Although the caves are closed, it is possible to see one of the crystals up close. Cailey Rizzo. By Cailey Rizzo September 14, Save Pin FB More. It is still incredibly hot in the cave due its proximity to a magma chamber, deep underground.
I will be entering the cave wearing a special cooling suit with chilling packs inside and a specialized backpack respirator which will allow me to breath chilled air. Even with all this equipment, I will still only be able to stay in the cave for no more than 45 minutes at a time.
In extreme heat, the body begins to lose higher brain functions which made the expedition much more difficult with the risk of falling into deep pits, or being impaled on a sharp crystal. All the camera gear needs to be slowly brought up to temperature beforehand by pre-heating it and most cameras with moving parts and tape mechanisms simply will not work at all.
It is as dangerous as it is beautiful. When the call comes over the radio to get out It is time to go. Climbing up onto one of the larger crystals.
When we first arrived at the Naica mine, Manuel and his crew took us inside without wearing the special cooling suits. This was in order to get us used to what REAL heat is like. There is a steel door protecting the cave and as soon as you pass through it, the temperature hits you like a truck, but as soon as you get your first glimpse of the incredible crystals, you want to keep going deeper.
We were inside for only 14 minutes, which was pushing the danger limits without cooling suits. When we exited, the staging area was a "cool" 41 Celsius.
All we could do was sit, drink and rest. The next day, the real exploration began. We had left our camera gear inside the cave the night before, sealed up in air tight bags so that it could slowly warm up to the ambient temperature of the cave. Without doing this, all the gear would fog up, form a layer of condensation and become totally useless. Crystallized Gypsum is known as Selenite. It looks like a scene from a science fiction movie.
After that happened, the anhydrate started breaking down, filling the water with calcium and sulfate. The particles slowly began recombining into a kind of gypsum known as selenite. White-tinted selenite crystals took over the cave.
Because the crystals remained underwater — and because the water temperature stayed within a few degrees of degrees Fahrenheit 58 degrees Celsius — they were able to keep growing continuously. Granted, the crystals didn't turn into giants overnight. A study argued that, under the conditions that were available in this cave , it would've taken anywhere from , to , years to grow a selenite crystal measuring 3.
Nevertheless, over time, a lot of these things attained breathtaking sizes. Many are The very largest , meanwhile, are up to 36 feet 11 meters long and 3. In , prospectors discovered silver on the Sierra de Naica Mountain. Before long, troves of lead, zinc and gold turned up as well — and by the midth century, the first mining operations broke ground along the slopes.
But these were significantly smaller, only about 8. They probably formed in the same way the bigger crystals down below formed. However, the Cave of Swords apparently cooled down at a much faster rate.
This put a cap on how large its selenite spikes could get. Giant Crystal Cave itself wasn't found until the year Brothers Pedro and Juan Sanchez — two miners with the organization — became the first people to lay eyes on its crystals when they entered the drying cave on foot.
It soon became clear that Giant Crystal Cave was an inhospitable place. Not only did the air temperature climb as high as degrees Fahrenheit The place was so humid that a visitor who lingered too long risked having fluids condense inside his or her lungs. That can be fatal. At first, explorers were limited to minute forays into the cave due to the justifiable safety concerns.
Lab experiments with varying degrees of saturation and temperature have been studied to determine what the conditions were for formation. The temperature is thought to have remained constant throughout growth at about 58 degrees Celsius, while the water that was supersaturated with calcium sulfate began to stack together to form selenite crystals, a form of gypsum. Other caves with smaller formations did not have these ideal conditions and the temperature in them fluctuated over time, not allowing for constant uninterrupted growth.
Around , the water table was lowered by the miners at Naica as they unknowingly drained the cave. If this had not occurred, the crystals would still be growing today.
The selenite formations in the Cave of Crystals are very soft and can break easily if disturbed. Even a fingernail will scratch these massive crystals.
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