Underground dreams
Arizona cave offers unique overnight accommodations
As the elevator rumbled down to its only stop, John Riffle wondered if the next several hours would be worth the price he paid.
The answer rode along the beam of an LED flashlight piercing the utter blackness of an encapsulated world 200 feet removed from civilization.
He played the beam over the craggy limestone walls of Grand Canyon Caverns, imagining he had stepped back eons in time. Well, except for the concrete walkway and the fact that a few minutes ago, he and his wife were stretched out on the couch in front of a 32-inch high-definition TV.
Yes, he thought, it was worth every one of the 1,000 license plates he traded for a night in the state’s deepest, darkest, quietest hotel room.
“An amazing experience,” says Riffle, who lives 50 miles away in Ash Fork. “Unlike anywhere we’ve ever stayed.”
Riffle and his wife, Bev, are among the 1,300 people over six years who have spent a night in this geologic air pocket between Seligman and Peach Springs. Riffle, who owned a pawn shop at the time and didn’t have the cash for the $800-a-night tab, offered the plates in trade, which he says one of the hotel owners happily accepted.
The Caverns Suite is assembled atop a wooden platform in the middle of the cave’s largest room, where tour groups pass by every 30 minutes during the day. The windowless room where the air is deathly still may be one of the USA’s most unusual places to spend the night.
It comes with two queen beds, a coffeemaker and a 70-foot-high vaulted cavern ceiling, as well as access to the looping, mile-long trail through Grand Canyon Caverns. Once the last tour is gone, usually about 6:30 p.m., guests have the cave to themselves to do whatever they like, as long as they stick to the concrete path. Offroading is strictly prohibited, given the drop-offs scattered about.
The rate includes a suite attendant, stationed topside throughout the night should guests need anything.
The room is booked about a third of the year, mostly for special occasions, lead tour guide Levi Goldsmith says. And each stay begins with, of course, a tour. A WHOLE NEW WORLD Almost a century ago, tourists would pay 25 cents to be lowered down a narrow shaft, a process guides affectionately called “Dope on a Rope.” The fee included a kerosene lamp and as much time in the cavern as they’d like, keeping in mind the patience of the rope-minder.
Dopes on ropes were lowered for nine years until 1936, when operators installed ladders and a swinging bridge to deliver visitors more safely.
The elevator, a three-year pro- ject (two to blast through tons of rock, another to install), was unveiled in 1962, opening the cavern to the less-adventurous masses.
After a minute-long descent in the rattling metal cage, Goldsmith throws open the doors and leads visitors through a narrow hall cut through solid stone. Thirty feet in, walls burst upward and outward as the yawning, rocky dome of the Chapel of the Ages swallows visitors.
Goldsmith heads up the short wooden stairway and into the suite, where guests might first take note of how a lack of walls impedes privacy.
Goldsmith points out the amenities, such as the flat-screen HDTV. There is no cable but plenty of movies, including “The Descent,” in which four adventurous spelunkers encounter mutant cave-dwellers — wait, what was that noise?
He also points out the wonderful acoustics of the cavern.
“You can have two people stand at opposite ends of the room, and they can hear one another easily while speaking in normal conversational tones,” Goldsmith says. “It’s pretty incredible.”
Tucked behind the entertainment center, its shelves filled with antique issues of National Geo
graphic donated by an early benefactor, is the bathroom. Saloon doors swing open to reveal the room, which comes with a warning. Water is limited, so the toilet is good for only five to six flushes. That means that at some point guests have to ask themselves: Was that five flushes, or six? Do they feel lucky? Well, do they?
“When I hear the elevator, it’s mostly because someone’s coming up to use the restrooms,” Goldsmith says.
Eventually, Goldsmith shows guests how to turn off the lights, allowing them to experience the cave in its natural, eeriest state. He tells guests they won’t be able to see their hands in front of their faces.
And then he’ll tell guests to remain still and enjoy something rarely found topside: silence, saved for the low hum of the water heater and mini-fridge.
The Caverns Suite was built in 2010 when owners had this question: Would people spend hundreds of dollars for a suite that only Fred Flintstone might find luxurious?
But it has never been about luxury. It is all about the real estate maxim “Location, location, location.” It’s not the world’s first in-cave room, but the fact that it was erected 200 feet below the surface places it in rarefied, and very dry, air. ‘LAST PERSON ON EARTH’ Of all the amenities that come with living underground, the greatest might be solitude.
Attendants never intrude until checkout time, so once the last tour departs, guests are truly alone. There are no cameras and no intercoms, and the only phone — beige with rotary dial — hasn’t worked for months. The only connection with topside is via the elevator.
The cavern’s seclusion may bring out an amorous nature. Once tours stop for the day and the elevator doors slide shut, those staying in the suite are the only living things around for at least 200 feet.
Guests are encouraged to explore with supplied flashlights, and attendants have few doubts couples have taken the term “explore” to its limits.
As general manager Jenna Jones says, “There’s been a lot of baby-making down there over the years.”
Riffle was far too much of a gentleman to talk about such things. After he and Bev strolled, he says, they enjoyed dinner, watched a bit of TV, and then it was lights-out. One light remained on because the absolute darkness was discomforting. The next morning the attendant arrived with breakfast. The couple checked out before the first tour arrived, leaving the attendant to cart the towels and linens to the topside motel a mile away.