The Cave of the Crystals – Cueva de los Cristales – in Naica, Mexico, houses the largest naturally formed crystals that have so far been found on god’s weird earth. These mighty blocks are giant selenite crystals (that’s gypsum, CaSO4·2 H2O for the chemistry lovers among you) and are sitting in a sweaty den about 300 metres below Naica, Chihuahua.
The crystal cave was only found in the year 2000 by miners who were excavating the cavern above, named the cave of swords, due to it’s metre long, sword like crystals. The biggest crystal so far found in the Naica mine is 12m (39ft) x 4m (13ft) and weighs 55 tonnes.
Exploration of the Cave of Crystals is a tricky task though, temperatures in the cavern reach up to 58 degrees Celsius and humidity is normally above 90%. Not ideal conditions to be hanging out with a hard hat on.
The largest expedition of the cave took place in 2006, the outdoor equipment company – Ferrino – designed the Tolomea suit and Sinusit respirator so that the men could work for longer down in these harsh, alien conditions. The workers in the mine were fitted with a mattress of refrigerating tubes placed all over the body and connected to a backpack weighing about 20 kg (44 lbs) containing a reservoir filled with cold water and ice. But this still only gave them half an hour in the cave.
More pics on the next page…
The huge, horse shoe shaped cave is constantly being pumped free of water so that the Naica explorers can visually document the crystals. They degrade in air so at some point (probably when the Naica cave above stops being profitable) the cave will be allowed to reflood to keep them in their glorious state. A Discovery channel program on the cave hinted that there may be further caves attached to the Cave of Crystals, but to get to it would require destruction of some of the crystals pictured here, so we may never know if there really are any bigger one’s chilling out down there.
The crystals were formed because the vein sits atop a magma chamber. The mineral rich water was kept at a stable temperature for around 500,000 years and crystals were allowed to form unhindered and unchecked.
Here’s a quote from an adventurer/ storm chaser, George Kourounis who has been privileged enough to enter this crystal womb of doom:
Each minute you stay inside, the more unbearable it gets. You begin to breathe heavy, your hear rate jumps up and sweat is pouring down your hands. I was actually concerned that the sweat was going to short circuit my camera. It becomes easy to get confused and disoriented from the heat and your higher cognitive functions start to shut down. When you finally leave the cave, your body is so weak that all you want to do is lie down and drink. Dehydration is an obvious concern and I was amazed at how many liters of water I drank.
