Arizona's Kartchner Caverns | Xanadu under the desert

BENSON, Ariz. — I'm seeing bacon. Thick, red-and-tan, meaty strips of bacon.

And ice cream. Generous mounds of butter-pecan ice cream.

And taffy. Long strings of caramel-colored taffy.

So I'm thinking: Maybe I should have had lunch before I ventured into this remote cave in Southeast Arizona. Maybe then my mind wouldn't turn each of these fantastic formations into something I'd like to snap off and munch.

But our guide, park ranger Andrea Gaines, says I'm not alone. Cave explorers in general are a hungry sort, and a lot of these features actually are named for food. There's cave bacon up there, popcorn down there and fried eggs over there.

Underground, under cover

If you ever have a spare few hours during a sun-break trip to Tucson, head out to Kartchner Caverns State Park, about 45 minutes southeast of town, and prepare not only to have your appetite teased, but your mind boggled. Consider:

• These caves took about a million years to form, but there's no indication anyone set foot in them until 33 years ago. As a guide book notes, there were human footprints on the moon before there were human footprints in here.

• Gary Tenen and Randy Tufts, the two men who found the caves as college students in 1974, entered them by exploring a hole roughly the size of a regular wire coat hanger.

• After the caves were discovered, their existence was a closely guarded secret for 14 years, until it could be assured they would be protected from overuse, graffiti and litter.

The go-down lowdown

These days, we don't have to squeeze through a tiny hole to gaze on such wonders as the 58-foot-tall column called Kubla Khan, or to see countless collections of white, yellow, tan and red stalactites in a series of underground grottoes.

But we did have to promise not to touch anything, to stay with our group and to enter the caves down a walkway on which we are sprayed by a fine mist. That's to dampen the lint on our clothing and reduce the number of microscopic spores that could fall off us into the caves.

As we walk deeper under the earth, the low, indirect lighting along each section of the path comes on only as we approach, and clicks off again after we pass, minimizing the amount of light given off, because even light can encourage the growth of algae and mold. There's even a slight curb along the pathway to collect any debris we may have tracked in.

All these steps are taken to balance the potentially competing goals of preserving the caves, accommodating research and allowing the public a view.

Slow-growing spears

The park

Kartchner Caverns State Park is about 45 miles southeast of Tucson, Ariz., nine miles south of Interstate 10. In addition to the caves, the park has picnic and camping areas.

The caves

Two tours are offered, each covering a half-mile and lasting 90 minutes. The Rotunda/Throne Room tour is offered year-round. The Big Room tour is offered from mid-October to mid-April and excludes children 6 and under.

Admission charge

Rotunda/Throne Room tour: $18.95 adults, $9.95 ages 7-13, free for children 6 and under.

Big Room tour: $22.95 adults, $12.95 ages 7-13.

Reservation / Information

520-586-CAVE (2283); www.pr.state.az.us/Parks/
parkhtml/kartchner.html

These are "living" caves, Gaines tells us. The geological formations in front of us are continuing to grow, fed by mineral deposits in rainwater that trickles down through cracks in the rocks. But don't expect to see them expand before your eyes: Scientists say the spear-like stalactites grow about an inch every 750 years.

I do the math: That means they've grown about a third of an inch since the United States became a country, less than 3 inches since the time of Christ. But many of them are 6 to 10 feet long, even longer, which means ... oops, my mind is making boggling noises again.

In some areas, the colorful deposits hang like thick pleated drapes. In others, they pile up like stacks of jellyfish. In others, stalactites that have broken from the ceiling are stuck like javelins in the mud below — exactly where they probably have been for centuries, Gaines says.

A different world

Even though cave explorers and construction crews have been here before us, care has always been taken to trod on as little of this ground as possible. Seventy to 80 percent of the surfaces we see have never been walked on by people.

The world inside these caves is vastly different than the desert above. Outside, summer temperatures around 100 are common, but the caves stay at about 68 to 71 degrees year-round. And while the desert is usually dry, getting maybe a dozen inches of rain a year, the air in the caves is quite humid.

Tour groups, limited to 20 visitors, walk past air-tight metal doors as they enter the caves. But even the opening of those doors allows some humidity to escape, so at several points in the cave, small nozzles spray a fine mist into the air.

A smell, then discovery

The dampness of the air in the caves, in fact, was a crucial clue leading to their discovery.

Tenen and Tufts were checking out a sinkhole they'd seen before on a cool November day in 1974 when they noticed a warm, moist breeze that smelled of bat droppings coming from a small opening.

Tracking the source of the breeze, and chipping away rock until they could barely fit through, the two friends made a find beyond any expectation. Though it would take numerous trips to fully explore, the opening led to more than two miles of passageways and underground chambers, some with ceilings up to 100 feet high, with massive columns, fang-like stalactites, pencil-thin formations called soda straws and an almost limitless variety of shapes and colors.

As fantastic as this find was, though, it was also a cause for concern. The area, nines miles off an interstate highway, is relatively accessible. Tenen and Tufts had seen other caves that visitors had trampled — caves with garbage and beer bottles left inside, caves in which centuries-old formations had been broken off as souvenirs.

So it was decided: They would continue to explore the caves, telling as few people as possible, and swearing those people to secrecy. They referred to the caverns with the code name "Xanadu."

Manage and protect

In the patchwork of private and public lands that make up much of the Arizona desert, Tenen and Tufts didn't initially realize the caves were on private property. It wasn't until 1978 that they told the landowners, the Kartchner family, of the find.

Fortunately, James Kartchner, a former science teacher, shared their desire that the caves be protected. For years, the Kartchners considered managing the caves themselves as a research and visitor destination, but they eventually decided that was impractical.

It was decided the best way to both manage and protect these caves was to have the state of Arizona purchase them.

In 1985, then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt was given a tour of the caverns, and became an enthusiastic proponent of having the site become a state park. Finally, in 1988, legislators were told enough about the caverns to authorize the purchase for $1.8 million. Far from concluding matters, however, that started a new round of difficult work and delicate choices: How could the caverns be protected, yet have pathways blasted through them? How could the public see these treasures without spoiling them? How could walkways be crafted through steep terrain, but still meet federal guidelines for wheelchair accessibility?

The luck of the cave kiss

After delays and cost overruns, the first of the cavern tours, winding through underground rooms called the Rotunda and Throne Room, opened to the public in 1999. A second tour, through an area called the Big Room, was added in 2003, and is conducted only in the fall and winter, when the small colony of bats leaves the area.

Our tour of the Rotunda and Throne Room starts in the Discovery Center, where a 15-minute slide show gives a quick history of the caverns. Then after a brief talk from Gaines, we pile into the cars of a waiting tram for the short ride up to the cave entrance.

Don't chew gum, eat food or take pictures inside, we're told. They don't want any debris — or even the light of a camera flash.

The paved walkway slopes down gradually, winding through the chambers. Unlike the initial explorers, we don't smell any bat guano (which is fine with us) because the bats stay in other parts of the caverns.

In the desert above us, it has been weeks since the last rainfall. But down here, some surfaces glisten with a fine coat of moisture as that rainwater ever-so-slowly seeps through tiny cracks and hangs as droplets from a few of the stalactites.

If any of those droplets fall on us, Gaines says, we've been touched by a "cave kiss," and good fortune will come our way. None falls on me, but the man and woman in front of me — visitors from Wisconsin who heard about this tour from a Tucson waiter — each have been kissed. Also on our tour are travelers from Vermont, South Carolina, Iowa and Ottawa.

At the end of our 90-minute expedition, we learn that Gaines, our guide, is a Puyallup native who moved here for the sunshine a decade ago. She's worked for the park for 2-½ years. "I've always been interested in caves," she said. "If you love to learn, this is a great place to be."

She has a particular interest in the colony of some 2,000 female myotis bats who use the Big Room as a nursery in the summer months. A single bat, she says, can eat up to 600 insects an hour.

Which reminds me: Isn't it about time for lunch?

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom@seattletimes.com