"The Whale's Mouth"

Located along the Natural Entrance Trail is an interesting natural sculpture of flowstone and draperies resembling the baleen in a whale's mouth. Called speleothems by geologists, cave formations are created when water from rainfall and snowmelt permeates the limestone rock above the caverns. Carrying carbon dioxide from the air and soil, the mildly acidic water slowly seeps through hundreds of feet of limestone until it reaches the ceiling of the cave. A tiny amount of dissolved limestone (calcite) is carried with each drop of water. Before falling away, the water drop deposits part of its calcite cargo on the cave ceiling and carries the rest with it to the cave floor. As this process repeats over tens of thousands of years, these calcite deposits grow into the spectacular formations seen today.