There is so much to see and do at this National Monument that you'd definitely want to stay for more than a full day if you want to experience it all. From the beautiful hikes to the high quality visitor's centers to the awesome lava tubes, El Malpais provided a unique experience for our family.
An obvious first stop upon arriving in Grants is to go to the Northwest New Mexico Visitor Center. If you are coming from I-40, just take Exit 85 and the Visitor Center is conveniently located on the southwest side of the highway. This Visitor's Center has an absolutely stunning view out the large windows. Several informative room and booths are available including a video room where you can get a ranger to start a documentary-type movie. Depending on which you pick, this will give you information about culture of the area and about the geologic history of how the lava tubes and volcanoes formed. There are also plenty of fun items to purchase at the gift shop. Mostly, though, I would recommend talking to the Ranger at the desk about your trip and what interests you. They have maps and plenty of handouts to give you with hiking and caving information. If you plan on doing any sort of caving during the trip, it is absolutely required to get a caving permit with one of the Rangers. He will discuss safety requirements for both you and the bats (they can help you clean your equipment to help prevent white nose syndrome of the bats). If you wish to go camping in the National Monument lands, you may discuss this with the Ranger as well. Finally, all this information and the permits are available at two other areas if you want to skip over the Visitor Center. These locations are the El Malpais Information Center and the El Malpais Rnager Station (click on the "maps" option at the top of this page to view these areas).
Unfortunately, we arrived in Grants right as a summer afternoon lightning and rainstorm began. We were kindly told at the Visitor's Center to avoid being outside if lightning begins as the rocks contain iron which may be more likely to conduct lightning. This storm subsided eventually, giving us enough time to get in a hike at the El Calderon Area before sunset (sunrise to sunset are the Park hours and you cannot park at the Park overnight). This was a beautiful 2-3 mile hike which passed by many areas including the Double Sinks Caves (very spacious sink holes surrounding either side of the path), the Bat and Xenolith Caves, and El Calderon Cinder Cone.
These are the Double Sinks Caves
During this summer the Park has a special "Bat OutFlight Program" where you can meet with a Park Ranger at the El Calderon Trailhead at 7:30pm on Saturdays. Sadly, we didn't get to do this program this time, but we plan on returning in the future to do it and to do some more caving (we will update when we do)! With this program, the ranger will tell information about bats and you may be lucky enough to see thousands of bats leave this cave to feed for the night. Some information we learned about bats are that they are Earth's only flying mammals and a nursing mother can eat more than her body weight in insects every night. Even just the fact that bats use echolocation makes them quite cool, so my husband bought a pretty awesome t-shirt at the gift shop to commemorate them.
This is cool, right?!
We came back the next day and went caving in Junction Cave. This is the cave with the most moderate difficulty of all the caves at El Malpais. When you are caving, it is recommended to have the following gear:
- Helmets
- Knee Pads
- Gloves
- Water
- At least 3 working flashlights per person
- Spare batteries
We texted a person who cares to let her know that we were about to enter a cave and weWe told her that we would text again when we exited. Upon entering the cave, we came across a metal gate which we think is present to keep out bears. This gate appears to have been installed in 2015. There is one small area where you are able to crawl through. After this point, it begins to be extremely dark.
Lava tubes are created when lava rushes underground. The edges of the tunnel cool faster than the middle, which forms the outside of a tube. As subsequent flows come, other layers are added to the tunnel shell kind of like forming an onion from the outside in. This geology is very apparent in the Junction Cave. We very shortly reached the end of the cave. Looking at the cave map now, it appears that this cave is less than 1000 feet long.
We shut off all of our lights and we sat in complete darkness for several minutes. The weirdest phenomenon occurred for me. It was as if my mind couldn't believe I was sitting in absolute darkness. In my peripheral vision, my eyes tried to create light where there was none. As I turned my head, that area would be completely dark. But then my peripheral vision would create a new lighted rock to the side again. As long as we kept it dark, these lighted rocks just outside my view never ceased to exist. It seems like there is some sort of metaphor that can be drawn from this instance. Like how the light inside us never ceases. Comment below if you can think of something better!
We exited the cave about 1 hour after entering it and returned back to the heat of the day. We very much enjoyed this free stop in our trip. There are many more caves which we didn't have time to explore this time and so we look forward to visiting again in the future!!
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