Ubertrip, Day 3:
We had to get up early in order to get to Carlsbad Cavern by 9:00am for our private tour. We met Tom "Boomer" Bemis, got our helmets, signed the permit, and off we went. The tour of Lower Cave was the deluxe version, much better than the trip I took earlier this year.
We got to go down to the bottom of the National Geographic Expedition ladder, which you can see from the Big Room. Also, insead of the little crawl after the Colonel Boles formation, we took the scenic route through a large collection of tunnels that run all the way to underneath the Mabel Room. There was lots of boneyard and aragonite, I loved it.
At one point, we sat in complete darkness while Boomer told stories about the Hodag (sp?). Lukas especially loved this. After the tour was done, we had lunch in the underground cafeteria, including the world's largest chef salads.
Having filled up on olives and lettuce, we returned to the surface and went into the cave through the natural entrance. The cave swallows were out in force. The natural entrance route is a great trail. The rooms just gets larger and larger and the decorations more and more impressive. There was no sign of the collapse that occurred on Monday.
Reaching the Big Room, we made our way around. At the top of the cross, we stopped for a rest on the rows of stone benches there. Aaron and I fell asleep. All this hiking and climbing is exhausting.
After leaving the cavern, we had several hours to waste before the bat flight, so we drove down to Rattlesnake Springs. The springs themselves are a bit of a let-down, but the irrigation canal proved entertaining... Aaron and I built a dam and then releasted the water which flowed down the canal in a big soliton. Probably not the highlight of the trip, but it kept us occupied for a couple hours. Oh, and also, we spent about 20 minutes messing with a colony of bull ants, trying to get the big warrior ants to come out. Didn't work.
The bat flight was the best I had seen yet. Very dense.
When we returned to Carlsbad, Lukas and Allana again fell asleep immediately. Aaron and I waited for Nichol to arrive. When she did, the three of us went swimming. A great way to relax after a day of hiking.
Ubertrip, Day 4:
White Sands National Monument only takes reservations for their back-country camping day-of, and it's at least a four hour drive from Carlsbad, so we got up really early to drive over and make our reservations.
With Nichol having joined us, and having brought my rental car, we were now a two vehicle caravan. We used Lukas' two-way radios to tell jokes back and forth between the cars and do Star Wars impressions.
Just like last year's trip, it turned out that hardly anyone had made reservations for the campsites at White Sands. There was only one site taken when we arrived. I grabbed the site farthest away from the road (about one half mile). We played around on the dunes for awhile, but the 100+ F heat was unbearable, so we went back to Alamogordo. We bought supplies (including 8 gallons of water) and had lunch. Then we were stuck with nothing to do until the heat subsided.
We went to the movie theater, but we the next showings weren't until dinnertime, so it wasn't worth it. Instead, we drove up to the space museum and investigated the IMAX theater there. We had just missed the space shuttle one, which I have seen before but I really really like it, so we had to settle for the one about wildfires. In the introduction, they made a point of saying that this was the smallest IMAX theater in the world. And the seats proved it. Aaron, Nichol, and I, all over six feet tall, were chewing on our knees the whole time.
The movie was a little over-sensational, and there was a lot of nervous laughter when they brought up controlled burns, considering the recent tragedy in Los Alamos. But overall, I enjoyed it.
Finally, it was cool enough to return to the dunes. We hiked back to our campsite, carrying a gallon of water each. Setting up the tents was 10,000x easier this year because of the lack of wind. In the time between when we got our camp set up and when the sun set, Lukas and Allana went on a long hike while Aaron, Nichol and I engaged in a healthy dose of dune jumping.
The windward side of the dunes are not steep at all and are packed hard by the wind. The leeward side, however, is very steep and composed mostly of very soft powder. By running up the windward side and then jumping off the ridge, the leeward slope drops away beneath you and you can quickly find yourself about 15 feet above the surface. The sand is so fine and the slope so steep that the landings are painless. The only difficult part is getting back up the slope to jump again. Now that's a workout!
When the sun began to set, we grabbed our cameras and sat on the dune to watch it happen. A very thin crescent moon appeared just above the mountains and the clouds were neon pink and orange.
Despite a small mesquito problem, we stayed on top of the dune to watch the stars come out and the fireworks over Alamogordo.
Ubertrip Day 5:
Aaron and I woke up just in time to see the sun rise.
It was very cold in the early morning, but as soon as the sun began to shine on us it warmed up quickly.
And without further delay, we were dune jumping again. This time, everyone got involved. We found a steeper dune and Aaron achieved a new distance record of at least 35 feet. Lukas even attempted diving head first. I thought he was going to kill himself, but he escaped unscathed.
I sustained one minor injury on my first jump. The dune was still unmarred by foot prints, so it had a thin hard crust on it which had to be broken up in order for the landings to really be soft. I landed on my ass and slid down the slope, cutting a path through the hard crust like and ice-breaker ship in the arctic sea. Now I have a huge raspberry on the back of my upper thigh, which took the brunt of the impact. After that jump, the crusty bit was mashed up enough to not be a problem.
Getting up at 5:45am makes the morning seem to last forever. We continued jumping until we were all exhausted and the air started to get prohibitively hot.
The dune jumping was so fun that it was hard to get ourselves to pack up and leave, but we were getting hungry and sick of eating nothing but granola bars and apples.
So, the tents came down, we hiked back to the cars, and drove back to civilization for a great breakfast at Ramona's. They served a "breakfast buritto" but it paled in comparison to the fine work of art that Chili Works offers. It lacked hash browns and chili, making it just eggs and bacon in a tortilla. ...weak...
Now, the plan was for us to drive up to the VLA and meet there.
But I screwed it up really bad. Aaron was driving my rental, and I fell asleep in the back seet without telling him where the next turn was. Lukas was driving very fast and was out of site when he made the turn onto 308. They woke me up when 54 ran into 285, approximately 100 miles after our turn. We decided to still go to the VLA, but by a very circuitious route. We wasted about 3 hours by driving the scenic route on highway 60.
By the time we got to the VLA, Lukas and Allana had alreay left. They were trying to get to Flagstaff by nightfall. So our parting was a bit anticlimatic. The last things we said to each other was over the radios and was something like, "You're clear to pass that guy, there's no one in the other lane for at least a mile." I still have Lukas' radio and discman, he has my map of Carlsbad Caverns. Doh.
We saw that Lukas and Allana had signed in at the visitor's center of the VLA, but they were long gone.
After our breif stop at the VLA, we drove on to Santa Fe and ate at Gabriel's, then it was to the White Rock Overlook to watch the stars and the Santa Fe fireworks.
We missed the fireworks, but the stars were great. We saw multiple meteorites and a few satellites. Being thouroughly exhausted, we retired to my apartment for the night.
Ubertrip Day 6:
Everyone was pretty tired, and Aaron and Nichol's planes left from Albuquerque at 4:30pm, so we didn't do a lot. We drove around and looked at the caldera and the soda dam, then went to the Overlook again and did a little bit of hiking. I showed Aaron the great climbing cliffs there.
We did, however, get to eat at Chili Works. And that's always a good thing.
We drove down to Albuquerque and parted on our separate ways.
Despite a number of things going wrong and some people not being able to make it, this was a fantastic experience. I think everyone had a great time and I'm definitely going to plan something like this again next year. Not sure how I can improve on this one tho...
