Explore New Mexico's Karst Country

“Karst covers 25 percent of the country,” he continues. “About 700 million people worldwide depend on karst groundwater as their water supply, but most people have never heard of it.” That’s a bit of a problem, Veni says. While the world’s largest springs and aquifers come from karst, this water supply is also incredibly vulnerable to contamination. “Protecting the source area is critical.”

First, we need to know it is there. I’ve been hearing about karst for several years, so I’m dedicating a few days to explore New Mexico’s best examples. On a late-summer day, I aim my car toward a landscape that I usually just drive past, this time hoping to discover the natural wonders of southeastern New Mexico.

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The karst spring that produces the main natural attraction in Santa Rosa, the 30-foot-wide and 80-foot-deep cenote known as the Blue Hole, releases water at an impressive 3,000 gallons per minute. Its crystal-clear water attracts scuba divers from around the world. But Blue Hole is only one of the many karst formations in the Santa Rosa Basin.

Cenotes, springs, and ciénegas dot city and private land here, and few of them are open to public access. Larry Stevens, a biologist who studies spring ecosystems in the Southwest, contends that the region could be a national monument. The alkaline water of the formations attracts migrating birds, breeds unique microbacterial life and rare flora, and harbors aquatic invertebrates and fish species. “It’s a place like none other on earth,” says Stevens.

After cooling off in the water, I head south from Santa Rosa on US 84, following the Pecos River toward Roswell. Huge wind turbines dot escarpments in the distance while old livestock windmills spin and spin, striving to draw water. Long trains parallel the highway, inviting a race. The big, puffy white clouds of late summer create shadows on land, disrupted only by long stretches of sagging fences.

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As I drop into the Roswell Artesian Basin, karst reveals itself again. An escarpment of impenetrable rock on the eastern side of the Pecos River Valley forces water from the underlying San Andres aquifer to the surface. Traces of sulfur and salt linger in the air from the gypsum-laced water. The area has been designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance for the rare species it holds and the thousands of migratory birds that depend on it. The Ramsar site includes Bottomless Lakes State Park, to the south of US 380, and Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge, to the north.

A drive into Bottomless Lakes State Park reveals nine cenotes, deep lakes that fill from the bottom up by springs. Two-inch-long desert fish, barking frogs, tiny snails, and shrimp-like creatures call these waters home. At the park’s only developed lake, Lea Lake, a grandmother tries to command the six kids in her charge as they dig in the sand and splash around in the water. A trio of young friends kayak on the calm water. Its dark depths have inspired myths of strange creatures guarding an endless bottom. A spring that fills Lea Lake flows out into a ciénega, much like at Blue Hole, in Santa Rosa.

I cross the wetlands on a boardwalk that leads to three bird-blinds overlooking ponds lined with cattails. A family sits peering over the edge of the boardwalk, looking for the Pecos pupfish and other desert fishes.

Later, I arrive at Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge’s modern visitors’ center. “Summer is the best time to see the dragonflies,” says Merideth Hildreth, president of the Friends of Bitter Lake. “That’s what inspired me to become involved in the refuge.” Over 90 species of dragonflies and damselflies have been identified here—the richest diversity of these fancy fliers in the country.

In August, not only dragonflies buzz the water-filled flats. A least tern, a seabird recently removed from the Endangered Species List, has been nesting, along with snowy plovers that feed in the mudflats in a remote sector of the refuge. Each October, thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese also arrive at the refuge, lured by the open water to make a refueling stop on their migratory journey to winter grounds farther south.

After a turn around the six-mile wildlife-watching loop, I head south, following the path of the Pecos River again to New Mexico’s showiest karst area: Carlsbad Caverns. Its subterranean depths and eroded marvels have earned it national park status, but Veni gives me a tip on where to find the entrance to the second-largest gypsum cave in New Mexico, so I skip the park and the crowds and head to the lesser-known karstic wonder.

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In an empty dispersed camping area, I stand before three of the 18 cave entrances in the Chosa Draw area. One is flooded. A rattlesnake guards the second. I choose door number three. The cave is tall enough for me to stand up in most places, and not much wider than my outstretched arms. White gypsum powder dusts the floors and piles up in nooks in the walls. Underneath the dust, marble-like white gypsum sparkles in my headlamp’s beam.

I walk some distance into the dark, guano-scented cave. A bat flies from its perch above, an albino cricket crawls on the walls. I’m the only other being I can detect in the cave. These caves go on for more than four miles underground, with stretches that require crawling, swimming, and squeezing. As a novice caver, alone and mindful of the warning signs at the entrance about potential flash flooding, I don’t venture too far. I peer into the darkness, past where my light reaches, and decide to return another day, with company.