PROJECT REPORT

Colorado Bend State Park Project

Project Date: March 7-9, 1997 Reported by: Dale Barnard

Person-hours: 68

Personnel: (12 folks)

Eric Flint, Steve Burns, Christie Rogers, Terry Holsinger, Derek Nash, Debbie Blackburn, Chris Hall, Butch Fralia, Sharon Mastbrook, Randy Brown, Brian Andres, Roseanne Larson

Randy's team (Eric and Steve) spent 10 hours surveying in Be Excellent. They planned to survey past station #42, but encountered high water due to the rains. Instead, they moved on past "bottoms up" where they picked up a hanging survey at station #50. Several shots later, after a climb-down, they encountered a sumped stream. They hope to push past the sump on a lower water day. Randy reports, "Lots of water and fun!"

Terry's crew (Christie, Debbie, Derek, Chris, and Roseanne) spent 6 hours on a variety of objectives. First, they did a quick sketch of Dale's Birthday Cave and Heavenly Snacks Cave. They estimated that a 10-shot survey would complete Heavenly Snacks Cave. They visited Biscuit Can Cave and noted the water level. In Turtle Shell Cave, the water level had reached the top of the 20 foot climb-down.

Butch and Sharon spent 7 hours working at the park and Butch spent 4 hours at home working with the data. They returned to the McLarrin Fissure System with the map from Ernst Kastning's masters thesis and a topo map to try to complete locating and associating names with all of the caves. Despite the rainy weather, they completed this objective as well as refining some GPS locations. They flagged all of the caves to help distinguish them in the future. We need to put permanent name plates on each cave. They also relocated Gorman Sink. Some of the following readings replace previously reported readings.