The Ice Caves - New Mexico

Located in part of a collapsed lava tube about a half mile from Bandera Volcano are the ice caves. The ICE CAVES temperature never rises above 31 F because it is shielded from the sun by lava tubes. Lava tubes form because as lava flows the top cools faster than the bottom.

Here is the Trading Post that points the way to the ice caves.

On the way to the caves, you are surrounded by lava tubes and lava flows.

Here's Monkee and Laura in front of the lava flows.

What you are seeing here is a collapsed lava tube. It is about 25 feet deep. The top of the tube collapsed under its own weight and due to time and erosion becomes very unstable.

Here's one of my favourite pictures. It is the decent to the ice caves, but there's something Alfred Hitchcock about this photo.

Monkee on his way down into the ice caves. Let me tell you it gets radically colder as you decend into the ground. The rocks at the top of the photo are part of a lava tube 17 miles long - the longest lava tube in north America!

Here you can see the frozen water, which is about 3500 years old! Settlers used to keep food down here - a natural refrigerator.

Another view of the cave.

Here I am - with red cheeks from the cold. It was about 85 degrees no more than 50 feet above us.