Presently they came to a place where a little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and ruffled Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his small body behind it in order to illuminate it for Becky’s gratification.
Mark Twain, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”
Coloradans who are sick of being cold, but who can’t pack up and fly to Hawaii, are pondering closer alternatives.
How about a cave?
No matter how cold it gets outside, it is always 52 degrees inside Glenwood Caverns. That’s the average temperature year-round at the mouth of the caverns, 7,100 feet above sea level and about 1,500 feet above the town of Glenwood Springs.
“And it’s very humid,” says Many Gauldin, spokeswoman for the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. It’s a living cave, with formations growing naturally.
A cave! That’s just the ticket.
Glenwood Caverns – formerly known as the Fairy Caves – were a huge tourist attraction in the late 19th century. They closed in 1917 and stayed closed for 82 years.
Steve Beckley, a Cortez native with a degree from the Colorado School of Mines, read about the Fairy Caves in an out-of-print book and wrote to the property owner, asking for permission to visit. Beckley spent 16 years writing to the owner before he got an answer.
Beckley and his wife, Jeanne, quit their suit- and-tie jobs in Denver and moved to Glenwood to become full-time spelunkers.
“The previous owner was a little eccentric,” Gauldin says. “He used the caves for storage, and he liked buying army-surplus stuff. There were hundreds of typewriters in there.”
Among the improvements the Beckleys made were graveling a road up to the cave and blasting a new tunnel into the mountain so that access would be easier while controlling temperate and humidity so the formations would continue to grow. They drove vanloads of tourists up to the cave until the Iron Mountain Tramway was opened in 2003.
“It’s a great time, because it’s not nearly as crowded this time of year,” Gauldin says. Tour groups are smaller – sometimes as few as two people on winter days. There’s a 70-minute tour open to all, and 90-minute “adventure tour” for older children and adults, a 3-hour “wild tour” for ages 13 and up.
The short tour involves 127 steps (not all at once) and isn’t suitable for pregnant women or people with heart or respiratory problems. The longer tours aren’t for the claustrophobic, those afraid of the dark or anybody who can’t squeeze through an 18- to 24-inch-wide opening. You get a headlamp and knee pads, and can rent coveralls or bring old clothes. There’s crawling involved.
But the rewards are magnificent: soda-straw stalactites, glimmering waterfalls of flowstone, helictite formations that look like elk antlers or bowls of spaghetti, intricate crystalline frostwork and a fat stalagmite called Jabba the Hutt.
Many of the park’s attractions are closed for the winter, but the alpine coaster stays open all year. Bundle up and hurtle 3,400 feet downhill on tubular rails for $7. “My son will ride that as many times as you will let him,” Gauldin reports. His record is eight.
Spelunkers will find many other caves in the mountainsides around Glenwood. At Rifle Falls State Park, limestone caves are hidden beneath the 80-foot triple waterfall, popular with ice climbers (and cold). Winter campsites (cold) and fishing (don’t even go there) are available at Rifle Gap State Park. There’s snowshoeing and sledding in Four Mile Park (cold), snowmobiling in the White River National Forest (cold) and skiing at Sunlight (cold), with the promise of the Hot Springs Pool and
Yampah Vapor Caves afterward.
Lisa Everitt is a freelance writer who lives in Arvada. Contact her at lisaeveritt@comcast.net.
The details
Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park, 51000 Two Rivers Plaza Road, Glenwood Springs. 970-945-4228, 800-530-1635, glenwoodcaverns.com. A trip up the Iron Mountain Tramway and a cave tour is $18 for adults, $16 for seniors, $13 for children 3 to 12. Tramway plus Wild Tour (for ages 13 and up) is $50. Park is open year-round; winter hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursday-Sunday. Spring break hours (10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily) begin March 10. Take Interstate 70 to Exit 116, turn left on West Sixth Street, and look for the signs on your left.
Rifle Falls State Park, 5775 Colorado 325, Rifle, 970-625-1607, parks.state.co.us/Parks/RifleFalls. Day pass is $5. Camping available year-round. Take I-70 to the Rifle exit, then go north on Colorado 13 for three miles. Turn right onto Colorado 325 and drive 9.8 miles.
