Black Cave and Little Beauty Cave

Headed back into the Lincoln National Forest today with some friends from work to check out some caves. We parked past the Dark Canyon Lookout Tower just before the section of road that's so rough its called the "Dragon's Teeth".

From there we followed some trails to Black Cave.

Parts of Black Cave, like the name suggests, are quite black in color. Is it manganese oxide? I don't know but it was sure an interesting little cave.

Inside we saw cave crickets,

lots of formations,

and a bat skeleton encased in calcite.

We spent about an hour exploring as much of Black Cave as we could from the trail.

Then we headed out. We ate a snack outside the cave entrance and then hit the trail

to find our second cave, Little Beauty. Little Beauty is appropriately named. it is small, and there are some nice, inactive formations inside.

After a few minutes inside Little Beauty we were outside in the heat ready for our hike back to the car and the long drive back to Carlsbad.