What's New

15-Jan-01
NPS Announces Lechuguilla to open this year
In an email message sent to active Lechuguilla cavers, park Cave Specialist Dale Pate announced that the new culvert had been completed, and that exploration would resume this year. The recipients of this year’s permits has not yet been announced, and trips have been delayed into the cave due to outstanding issues with the airlock.

5-May-00
    NPS Preparing to Install New Gate in Lechuguilla Cave
For the last several years, Park officials have been concerned over the large air exchange at the entrance of Lechuguilla Cave. Ever since the 1986 breakthrough, the airflow in and out of the cave has been enhanced, causing formations, pools, and flowstone to dry out with repeated exposure to the dry desert air.
    In January of this year, the Park closed Lechuguilla Cave to all travel and began excavating the 14-year-old steel culvert that has served as access to the cave. Local grottos have provided volunteer manpower to assist NPS personnel. The plan is to replace the aging entrance gate with a new airlock system that will minimize airflow through the entrance.
    In mid-April assistant cave specialist Stan Allison announced that the excavation has been completed and the culvert removed. A new all-plastic culvert and airlock chamber is scheduled to arrive in August. At that time a haul system will be set up to lower the new culvert and welding equipment, and then to raise the old culvert and remove it from the cave. Installation of the new access system will be followed by backfilling the now-exposed entrance passage and sealing it with a concrete and gravel mix.
    Park officials acknowledge that they still have a lot of work to do, but the result will be improved protection of the fragile microclimate in Lechuguilla Cave. Many cavers expect the repairs to continue into the fall, with exploration resuming next year.




	15-Mar-00 Paul Burger, hydrologist at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, has just released his summary of all the science that’s been going on at Lechuguilla over the last year. Here’s his summary; if you want to read the whole article, click on the link below: There is a great deal of active research going on in the backcountry caves of Carlsbad Caverns National Park, especially in Lechuguilla Cave. This report is intended to update cave scientists, cave surveyors, and the interested public on what has been going on in the past year and to provide some very preliminary results of these studies. All of these reports have been compiled from trip reports and communication with the investigators. Some of the research being conducted in Lechuguilla has been reported at conferences this year and can be found in the references listed at the end of this report. If any researchers have conducted trips or presented papers not shown below, please let me know. There are some long-term projects that continued this year, including Harvey DuChene's mineral inventory, Diana Northup's study of human impacts on cave microbes, and Penny Boston's study of potential urine dump remediation. New studies that began this year include a study of life in extreme environments headed by Diana Northup and Penny , a study that could provide analogs to Martian life by Mike Spilde, and a water tracing study by Jake Turin. The park also instituted a new system for tracking the science stations in the cave. A simple form has been developed that ties the science locations into survey stations and records what type of sample was taken. Part of the form includes spaces to keep track of equipment being left in the cave. Hopefully, this will allow the park and the researchers to keep better track of experiments in the cave. 1999 Lechuguilla Cave Science Summary



	17-Nov-99 In a letter to expedition trip leaders, Superintendent Frank Deckert announced more than 206 volunteers had donated 15,204 recorded hours to Carlsbad Caverns National Park in 1999. This is the equivalent of an additional 7 full-time employees. In Carlsbad Cavern, approximately 1.6 miles of passage was resurveyed, while in Lechuguilla Cave over 6.4 miles of new passage was added. One of the noteworthy discoveries in Lechuguilla was Zanzibar, and area near the end of the Western Borehole that may provide a route around the current termination of the borehole at the Oasis. The official length of Lechuguilla Cave is 105.7 miles.

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