Exploring Coronado Caves

Instead, I became a guy who writes stories for Currents, while occasionally turning into something of a Walter Mitty, tilting lances at windmills and still believing there’s leprechaun’s gold at the end of every rainbow.

But today, my Walter Mittyness has taken me to a trailhead with 22 others wearing metal cave helmets, where National Park Ranger Callie Calpenor is guiding us on a two-hour hike — hopefully a far cry from the ill-fated voyage Gilligan took on the S.S.Minnow — on an uphill trail  to explore the Coronado Cave in the 5,000-acre Coronado National Memorial.

As popular as the hike is, Ranger Callie told me one of the groups she recently took found the half-mile hike that rises from 5,230 feet to 5,700 feet in elevation a bit daunting and had to turn back after 20 minutes.

But this group looks like it could scale the North Face of Mt. Everest in sandals, and we’ve all made sure our big boys' and girls’ boots are laced tight and we’re up for the challenge. I’ve already had a banana, four granola bars and an energy drink as if I’m about to rappel the Seven Summits, and I’m raring to go.

After tripping over a tree root eight steps from a picnic table at the start of the trailhead, I realize that a Walter Mitty armchair explorer may be all that I'm cut out for.

I'm already wondering when Ranger Callie — who’s leading us past agaves, manzanitas, yuccas, desert spoons and spectacular limestone outcroppings through the Montezuma Watershed and telling us what the region looked like 250 million years ago — will stop for our first break before we get to the 600-foot-long limestone cavern in the south slope of Montezuma Peak.

Higher and higher we go into the Montezuma Caldera, past stunning views of the San Pedro River Valley, our cave helmets, headlamps and gloves swinging from our daypacks as Ranger Callie points out the formation of “cherts” — petrified remains of silica — embedded in limestone rocks as we approach the mouth of the cave.

And suddenly there it is — one of those “wow” moments — an entry into a massive, vertical stockpile of boulders upon boulders, where we slowly descend using our gloved hands and backsides into one of several chambers of an undeveloped, living cave that’s 70-feet wide with 20-foot-high ceilings in some places with a 68-degree temperature year-round. 

Also called Montezuma’s Treasure Vault and Geronimo’s Cave, legend has it that the U.S. Cavalry chased Geronimo and his warriors into the cave, waited for him to come out and surrender, only to be outsmarted by the Apache Chief, who found an opening in the back of the cave and escaped. Our headlamps spot small crawl spaces here and there along with roof like limestone cropping, and as we move into the back chambers of the cave, we confront ghostly looking living stalagmites and stalactites as well as some historic graffiti on the chamber ceilings.