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Carlsbad, New Mexico

Everywhere I look I see something of interest. Unfortunately, lighting is frequently insufficient to allow for good pictures, and it is only in a few instances that I manage to squeak out pictures worth posting. For every picture you see in this write-up, there are 5 that I had to discard.

VIDEO: Here's a 360-degree horizontal pan video (3.5 MB) of the Big Room. As you can see, it's so dark in the cave that only a grainy video is possible. Here's another video (2.0 MB), this one pans upward to the ceiling. The ceiling here must be more than 100 feet high.

The first two pictures show a formation that is coming close to forming a pillar. The stalactite (Sword of Damocles) above is reaching downward to the stalagmite below. Such is the life of many of the formations here, reaching in both directions in the hopes of making a connection someday. The third and forth show some nice soda straw formations.

VIDEO: Here's another horizontal pan video (2.8 MB).

Here's the Hall of Giants. These three big guys easy steal the show here in this nook of the Big Room.

VIDEO: Here's a great video (2.2 MB) of the big guys. Here's a horizontal pan video (4.0 MB) of the cavern.

Apparently I'm in Fairyland. Pictures without a flash serve up nothing but black, so I buckle under and use a flash. The result is rather lousy. Now you know why I don't use a flash, the colors always bleach out, causing the formation to look very unnatural.