cunningham
will handle the science studies for the expedition.
Nuclear test engineer Anne Strait is an expert
in surveying and mapping caves.
And specialist cameraman from England, Sid Perou,
will be the first to document Lechuguilla on motion picture film.
The journey begins with a deceptively ordinary hike.
The cave is named after a desert plant that grows in this harsh,
dry environment-Lechuguilla-Spanish for little lettuce.
Forty people will support the venture,
including two support teams to pack in supplies
and batteries for photographic lights.
On high rope.
We tend to have this feeling that
the surface of the earth is the life of the earth.
But we're just this small,
thin little shell that we choose to call our world,
and beneath it there's an entire realm that we know very little about.
And we can, if we choose,
enter that realm and we can learn something from it.
I will never go to the moon,
but I can go to a cave the nobody else has been to
and have the same elation of exploration in the sense
that I have gone where no one's gone before.
Bombs away.
I would like to think that had I lived in another time
I would have been an explorer.
You know, had I lived in the late 1700s,
I would have wanted to know what was across the Appalachian Mountains.
If I'd been around when Lewis and Clark went to the coast,
I'd liked to have gone with them, you know.
And I think most people that cave
at this level and do this kind of exploration feel that way.
Here, Bridges and his companions
excavated to break into Lechuguilla for the first time.
Now the entrance is protected by a lockable hatchway.
Through this tiny aperture the cave breathes
blowing air out or sucking
it in to equalize with the barometric pressure above ground.
Winds up to 60 miles an hour howl out of here,
hinting at the vast underworld below.
Today, this is Lechuguilla's only known entrance,
and there may have never been another.
For a million years this place has lain undisturbed.
In a real sense, it is a primordial world,
untouched by all but microscopic forms of life.
On rope!
It's a long ways down.
See you guys on the bottom.
Dave Jones starts down
the 150 foot pit called Boulder Falls
It was here that the first explorers realized
what a vast place they had discovered.
As you progress down,
it gets steeper and steeper and pretty soon you're free hanging,
but your feet are still against the rock
And all of a sudden you rappel
by this little ledge
and there's no more rock. There's nothing in any direction.
Beyond the base of the pit
the cave branches off in all directions.
Only computer imagery can portray this labyrinth.
After the May 1986 exploration
the cave was known to be 700 feet deep
and more than half a mile long.
Today the system totals 60 miles and plummets more than 1,600 feet.
Twisting capillaries and veins pierce the earth in all directions.
This is a gigantic maze in three dimensions,
defying conventional ideas of direction and scale.
Footprints remain forever in this fragile environment.
Plastic ribbons keep cavers on main trails.
Expeditions into Lechuguilla have been likened to exploring Everest
only in reverse.
The team is headed for Base Camp still hours away.
The trail leads on into inky blackness
Often they traverse chambers so vast
the cave walls are barely discernible.
Gypsum crystals sparkle along the route.
Now, cavers encounter Lechuguilla's fantastic decorations
for the first time.
Helictites and gypsum flowers extrude from the walls
fragile gardens that have taken centuries to blossom,
as minerals have been squeezed from the rocks like toothpaste from a tube.
Beauty abounds.
These jewels of the underground
are exquisitely delicate needles of selenite.
With the constant maneuvering up down
and through the cave's difficult terrain,
50 pound backpacks become painful burdens.
Always, in Lechuguills, danger is not far away.
Okay, on three. One, two, three.
In 1991 seasoned caver Emily Mobley slipped and broke her leg
while working on a surveying expedition in the cave's western sector.
A mile and a half from the entrance,
900 feet below the surface,
this accident would trigger the largest and most publicized cave rescue
in U.S. History.
A hundred experienced cavers
summoned to the scene would labor four arduous days
to bring her to safety.
The bond of comradeship that unites
the caving community was seldommore evident than during this emergency.
Every caver knows and instinctively responds to the code of the underground
that only cavers can save and protect each other.
After almost four hours, the expedition reaches Lake Lebarge,
the first sizeable body of water to be discovered inthis branch of Lechuguilla.
Beautiful!
One of the greatest sights in caving, isn't it?
Yes. Fantastic. Is this Lake Lebarge?
Yeah. Lebarge Borehole looks easier now.
Beautiful!
On rope!
The lake completely blocks the way ahead.
Cavers had to wade it until they found a detour
tricky, but possible.
Well, I think of particular moves like dancing around the edge of Lebarge
as almost a ballet, an underground ballet.
I know where my footholds are; I know where my handholds are.
I know if I hit them just right and move just right
some of them are kind of dynamic in so much as you leave one handhold
while you're going for the next foothold.
And if you do that just right and you have your pack balanced
just right, you flow through it real smoothly.
And so I think it's very much like doing a dance,
a very intricate dance.
And you want to do it perfectly,
you know, and it's very beautiful when you do.
Deeper into the cave,
mineral formations become more fantastic and delicate.
Cavers must move among them with great care.
Spikes of aragonite,
one form of calcium carbonate, grow in fragile bushes.
The gentlest touch could damage them.
There is infinite contrast here.
The now famous Chandelier Ballroom is one of caving's classic beauty spots
Plumes of gypsum sprout from the ceiling,
some as long as 20 feet
the most dazzing examples of their type ever found.
Utter silence pervades Lechuguilla.
The only sound is made by the intruder
In the constant 68-degree temperature and high humidity,
dehydration is always a threat.
Anybody else need any hot water?
For some, the notion of life
with almost a quarter mile of rock overhead
can be oppressive, even terrifying.
But cavers like Bridges relish the experience.
It's almost like coming back to home after you've been gone for a while.
It's a very comfortable feeling to me, particularly in that particular cave.
And you know it's a sense of isolation
The world becomes very simple
Here there is no day or night.
If they ignore the time, cavers tend to stay awake,
and sleep, for longer and longer periods.
In Lechuguilla Cave,
there is little evidence of life.
But this is rare.
Many caves harbor a hidden kingdom of creatures, dominated by bats.
Bats thrive in darkness.
They navigate not by sight,
but by subtle patterns of reflected sound.
Some caves are home to millions of bats,
the greatest concentration of mammals anywhere.
Their nitrogen-rich droppings, or guano,
are harvested as a fertilizer.
Large deposits produce a toxic gas, which can be lethal.
Mountains of bat guano support the intricate food chain underground.
Sometimes, an injured bat, or a baby,
falls into the guano and itself becomes food.
Within minutes the bat is reduced to a skeleton.
Abundant underground, the cave cricket
Crickets spend much of their time gathering food outside their caves,
but inside they perform a vital role as scavengers.
In mute testament to their environment fish have evolved here without eyes.
The salamander has dispensed with eyes, too,
and has no need of skin pigment in a world without sunlight.
People have probably always found shelter in aves.
Thousands of years ago,
as much of the world still lay in the grip of the last Ice Age,
prehistoric hunters left spectacular evidence behind them.
The human spirit was born and nurtured here,
its expression etched on walls of stone.
By the early 20th century most people lived elsewhere.
But science and curiosity drove some to explore deeper underground.
Magnesium flares lit the way, filling dark voids with light.
Geologists squeezed into subterranean chambers
seeking to understand their origin and structure.
And soon the ancient lure of caves turned to profit.
Tourists went underground.
Then and now,
humans have been compelled to seek out caves,
and to combat the gloom with gay defiance.
In the United States, New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns
was declared a national park in 1930.
But natural wonders were not enough.
Carlsbad and other caves promoted all sorts of attractions,
some a bit farfetched.
The time will come when some master musician
in the Carlsbad Cavern will be able to create s symphony in stone
Many parts of the world are known for caves.
Because most lie on limestone bedrock,
the soil is often thin and life is hard
So it has often been in the remote uplands of Kentucky.
But the automobile brought a new source of wealth
city folks, eager for amusement.
Everyone who owned a cave hung up a sign.
Each was touted as being bigger and better than the others.
The so-called Cave Wars spurred bitter feuds and even violence
Crystal Cave belonged to the Collins family,
but it was too far from the beaten path to prosper.
Thirty-seven-year-old Floyd, one of the Collins boys,
was determined to find a cave closer to the highway.
He set off alone on a cold winter morning in January 1925
and squeezed into a narrow, twisting crack in the earth,
never before explored.
A hundred feet or so into the tight passageway
Floyd dislodges a rock that falls on his leg and pains his left foot.
Every detail of this fateful mishap will soon be known throughout the world
Struggling to free himself, Floyed becomes more tightly wedged.
His arms are pinned at his sides.
He can do nothing but shout for help.
Twenty-four hours later Floyd's cries are heard.
A younger brother, Homer, manages to reach him.
Coffee and sandwiches revive Floyd,
but no amount of tugging or pulling will set him free.
Would-be rescuers knock down more dirt and rocks.
Soon more help arrives,
but rescue efforts are clumsy and disorganized.
Curious onlookers begin to gather.
They become restive and quarrelsome.
A week goes by.
Floyd is still alive and the crowed swells to thousand.
It becomes a carnival.
Souvenirs are sold and moonshiners arrive on the scene.
It's hard to maintain order and the National Guard is summoned.
Skeets Miller a 21-year-old newspaper reporter,
braves the tortuous passage seven times to comfort Floyd
and describe his plight.
Miller takes down food and drink
and an electric light bulb to keep Floyd warm.
In bitter cold and rain, little more can be done for him.
When a cave-in blocks the passage, a rescue shaft is begun.
People all over the country join Floyd's family in prayer.
Floyd's brothers expect the worst.
Rescuers finally reach him on the 18th day.
It is too late.
Floyd has been dead for some time.
The crowd goes home.
The public is soon interested in other things.
It takes two months to recover the body.
The rock that trapped Floyd was not a boulder,
but a mere 27-pound stone, shaped like a leg of lamb.
His death left a legacy of fear of the dark,
mysterious underground that haunts many to this day.
Today, there are about 16,000 devotees of caving in the U.S.
Here, where Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia meet,
the countryside is studded by deep pits
vertical caves the delight of weekend enthusiasts.
Nine-year-old Leah Brown
holds a world speed record for rope climbing.
Her partner, Avis Van Swearingen,
also holds a climbing record for women over the age of 60.
With skill and courage
they suspend their lives on a slender thread.
We call that rope the nylon highway
because it takes us to wonderful places
and new parts of the cave, and it's the only way you can get there
If I'm the first one down a drop, and I have been the first,
the very first person to ever go down a drop...
if we can't really tell if the rope reaches the bottom,
the person who goes down first wears their climbing gear, too,
so that you can put your climbing gear on the rope and come up.
Also, we put a knot at the bottom of that rope
so we can't rappel off the end of it,
which has happened to people.
I like the deep pits,
because when they're deep, you get to go fast more.
That's why I like the deep pits,
because the short ones you don't get to go fast very long.
The first time I did it in a pit,
it was only a 90-foot pit and I didn't get scared.
I don't get scared very easily.
I like going fast.
When I go down fast,
the floor is real tiny and then it starts getting bigger and bigger,
and I like to watch that.
An unfettered commitment to their sport
compels cavers to seek new thrills in undiscovered places.
For some, the quest for adventure knows no boundary.
The Austrian Apls.
A fifth of the world's deepest caves are located here, high in the mountains
These ice caves are 5,000 feet above sea level.
They are natural deep freezes where ice remains, even in hot summers
Here, geological time is condensed.
We can witness the growth of ice formations
in short periods of months or years,
which in their stone counterparts would take centuries.
From year to year these caves are never the same.
As they thaw and freeze again,
the fantastic ice formations are ever changing.
Few places on earth are more beautiful or more treacherous,
with perhaps one exception.
Some cavers have merged their love of the unknown with a passion for diving,
venturing into a bizarre world underground and under water.
Originally formed above sea level,
these caves became submerged about 10,000 years ago
as the last Ice Age retreated.
They are now 70 feet beneath the surface.
Underwater caves are deathtraps for the inexperienced.
But, from time to time,
tempting fate can have astounding rewards.
In 1990, when exploring a submerged tunnel off
the Mediterranean coast of France,
a professional diver surfaced in a hidden chamber.
He found a treasure chest of art, perhaps 18,000 years old.
Paintings and engravings depict animals that roamed southern Europe
before the last great ice sheets melted
Some experts question the authenticity of the art,
but close examination is impossible.
Cosquer Cave is a place of haunting mystery.
To protect it, the cave is now sealed by order of the French government.
In time a new entrance may be built and the truth known.
An expanse of sinkholes and depressions pockmark
south central Kentucky
where, beneath the surface, the limestone is riddled with caves.
They are everywhere, an integral part of the landscape.
This is Floyd Collins country,
and the contest to attract the tourist dollar still rages on.
The star attraction is Mammoth the world's longest cave.
A national park since 1941,
the cave now draws more than half a million visitors a year.
Back in the 1800s
tour guides here were often black slaves.
One of them, Stephen Bishop,
became perhaps the greatest caver of them all.
On his own, with little more than a lamp,
a rope, and a sketchbook,
Bishop explores the depths of Mammoth Cave.
He creates a surprisingly accurate map of this complex underground maze.
Deep in the cave
Bishop is confronted by a gaping void
that came to be known as Bottomless Pit.
Beyond, Bishop explores regions that had never been visited in his time
But in these remote reaches he hinds evidence
that someone has preceded him.
Some archaeologists believe that Stephen Bishop
may have also encountered one of Mammoth's most compelling mysteries
Trapped under a boulder
are the ancient remains of a human being.
Not for another century would the mummified body be rediscovered
and then as the technology became available,
removed from beneath the six-ton boulder.
A sensation in its time,
the mysterious body would be on public display for years
and given the name Lost John.
Two to three thousand years ago
this man was digging around the base of a heavy rock
when it dislodged and crushed him.
What was he doing here?
How did he get here?
No one believed that ancient humans could have ventured this far
into the forbidding depths of Mammoth Cave.
Today, new evidence helps to answer these questions.
Archaeologist Ken Tankersley has spent years
investigating the traces of ancient humans in Mammoth.
Armed with cane reeds collected near the park,
Tankersley simulates the methods prehistoric
explorers would have used here.
We have long known that human beings lived near the entrance of caves.
But Lost John suggested that prehistoric people
had gone far into Mammoth
perhaps two day's travel.
Was this possible?
At first Tankersley himself had doubts
I'm always amazed when I think about
what it takes for us to go into a cave.
We wear a hard hat; we wear out caving lamp,
whether it's electric or carbide;
and we carry two sources of back-up light.
We wear enough clothing to ward off hypothermia.
These people wore virtually nothing
loin cloths at best.
Probably most frequently,
based on what we've seen in the cave in terms of human remains,
these people were naked, carrying nothing but cane reed torches
The reed torches were the only light source available to ancient humans.
They produce surprisingly efficient illumination
and conjure ghosts from the heavy shadows.
Their daring was incredible.
For humans, light is life in a cave.
But these explorers traveled up to 12 miles
with nothing but reed torches between them and a horrible fate.
Their pathway can be followed even now
A trail of burned torch fragments leads Tankersley and his companions
to a cavity in the rock face.
Digging marks and a crude implement
are evidence of some kind of activity here.
That's magnificent. Notice the cut edge.
A primitive tool,
one of dozens found deep in the cave.
What was it used for?
Another clue:
A rich seam of selenite crystal courses through the rock face nearby.
These findings prove that prehistoric people were engaged
in widespread mining of crystals throughout the cave.
The scale of the operation was staggering.
Tons of material were removed.
The mining continued without interruption for over a thousand years
The ancient miners took selenite and other minerals from the cave.
But what they were used for remains a mystery
as medicines, or ornaments,
or for use in rituals? Perhaps all three.
Just as mysteriously, around the time of the birth of Christ
the mining suddenly ceased.
As yet no one knows why.
All that remains is abundant evidence that they once were here,
driven by needs and desires we may never understand.
To our right, down below, is the famous Bottomless Pit.
For many, many years lights were not sufficient to reach the bottom.
Visiting Mammoth today is a journey through time.
But as they are guided along comfortable tourist trails,
few visitors can imagine the tortuous passageways that lie beyond them.
Not knowing the true depth of the pit or what lay on the other side.
Reaching the other side,
they were surprised to find an avenue over there and more cave.
This opened up the doorway to the vast
unknown mileage that we all Mammoth Cave.
Mammoth Cave Ridge skirts the Houchins Valley.
On the other side, beneath Flint Ridge
lies another cave network, once shrouded in mystery.
Here, 40 years ago,
one of the great exploits of cave exploration began.
In the 1950s a group of weekend adventurers began an intensive probe
into the secrets of Flint Ridge.
There had long been talk of a vast underground system
that might link all the caves in the area.
It began as an exciting pastime. It became a grueling obsession.
Over the years hundreds of men and women took part.
There were untold yards of muddy crawlways.
There were pits and crevices and mazes from which there seemed no escape.
Flint ridge developed its own colorful place names: The Corkscrew,
Shower Shaft, Agony Avenue.
But the cave grew,
until Flint Ridge alone was pushed to nearly 90 miles.
And if it could be connected to Mammoth,
then this was the underground Everest
by far the longest cave in the world.
In the summer of 1972
a team entered Flint Ridge to probe a tantalizing passage
that led toward Mammoth.
It took seven hours to reach the end of the known passage.
Then they tackled what would be called the Tight Spot.
It seemed impenetrable.
But one of the team had a knack for narrow places
Pat Crowther a computer programmer and mother of two.
Well, it never occurred to anyone to try to go through that place.
It was a crazy place to even think that you could get your body into.
The 'Tight Sport was a very tiny,
vertical crevice out the bottom of a small indentation in the floor.
And if you just casually looked down into the hole and saw that crack,
you would say no one could possibly fit in there.
Somehow Crowther squirmed through.
Six weeks later,
miles beyond where anyone had gone before,
a chilling but significant discovery was made.
In a mud bank were the initials P.H.,
scratched there by Pete Hanson, a long-dead tour guide.
He could have come here only from the Mammoth Cave side.
Carpenter Richard Zopf was in the group
and recalls the impact of the discovery.
We had the feeling that we had found
...the passage that was going to take us into Mammoth Cave,
but we hadn't done it.
We seen virtually a mile of passage
but we didn't know exactly where it went.
And we plugged along and we plodded along
and we surveyed and we surveyed and we surveyed.
Ten days later the group tried again,
reaching what they now called Hanson's Lost River in nine hours.
Excitement and exhaustion dominated the thoughts of leader John Wilcox.
The worst thing we feared was that the passage would descent
so that the water would come clear to the ceiling,
and it sure looked like that was what was happening.
The water was getting deeper and deeper
and the ceiling was coming down.
We're getting bent over,
scrunching our backs up against the ceiling,
trying to keep from getting our chests wet.
And it was getting so wet that I told the rest of the party to wait here...
I'm going to look ahead a little bit.
Because I know if I get completely wet
I can get out of the cave, but I wasn't sure everybody else could
And just go as far as I can and trying very carefully
not to get my chest wet and not to put my light out and so forth.
I don't have a good sense of the time
but John only went a few feet, went ahead for 30 seconds.
And then there was a pause and it's like:
What's happening, John?
And John says:
You know the passage is opening up!
And, well, you know: Should we come ahead? '
From that low point the passage just immediately opens
into the huge Echo River passage...
and eventually my eyes adjusted enough
I could begin to see a wall clear across the passage,
a hundred feet away perhaps.
And there was a bright, shining,
horizontal line along the wall,
which is something you don't see in a cave.
You don't see any straight lines.
And it had these vertical lines underneath
and I realized that was a handrail.
We had come out on a tourist trail!
All of sudden John shouted: I see a tourist trail!
And those words just electrified the party.
It was kind of like someone yelling Fire! In a theater.
Everybody just surged forward...
...and we realized that we had made the connection.
Achieving the dream of decades,
they had connected two great subterranean systems.
Today, it is a cave with 340 miles of passageways.
It's one of these, you know,
complete victories that you don't often achieve in life.
Usually things are shades of gray in your professional work
or your personal relations with other people or whatever.
In climbing a mountain, sometimes you have a clear-cut victory
Either you reached the top or you didn't.
And this was one clear-cut victory in my life where,
by golly, we went in the Flint Ridge side
and we came out the Mammoth Cave side
It was a strange and lonely victory.
After a grim struggle in the dark, subterranean river,
they emerged in Mammoth Cave at one in the morning.
Not even a watchman was there to greet them
as they trudged into one of the most famous
tourist landmarks underground the Snowball Dining Room.
And they would complete their historic trek
with sublime ease riding to the surface in an elevator.
There was no fanfare, no waiting reporters.
But they were still overjoyed.
Like all cavers, in victory or defeat,
they were used to being on their own.
Beneath the New Mexican desert,
the National Geographic expedition to Lechuguilla
Begins its second week underground.
The cave's beauty is now legendary,
but there is more to discover here.
High on a hill deep within the heart of the cave, a mystery unfolds.
Sulfur is prevalent here and in other regions of the cave.
And tiny bacteria are found in these deposits along
with fungi that feed on them.
In turn, the bacteria may feed on the sulfur,
thriving in eternal darkness.
Evidence indicates an unusual genesis for Lechuguilla.
As hydrogen sulfide rose from below,
it mixed with oxygen in water or air, forming sulfuric acid.
This potent chemistry gradually ate through the limestone,
creating the cave from the bottom up.
Lechuguilla's vulnerability to human impact
may preclude it from ever becoming a public show cave.
A profound respect for the cave is shared by most cavers
and severely enforced.
Special shoes are worn for traversing formations where boots
may mar exquisite flowstone.
Stalagmites of calcite line the shores of the Pearlsian Gulf,
so called because of the thousands of pearl-like formations found here.
Looking like fried eggs,
this kind of cave pearl is built up from calcite in the water.
Another variety of cave pearl forms when a single grain of sand
becomes coated with calcite.
Over time the relentless dripping of water swivels the grain
and the coating becomes thicker,
like the creation of a pearl in an oyster.
Lake Castrovalva guards a remote corner of the cave.
The only way across is to swim.
But the conservation creed demands that no dirty clothing soil its purity
The air and water temperatures are the same year round 68 degrees.
Intricate stone formations border the edge of the lake,
slowly deposited by waters rich in calcite.
For eons these exotic shores have been still and silent
calm until now.
Light on the station.
The primary function of any expedition is to explore and survey the cave
to produce a detailed map.
Keeping accurate records is virtually a religion for modern cavers.
Two thirty-nine, point five.
It's what separates them from earlier, less responsible explorers underground
Plus four.
Finding something new is the first great thrill of caving.
The second comes later finding the way out.
Each night the latest survey date are typed into the computer
to produce an updated map.
The ancient skeleton of a ring-tailed cat.
Kiym Cunningham examines one of the riddles of Lechuguilla.
It's a mystery. I mean, altogether it's a mystery how he got down here.
We're a thousand feet below the surface.
Many vertical pits and long passages to get here.
So, he was a heck of a caver!
He evidently died right on the margin of this old pool system here,
so I would imagine possibly he was alive when he was down here,
came to the pool to drink.
Only source of water he could find.
And maybe the mineral content was very high.
It was not a good pool to drink from and that may have been what killed him
The amount of carbon dioxide in the cave atmosphere is measured.
If the level down here is the same as on the surface,
it could indicate other openings yet to be discovered.
Somewhere within the cave's vast system
the air is being disturbed. There is noticeable movement.
Still, Lechuguilla refuses to yield its secrets easily.
It remains alien and strangely beautiful,
a landscape from another world.
Lechugulla's wonder is a fragile thing
What man can discover, he can easily destroy.
Most of us may never see these enchanting caverns
and others that lie still undiscovered.
But perhaps it will be enough to know that they are there.
Lechuguilla now consists of almost 60 miles
of breathtaking passageways.
New discoveries continue and there is no end in sight.