Exploration of Fort Stanton Cave continues to yield captivating discoveries

Aug. 22—Learn more

To find out more information about caving and local organizations near you, visit the National Speleological Society website at caves.org.

Nearby caving groups include Pajarito Grotto (pajaritogrotto.org) in Los Alamos and Sandia Grotto (sandiagrotto.org) in Albuquerque.

To virtually explore Fort Stanton Cave, download the free game Caver Quest at fscsp.org/CQ6.

Garrett Jorgensen emerges from the earth to the eagerly awaiting eyes and ears of members of a close-knit community of cavers who crave to see the images and hear the stories of what he and his team experienced at the edge of exploration.

The Edgewood resident spent his formative teenage years developing a passion for caving under the tutelage of longtime enthusiasts with the Fort Stanton Cave Study Project, a nonprofit that's been dedicated to the exploration, study and conservation of the cave for more than 55 years. Today, the 28-year-old is among a select group of cavers who have the skill and opportunity to see what no human has laid eyes on before while advancing the known frontier of one of the world's most unique caves.

Jorgensen is what FSCSP members classify as a "strong and light" caver who spends dozens of hours on single expeditions within the Lincoln County cave system to survey previously unexplored passages that are pushing beyond 12 miles from the cave's entrance with no end in sight.

The excitement of discovery fuels the strong and light teams, typically made up of four people, as they encounter brilliant stalactites and stalagmites, hollow soda straw formations, round cave pearls, and the very rare and colorful cave velvet flowstone formations that shimmer under the light of cavers' headlamps.

Currently at 44 1/2 surveyed miles, the cave complex registers as the ninth-longest in the country — longer than Carlsbad Caverns — and continues to offer up captivating discoveries from its remote reaches.

"In a way, it gives it this sort of raw wonder that maybe this is what explorers back hundreds of years ago felt like, where your teammates and what you have on you is all you've got," Jorgensen said. "It's an amazing feeling in that sense, the remoteness, but it's something to take seriously as well because an accident back there would be an absolute nightmare.

"We're definitely careful, it's something to respect, but it's an incredible feeling being out there and making new discoveries, he said.

A record-setting formation dubbed Snowy River is the remarkable signature of the cave system and ushers cavers into the unknown. The stream bed of white calcite stretches for more than 12 linear miles and is recognized as the largest continuous cave formation in the world.

Cavers must follow proper protocol put in place by the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the Fort Stanton-Snowy River National Conservation Area, to preserve the pristine formation that varies from seven inches to a few millimeters thick.

Those who go onto the Snowy River are required to take along an extra set of clean clothes and non-marking shoes to change into and out of when passing between mud or dirt sections and the white formation.

John Lyles, an electrical engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory and longtime caver, has been on strong and light teams that have been making trips onto Snowy River since 2003, two years after it was found. He said its discovery was a monumental moment for the cave and those who explore it.

"For the old-timers, it was originally a 7- 1/2 mile cave, and they had no idea all this was going to happen, but they did know there was this elusive air blowing through cracks in the main cave," said Lyles, 65, an FSCSP board member. "They knew there had to be more, but they didn't know how to get to it until they dug into Snowy River in 2001. When they did that, it was like all these dreams these guys had became truth."

Lyles, Jorgensen and other cavers who have surveyed Snowy River have found and explored passages that branch off of the main route, particularly in the southern portion of the cave system.

Like with Snowy River, cavers have yet to find the end of some of these passages. This leads many to believe there's much more than the 44 1/2 miles of cave that have been mapped so far.

Currently, Fort Stanton Cave is the second-longest cave in New Mexico, though well behind Lechuguilla Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Lechuguilla, which many of the cavers who frequent Fort Stanton Cave also explore, is the eighth-longest cave system in the world at 150 miles mapped so far.

While there are parts of Fort Stanton Cave that require long sections of crawling through tight passages or over areas of breakdown, Jorgenson said a unique and beneficial aspect is that it can be traversed much more quickly than other large cave systems.

Experienced teams familiar with the cave can reach the southern frontier, more than 12 miles from the entrance and 500-plus feet below ground, in about nine hours. This is because about 85 percent of the distance can be covered by walking, Jorgensen said. Going the same distance in most cave complexes could commonly takes multiple days, he said.

The cavers found a water source in 2014 they've called Finger Lake, which is a pool of drinkable water about the size of a home office and 6 to 8 inches deep. It's located approximately halfway between the beginning of Snowy River and the current frontier of the passage and allows cavers to reduce the amount of drinking water they have to carry into the cave. They've also established a camp that helps support longer journeys about 10 miles in at the southern end at a place they call Midnight Junction.

But exploring Snowy River has been touch-and-go in the past decade.

The passage is prone to flooding and the waters that originate from a still-unknown source often take a long time to recede.

The fragile formation can break under pressure when it's too wet, so cavers aren't allowed to be on it unless conditions are dry. This has considerably slowed the progress teams have been able to make. Lyles said the passage flooded in 2014 and kept cavers off of Snowy River for four years.

"We didn't know if we'd ever see it again," he said. "It was really elusive. It was almost like a dream. We were in there and now it's gone, and we didn't know if we'd see it again."

Cavers were able to return to Snowy River in 2018, but it flooded again in 2020. They got back to the farthest reaches for the first time since then this May, with teams making three 40-hour trips in the span of two weeks.

On one of the latest trips, Jorgensen found the skull of what is believed to be an extinct llama. Several years ago, Lyles and his team also found a calcified skeleton of a ringtail cat about 7 miles from the cave entrance.

"We're very far under the surface at this point," Jorgensen said, "but there were probably streams, maybe during the last glacial period, that were open and washing stuff in."

Much of the evidence of life in the cave is significantly smaller.

Microbiologists search for new microbe species that have developed in the unique cave environments that are totally different from anything found on the surface. Members of the cave study project regularly collect samples for independent researchers to test and study as part of a volunteer assistance agreement they have with the BLM.

The BLM permits a limited number of entries into the cave annually. The FSCSP and other organizations submit project proposals, and the BLM selects who gets to use the entries by choosing the top proposals for particular fields of study.

Starting in 2013, only 120 entries were allowed in each year. This was to help monitor and manage who entered the cave to prevent the spread of a bat disease known as white-nose syndrome from getting into the cave system.

The disease, which has killed millions of bats in North America, is caused by a fungus that can be spread through cavers' gear.

Two years ago, the BLM moved to a system of having dedicated cave gear for those who enter the cave so it doesn't go to other cave systems where it could pick up the deadly fungus.

, BLM cave specialist with the agency's Roswell Field Office, said this adjustment has allowed the number of entries to increase to 175 last year, 275 this year and 350 next year.

In addition to FSCSP members, who have typically gotten about half the annual entries, Peterson said researchers from institutions including New Mexico's public universities, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA also receive entries and commonly work in collaboration with FSCSP teams.

The FSCSP consists of more than 100 members. Many have extensive science and technology backgrounds, working for places such as LANL or Sandia National Laboratories, and apply their knowledge base to projects within the cave.

Lyles is using his electrical engineering experience to install a digital network of sensors that can detect the water levels on Snowy River so interested parties will be able to track when the passage is flooded and when it's passable. Currently, it takes a trip to Snowy River to confirm the status visually.

Retired Sandia Labs nuclear engineer Ron Lipinski, 73, has spent years working on a project to create a virtual 3D rendering of the cave through the use of do-it-yourself lidar devices, originally designed by the late caver and engineer Bob Buecher, that are lightweight and inexpensive.

Lipinski used the data and maps to create a 3D mesh in Blender software, then ported it into the Unity game engine and used photographs to plaster on the walls of the mesh model to make the cave look realistic. His video game, called Caver Quest, allows users to control an avatar to explore an 8-mile section of Fort Stanton Cave while learning facts and history along the way.

"Part of the reason that I developed the Caver Quest program was so that people who are unable to get onto Snowy River can have that experience," Lipinski said. "It allows them to feel and sense what it's like to walk down such a pristine passage without having to impact the cave by going into it, and without having to worry about being physically fit enough to be able to get that far in."

This fall, Caver Quest will be incorporated into an educational outreach pilot program for seventh graders at Carrizozo, Capitan, Ruidoso and Mescalero Apache schools.

The BLM teamed with the Public Lands Interpretive Association to offer a learning program called Caver Quest Academy that includes in-classroom sessions with a cave expert, a homework aspect revolving around a modified version of the Caver Quest game and a visit to Fort Stanton Cave in September.

Peterson said about 96 students will have the opportunity to spend two hours in the cave, going about quarter-mile in, to cap off the program.

The program is meant to encourage learning and success in science and technology through the interactive experience.

One of FSCSP's youngest members, Jorgensen is now a lead field geologist with a small geophysical consulting firm. He said his time with the group as a teen played a large role in shaping his future and pursuing a career field where he can make a living doing something he loves.

"A lot of [FSCSP members] are like parents in a way; I've learned tremendous amounts from them," Jorgensen said. "You're a little lost at that age, like a lot of people are in their teens. A lot of them helped me kind of get on a good path by inspiring me and sharing this passion with me.

"One thing that I've always appreciated is even when I first joined, they never talked to me as if I was a kid. They talked to me as a peer, like I was one of them, and really made me feel included. I've learned a ton from them and it's been quite a privilege."