Bandera Volcano and Ice Cave sit on privately owned land off Highway 53, about 25 miles southwest of Grants. Two short trails lead from the visitor area: one up to the rim of Bandera Crater (a well-preserved cinder cone about 1,000 feet in diameter), the other down into a lava tube cave where a layer of green ice remains permanently frozen despite the New Mexico summer heat above.
The ice is genuinely striking — vivid green from algae, surrounded by black basalt, in a cave that descends below the desert. The trails are easy, the experience is strange, and the combination of volcano rim and ice cave in the same afternoon is hard to find anywhere else. The site is privately operated; there is an admission fee.