The Cave Formation Repair Project - Repairing Cave Formation on the Lincoln National Forest, New Mexico

By Michael Mansur

Mike Mansur drills a hole into a curtain to install a stainless-steel reinforcing pin for the broken piece named “the Elephant’s Foot” that will be epoxied here in Hidden Cave. Two Stalactijacks stand ready to provide proper support to the formation. Photo by Michael Moffitt.

The Lincoln National Forest recently collaborated with members of the National Speleological Society (NSS) to repair broken stalagmites and other cave formations and features in the Black and Hidden Caves in New Mexico as part of the Cave Formation Repair Project, which encompasses caves on Forest Service (FS) lands, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, and National Park Service (NPS) lands. These formations typically grow only one cubic inch every 100 years, with larger formations taking thousands of years to reach their current size. Unfortunately, cave damage on the forest is often difficult to repair, but by collaborating with the NSS the Lincoln National Forest was able to make the needed repairs.

The project was initiated by Guadalupe District Ranger Aaron Stockton and Guadalupe Ranger District Cave Program Manager Jennifer Foote, who reached out to me to lead the project. I assembled a three-person team and signed a volunteer service agreement (VSA) with the Lincoln National Forest. The project kicked off on June 2, 2018 at Black and Hidden Caves, where myself and two other volunteers from the NSS used equipment that I invented to make repairs. These tools include the Stalactijack, the Speleoclamp, the Speleorake, and the Speleocup, which all are designed to make cave formation repairs easy and efficient. In Hidden Cave, we were able to reattach a large detached piece of curtain called The Boot.

A Stalactijack device supporting a repaired stalactite. — Guadalupe Ranger District Cave Program Manager Jen Foote stands next to a Stalactijack supporting a recently completed repair in the Cantina Room of Cottonwood Cave. Photo by Mike Mansur.

The project is ongoing with work now being done in Hidden, Virgin and Cottonwood Caves, with future scheduled visits to Pink Dragon Cave. In Cottonwood Cave, we were able to repair and reattach 54 pieces of cave formation to their origins in the Coke Table Room, and 77 formation pieces and 9 stalactites in the Cantina Room using our specialized equipment. There are still several large piles of formation pieces in the Cantina Room waiting to be matched and reattached, and this work will be performed in the future as part of this project. Overall, to this date we have made 37 different trips to caves and utilized 835.5 volunteer hours and 31 project participants to make 242 formation repairs. Additional work is being performed in caves on BLM- and NPS-managed lands.

All past and ongoing project work is following both Covid-safety protocols and white nose syndrome protocols. We have made repairs to a wide variety of cave formations, including stalactites, stalagmites, lion’s tails, soda straws, curtains, rimstone, and coke tables. There is still much work to be done, but we are excited to help repair these amazing natural features and be good stewards of our public lands.