Author: Wesley Landaker

News

SWR Summer Regional 2025

SWR Summer Regional sponsored by the Mesilla Valley Grotto

SWR Summer Regional in the Mimbres Mountains

Royal John Mine Cave

Date: June 6-7, 2025

Camping will be off Royal John Mine Rd, in the Gila National Forest, 8.5 miles form NM 61. The road to camp is suitable for just about every caving vehicle. Bring shade. Refer to the map for more info.

The Royal John Mine Cave natural entrance is on private property. Also on the property is a restored mining camp with extensive antique mining equipment.

Everyone entering the private property will be required to sign a liability waiver.

Royal John Mine Cave features an amazingly decorated Lake Room that overflows into the resurgence passage and exits through the natural entrance. This passage has pools of 43 °F water, tight spots and could be sumped. A wetsuit is advisable for those who would like to try to make a through trip. The current drought offers the possibility of a through trip from the natural entrance to the Lake Room.

For More Info Contact: Steve Peerman <gypcaver@comcast.net>

News

SWR Website News

Hello SWR cavers! This is Wes Landaker, the SWR Website Committee Chair.

“Old” SWR Website Updated

Please take a look at the recently updated the “old” SWR website: https://swr.caves.org (this site).

We’ve just refreshed the “old” SWR website and would be happy to get feedback from the SWR board & general membership. You can send feedback directly to me, or to any SWR officer.

SWR Website Committee

I’ve been asked by the SWR Chair to be the committee chair of a newly formed website committee (instead of a single “webmaster”) for the SWR website.

As part of the website update, we updated the version of WordPress running the site, fixed a lot of security issues, and as part of this, cleared out what appeared to be some very old permissions and user accounts for security reasons.

If you have been involved in maintaining the SWR website in the past, and have lost access but would like to continue to be involved, or if you are otherwise interested in being part of the SWR website committee, please contact me or an SWR officer and we’ll get you involved. =)

Upcoming Website Changes

Please note that I don’t yet have access to update the “new” SWR website here https://caves.org/grotto/southwestern-region; this is a bit of a work in progress.

However, the two sites do now at least point to each other, and as soon as I have that worked out the intent is to merge these two sites in an intelligent way that retains the advantages of both.

One of the most exciting things coming up is that soon, active SWR members will have access to digital copies of back-issues of the Southwestern Caver newsletter. This effort is largely thanks to the efforts of Jerry Atkinson and Pete Johnson who have done a ton of work to make this possible. Stay tuned for this to roll out to the general SWR membership very soon. =)