Major flood damage to the Walnut Canyon Desert Drive/NPS, Oscar Tavarez
Heavy rains that pounded Carlsbad Caverns National Park last week, at one point stranding roughly 200 people in the park, washed away sections of trails in the park, prompting the National Park Service to close the park's wilderness areas and backcountry trails to assess and repair the damage.
Flooding also caused major damage to the unpaved Walnut Canyon Desert Drive. Until assessments are completed, it is unknown when repairs will begin.
The trails closed include Old Guano, Slaughter Canyon, Yucca Canyon, Guadalupe Ridge, Rattlesnake Canyon, Juniper Ridge, Double Canyon, and Ussery.
The following areas remain open: the main park road, Carlsbad Cavern, visitor center, overlook trails, and Rattlesnake Springs. Reservations are required to enter Carlsbad Cavern and must be purchased at recreation.gov or 877-444-6777.
When the rains arrived on Saturday, they generated a flash flood across Walnut Canyon wash, the only access to the cavern and the visitor center. About 200 visitors and park staff remained safely at the visitor center for about nine hours until the water receded and the road was cleared of debris.
Typically, mid-June through September is New Mexico's monsoon season, featuring periods of heavy rain from thunderstorms.
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Comments
The mark of an intelligent person is that they do not repeat their mistakes. Trapped visitors and staff is a recurring issue at CAVE. The staff has become very frustrated that management refuses to take precautionary measures to ensue the safety of visitors and staff. It is the professed position of management that it is better to imprison a handful of staff and a couple hundred visitors who become trapped for hours by a seeming act of God instead of proactively closing off access before likely storm events in order not to agitate thousands of potential visitors.
Let me make it clear. When it starts raining heavily at CAVE, management can begin evacuating BEFORE the road floods. They choose not to do so.
Following this event management was heard congratulating themselves for a job well done, leading at least one staffer to leak the fact that management is not following its own policies.
Following the below news story the Superintendent sent out the customary self-congratulatory email and excoriated the unnamed staff for revelaing this major safety issue to the public.
This is the behavior of the swamp. The last Superindendent and Chief Ranger at CAVE were recently moved out; these two need to go as well.
https://www.koat.com/article/delayed-flood-response-carlsbad-caverns-nat...