El Malpais is essentially a large bed of lava and the majority of it is difficult to walk on. This part of the trail, El Calderon, wasn't difficult though which is probably good since it I was going on a night hike. I was a little nervous about the weather, especially since I had driven one hour to get there. The skies were threatening rain and lightning was closing in from every direction. It did create some beautiful skies though:
So a large group had assembled and we walked out on the trail with the a park ranger leading the way. The ranger said to expect the first group of bats to come out at 8:00, but they came out around 7:35 p.m. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was a little frightning at first. A few scout bats came towards the mouth of the cave and then apparently gave the go ahead to the rest of the bats who started pouring out of the cave. The whole cave has around 20,000 bats, but the first group that came out was the Mexican free-tailed bat. There was an echo-locater and it was eerie to hear their shrieks as they emerged. There was a rustling through the air and a light sweet smell, which the ranger explained was the guano. There was something calming about watching them gather and then fly away into the night. They streamed out of darkness for about 5 minutes before the last few flew back inside to watch the pups.
This picture does not do justice to the event. It was truly amazing to see. But as soon as the free-tailed bats were gone, the lightning started moving in even closer, from both the North and the West. The ranger talked about white nose syndrome, which is a fungus that the bats are spreading around North America. You can kind of see a small sign in the cave warning people not to go in because of this. It has a kill rate of 99% sadly and if it spreads to New Mexico it could wipe out their bat population. This would be devastating to the agriculture business because of the need for increased use of pesticides to kill the bugs that bats would normally eat. We sat a little while longer, and then the ranger warned that we would need to leave because of how close the lightning was and the fact that we were sitting on ferritic lava. Just then the small brown bats started coming out of the cave. We all watched as these tiny bats whirred closer and closer to us. They are apparently the acrobats of the bat world and had no fear of the intruders by their cave. They would literally whoosh inches away from people and were swooping in larger patterns than the first bats. The night ended with a walk back to the parking area and more beautiful skies thanks to the incoming storms.
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