Underground Ranger
Underground Ranger
Adventures in Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Other Remarkable Places
For six exciting years Doug Thompson worked as a park ranger at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. In Underground Ranger he passes along the essence of what he learned on this unusual job and in his related adventures exploring the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert. He overcame his fear of tight spaces and heights, learned to climb rope, and went on to explore many of the deep vertical caves in the Guadalupe Mountains of western Texas and southeastern New Mexico--including Lechuguilla Cave, one of the most spectacular underground wonders of the world. He even became a member of the park's technical rescue team and made a fifty-story rappel into one of the deepest underground pits in the United States. In visceral detail, Thompson shares the physical and mythical stories of caves and shows what it's like to experience the extravagant beauty of nature's underground realm.
In this book Doug Thompson takes us to underground places that even few cavers have explored and shows us their marvels--helicites, aragonite, draperies, columns. Best of all, in this compellingly personal book Thompson candidly shares his own fears and anxieties as he becomes initiated into the strange subsurface world.'--Robert Julyan, author of Hiking to History: A Guide to Off-Road New Mexico Historic Sites
Ranger Doug Thompson captures life in an underground national park and humanizes one of the greatest careers a lover of the outdoors can have.'--Melody Webb, author of A Woman in the Great Outdoors: Adventures in the National Park Service
After retiring from the National Park Service, Doug Thompson moved to the juniper-piñon hills of Capitan, New Mexico. Visit his Underground Ranger website at www.parkrangerdoug.com.
