Participants: Russ Johnson, Curtis Vaughn, Glenn Rogerson, Robert Tait, Will Harris, Jeff Tabor, Marcus Canonilo, Wayne Peplinski, Don Abercrombie, Eric Abercrombie, Nickolis Abercrombie, Aaron Sheefifet, Brandy Johnson, Sara Springer, Amanda Finke, Jack Johnson, Harold Haddock, Travis Scott, Jim Morris, Beckie Johnson Morris, Rachel Donovan, Rafal Kedzierski, Nico Hauwert, Joseph Beerg, Ed Goff, Bonnie Longley, Terry Holsinger.

After a couple of clear weather weekends, the rains came again. Friday it rained 1.75 inches at the park before noon, It then looked like it would be clear for the rest of the weekend. Wrong. A second storm front moved through the park dumping another .75 inches of rain around 11:30 Friday evening. Most everyone at the cavers camp was already in there tents so the rain caused little concern Saturday morning it was cold damp and windy. Keith Heuss decided that he would rather be at home so he left around 7:30 and Butch (Keith’s GPS cohort.) decided that staying home was also the better thing to do this weekend. Bonnie Longley arrived at the low water crossing out side of Bend around 2:30 in the morning to find the crossing a couple of feet under water. She slept in her car until the water was low enough and then showed up in camp. After a little more sleep she also headed home as the weather showed no signs of getting much warmer or drier. No survey was done this weekend as we tried to get descriptions of caves written. This is an aspect of the project that has not been a priority lately.

Team One was: Will Harris, Jeff Tabor, Marcus Canonilo, and Sara Springer. This team first headed to Lemons Ranch Cave to try and make it back to the pit. Members of this team had tried to reach the pit during the trip of 2-13-1999, but were turned back by "bad air" near the entrance of the crawl. This time the team was able to make it to the pit, were they better defined the of the cave at the "end" of the survey. The air was a little "stale" but was good enough for Will and Sara to bottom the 13 meter deep pit. At the bottom they noticed but did not push the crawl that crosses the bottom of the pit. Also, at the top of the pit, they checked out the two passages that continue past the pit. Both continue but were left to push on another day. This means if the air becomes a little less stale, there is some more surveying to be done in Lemons Ranch Cave.
After leaving Lemons Ranch Cave, the team headed to Polish Pit. They entered and proceeded to the bottom of the second drop, explored the crevice area, and left having written a description of the part of the cave they visited.

SAB233 Polish Pit
The entrance is a narrow crevice sloping down, from the side of a creek bed,  to a small room above the first drop. Here you drop the 6 meters to the Landing Pad. From here a small passage heads towards the surface creek and the second drop heads away from the surface creek. Dropping the 15 meters down this drop you notice the walls of this crevice like drop are covered in nice flowstone. At the bottom of this drop the cave continues to the left and right as a tall, sloping crevice, ~10 meters tall, in a parallel direction to the surface stream. In the upslope direction, the cave continues for 10+ meters to a small room with many formations. A smaller passage extends from this room for at least another 10 meters. In the down-sloe direction from the bottom of the second drop the cave continues as a crevice to the third drop.

Total time for team one: 26.0

Team Two was: Travis Scott, Brandy Johnson, Rachel Donovan, and Amanda Finke. This team was to head out to the Lively Pasture and enter and write descriptions of the caves entered. They also filled out a new information form for each cave. As is the habit for new teams to the Lively Pasture, they ended taking a bit longer then planned getting to there area, and then they were not in the area they were going to. They managed to get good information on the cave they entered, which did not have descriptions already done. After visiting three caves they were wet and cold and still had the hours hike to the trucks, so they headed back to camp making it there just before dark. This team is ready to go back to this area and continue with this task, and feel that now they know were they are going they will be more productive next trip.

SAB194 Sore Back Cave
The entrance is a tight crevice like crawl about 3 meters long. The squeeze makes a 90degree left turn and drops about 2.5 meters. Then after passing a tighter squeeze, you come to a 8 meter drop. There is also a short passage that continues to the right from the top of the pit, for about 3.5 meters. The pit may be climbable, but a rope was used on this trip. There are a few short passages leading from  the bottom of the pit. One of which descends about three meters and opens into a crevice, 1/3 meter wide ~6 meters tall and over 10 meters long, which then opens up as though it met with another crevice. This passage descends to another drop of 6+ meters, were it may join with a small stream passage. The Team states that they need to return and continue to describe this cave, as it is one of the mare complex caves in the park.

Total time for team two: 26.0

Team Three was: Ed Goff, Nico Hauwert, Rafal Kedzierski, Wayne Peplinski, Jim Morris, Beckie Johnson Morris. They were Headed to a lead Nico had "found" on an earlier trip, called Scorpion Pit. The team departed the TSA campground on foot around 11 am. We walked first to Puberty Pit, then backtracked through the woods and found the road that leads to Gorman Falls. A karst feature (vertical entrance, too small to enter) was noted in the road. From there, we walked east and north to an area of large cracks. After examining this, we walked north another couple hundred meters to our objective: a tight vertical entrance Nico had found and done some digging on, which he had named Scorpion Pit in honor of some friendly arachnids. We lowered a weighted rope and found the depth to be approximately 40 feet. About halfway down, there was a constriction too narrow to pass. Below this, the crack bells out into a room, and water can be seen trickling over flowstone on the floor. For several hours, we took turns rappelling down and hammering at the obstruction. Rafal and I returned to the truck and brought back my GPS receiver and some snacks for everyone. I got a 15-minute averaged GPS location. It was getting dark when I emerged from the last hammering shift, and Wayne and I were the last ones to leave for camp.
Later members of this team left for a trip to Polish Pit. These were: Ed Goff, and Wayne Peplinski. Wayne and I left the campfire about 11:30 Saturday night, and Rafal showed us the entrance to Polish Pit. We used a single 200-foot rope and had 6 feet left over at the bottom. We looked into one side passage halfway down, but left the other, which involves swinging over to a ledge, for our next visit to the cave. The ledge did not look as difficult as it had been described. Wayne waited at the bottom of the second drop while I descended the final 40 feet or so of the crack to the bottom of the cave, the "Quintessence Room." (A nice chockstone in the crack over this drop serves for a rebelay.) This is a small mud-floored room with a couple of small mud-filled drain holes in the floor on the side closest to the river, with a completely mud-filled passage 4 feet high by 8 to 10 feet wide leading in the opposite direction. This could be a challenging dig project. We returned to camp about 3 am, and I sketched the bottom of the cave from memory, since the last drop and Quintessence Room are not accurately represented on the map.
Sunday the team regrouped and headed back to Scorpion Pit. This time they were: Don Abercrombie, Eric Abercrombie, Ed Goff, Nico Hauwert, Wayne Peplinski. They returned to Scorpion Pit about 9:30 Sunday morning, fully expecting to get in. Eric, a slender teenager, descended but was uncertain he'd be able to get back up past the squeeze and so did not chance it. I tried next, attaching a figure-8 to my harness on a length of Spectra cord to get it off to one side in order to be able to squeeze through. I found a spot where I thought I might just be able to wriggle down into the room by exhaling fully, but I also opted not to risk ending up stuck below the constriction. Nico, who had a fairly bulky climbing system, decided not to bother since it was becoming clear no one would get into the cave that day. The entrance will take a little more work, but we intend to get in and survey it in April.
Total time for team three: 49.0 hours.

Team Four was: Russ Johnson, Curtis Vaughn, Glenn Rogerson, Robert Tait, Jack Johnson, and Harold Haddock. Russ has taken on the task of the continuing exploration and survey of Gorman Creek Crevice, the longest cave in the county, and this weekend he lead the second trip to familiarize himself with the location of existing survey points. They encountered standing water near the entrance, evidence of the recent rains. They headed to the pit to descend it and investigate the second drop in its floor. Thanks to the storm front that blew through, the air quality was only a little stale and was still easily breathable at the bottom of the 8 meter drop. Once at the bottom of the second drop, ~5 meters, the sound of flowing water could be heard. This has strengthened our theory on what is occurring in the upper Gorman Creek drainage. This passage will need a little digging to enlarge it so that normal sized people will be able to fit. By this point the team had been wet and in the cave for about 7 hours and few were ready to head further downstream to try and relocate survey markers from the area of the stream at the end of survey. They exited the cave at ~9:30 and spent the next 2 hours lost in the windy sub 50 degree night, until they reached the trucks at 11:30. Rob and Glen then left for Austin while the others returned to camp by 12:00. See end of report for a first hand description of this trip from Rob and Glen both new to the project.
Total time for team Four: 72.0

Total time for weekend: 172.0 hours

The one good thing about all these trips and the storms that have been proceeding them is the air quality has been better later in the year then it has been the last couple of years. As it turned out, the next week the park received a heavy rain that had water flowing out of Gorman Cave, and flooded the low water crossing to town. If this keeps up we should be able to get more done later in the year then usual. We plan to continue writing descriptions of the caves, as well as continue our surveys. Our next big task is to finish drafting the maps of the caves we have surveyed. It takes around twice as long to draft the map as it takes to survey the cave, so this task will keep us busy through the summer.
 
 

Trip Report: Gorman Creek Crevice
I can't remember names, I have a hard enough time with faces, but names are really out.  If I try real hard, and take notes, I sometimes can remember a name the first time. Usually after repeated exposure (like carcinogens) it will stick.  If you happen to be female, and I think there might be a chance that we might get together for a quiet dinner, the odds go up, but only because I would put your name on a post it, and stick it on my shoe.
So I can't remember names, It can come in handy, like on a recent trip to Colorado Bend where I spent about 12 hours in Gorman Creek Crevice and another 2 hours making the 20 minute walk back to the cars.  If I knew names, I could name them, with wild accusations, or humiliating stories.  Alas I have no such capacity. So the story is Generic, and the innocent are protected..
I arrived with Glenn ( I learned his name in less than month) Saturday morning, driving through the frosty air wondering why, every time I choose to go to Colorado Bend, the air temperature and the wind conspire to extract the most head from one's body in the shortest amount of time. At least we were smart, and planned to return to Austin that night. It's warm in Texas Caves.  If we did not freeze to death waiting to go caving, everything would be just fine.  I was glad to have my Michigan quality ear muffs, and mittens while things were sorted out.  Terry (he has the same name as my brother - I learned his name almost right away) selected a team to recon Gorman Creek Crevice, which included myself, Glenn, and 4 other guys.  We were to push any leads that looked promising, and look for survey markers.  Sounded like a plan, Terry pulled out the map to refresh the memories of he folks that had been there before, we distributed the gear. While the others were looking at the map, I was wandering around camp taking pictures of all the cold people (some I did not recognize without their winter cloths off at the Posse a few days later).
When I got laid off from my job in Michigan, my former coworkers chipped in and bought me climbing and caving gear. They know that I carry a lot of junk, and got me the biggest cave bag they could find. I was honored.  In honor of this fine gift, I volunteered to carry the 100' of rope that we were hauling along to do the pit at the bottom.  There was not much room in my bag to spare, but it fit. That was the extent of the distributed gear.
Shortly after 10:30, we loaded into two pickup trucks and headed off for the parking lot just down from the ranger's house, and proceeded on foot from there. I blindly followed the leader, taking in the scenery, and making note of some landmarks.  Without any backtracking or confusion we found ourselves on top of the crevice in short order.  I was not until then that it dawned on me that there would be a 20 minute walk back to the truck for clean and / or dry cloths.  Drat. Ah well.  We stowed whatever we did not want to take in the cave (for me it was a sweatshirt, coat, mittens, and ear muffs), fired up our lamps, and negotiated the first hand climb down from the crevice into the cave shortly after 11:30.  Glenn asked if he should bring a digging tool, and with out much encouragement decided on his own to pack this little thing that sort of a little pick ax with one flat blade but when we all made unkind remarks about the virtue of hauling such a thing, he declared that because we made fun of  him,  he was leaving it behind. No one argued.
A couple of guys held back in the entrance room to take notes and sketch, while the rest of us started in the crawl.  Half an hour after we entered the cave, our merry band of crawlers were surprised to find a Ringtail cat that had decided that it did not want to be chased any further down the passage. Perhaps it knew something we didn't.
I was in the rear of the line, and debated crawling up to get a picture of the critter, but there was some concern that tangling with such a beast in confined quarters might be foolhardy at best and very painful at worst.  Given that the passage was barley large enough for two people to pass each other, if the cat decided to come out when I was coming up, the passage would have been plugged. I have never seen an animal react adversely to electronic flash (although I did drive a Pack Rat to distraction with the infrared rangefinder on my Olympus, but that's a different story), so I  decided to try to snap a picture as it came by, that way only the guilty would get mauled.  The plan was that our lead person would ease by the Ringtail and flank it, as everybody else tried to become part of the left wall.  The plan worked, and the cat came shooting down the passage like a scalded dog.  For my efforts, I have a fuzzy dark picture of where the cat was sometime after  it streaked by. Drat.  Ah well.
Going was not too bad, the passage was not tall enough to get all the way up  on hands and knees, but the floor was smooth dirt.  We had been warned to keep dry if possible, because it being wet would make things troublesome further in the cave.  Good advice, although it turned out a little hard to follow.  In almost no time at all we had encountered water.  Not a lot of water, the deepest pool was less than two feet deep. The problem was that there was no way around it.  My concern was to not fall behind the other cavers (not a problem really - it would be hard to get lost in this cave), and to keep my camera dry.  The choice between getting me wet or the camera wet put me in second place, and I carefully lugged he bag through the bathtub, keeping the camera side of the cave bag up at all times.  The first couple of pools soaked me to my chest. Where there was flow, the water was pretty shallow, and not much trouble.
It was about this time that Glenn commented that he really hates crawling on gravel, and shortly after that he reiterated that he REALLY HATES crawling on gravel.  Part of the reason could be because he never uses elbow pads, but it could go deeper that that.  I will leave the reasons as an exercise for the reader. I was not too thrilled by the gravel myself, it was this small and pointy stuff, too small for throwing, and too big for sling shots. When Glenn his level of dislike became public knowledge, word came back from up the line that this was the easy stuff, the fist size rocks were coming up soon. Drat.  Oh Well.
We would hit pools of water intermittently. Some of them were quite fetid.  Not much water movement in those pools, just dark, murk and stench.
We managed a few breaks on the way, some of  us even got to sit up.  We came across a side passage that looked like it was a close relative of the same crevice we crawled in from, but the walls were too muddy to thoroughly explore or climb, so we pushed on, and by 2:00 we came across a side passage that opened in to a great crevice, similar to the previous one, however this one was sealed at the top by large boulders, rocks and mud, and had some adequate handholds that enabled exploration. [that was the obligatory run on sentence] I got the impression that if the proper, fist sized, rock were removed that the entire ceiling would fall away, exposing a clear path to the outside.  I kept my hands in my pockets.  A couple of guys went up, and poked around 40 feet or so over our heads. We could not see them, but got reports back from the void "Here's a sapling that was growing at one time, there must have been sunlight in this crevice in recent history", we appreciated the significance of what they were saying, and shouted encouragement... "Dig!". More time passes, and we hear that there are roots coming through the clay. We helped them with more encouragement; "DIG!!" we cry.  They decide that it is hopeless, but we persist in supporting their exploratory efforts by repeating.. "DIIIIGGGG!!!".  In the interest in maintaining a broader readership, the response will not be published in this chronicle.   They  secured a safe climb down using the rope, and we were on our way, a little excited that we may have found a short cut  that would enable access to the back of the cave without all the wear and tear on the knee pads, if we can only could locate the feature from the surface.  There was some lament that no one brought any percussive earth moving supplies but we did not beat ourselves up too badly. Who knew (Besides Glenn, who clearly left his digging implement to teach us a lesson)?
Three quarters of an hour of crawling on fist size rocks  terminated at the pit. The end or the horizontal road.  I was glad to get the rope out of he bag, and see it put to use. It would have been a bummer to haul it all the way in, and not get to use it. It was bad enough that I forgot my vertical gear.  We rigged the drop, tying off to a large formation / bolder that was right at the lip, protecting the sharp protrusions in the rock from our rope by lining the area with tee shirts.  Glenn harnessed up with his frog, and negotiated the lip with a moderate amount of grace, only drooping about three feet before all the slack got taken up, I don't think he swore or anything.   He made the rest of the 10 meter drop without further excitement.. The pit has a  pit within it, slightly offset requiring taking a few steps to drop the second pit.  Off to either side are passages that go back about 15 meters on one side and about 20 on the other.  This comfortable walking chamber had small crawling leads that wandered off to places where only the extreme, and punishment ready caver would dare follow... Why we did not pursue them to their full extent, and ultimate conclusion can only be attributed to time constraints, and bad air. They looked fun, if not promising and very cozy.
Before Glen had a chance to discover these treasures, he became a little concerned about the quality of the air and asked for a cigarette lighter. The next guy down the rope forgot to bring a lighter. Glenn was not pleased. Glenn sent up his harness for me to use and put a butterfly knot on the rope so I could lower his cave bag, the one with the lighter in it.  I returned the rope so I could climb down, forgetting the cave bag.  Glenn was ready to come up at this point. We dropped another caver down the rope WITH a lighter.  Somehow he went over the lip of the pit such that the rope was behind him. The inevitable slack was going to cause serious problems with equilibrium if he let loose, so he hung on to the rigging  with one hand and did some sort of Irish jig to get on the right side of the rope, and made the bottom without further incident, with lighter.
I geared up and  re-routed the rope so that it had a higher vantage and made the drop without incident. Well .. Almost. The butterfly that was tied in the rope was now about a meter off the ground, because the rope was re-routed.  My inseam is just under a meter.  Serves me right for not dropping the lighter to begin with.  I got ungangled and joined in the air quality experiments..
  With great effort we got the lighter adjusted so that it would light ever so often.   When it did light, the flame separated itself from the lighter by a distance as large as an inch.  I have never seen this effect in the  Indiana or Kentucky caves I am used to. Sometimes the flame would burn normally for a few seconds and then the lit part would wander away from the lighter and return.  Most fascinating.  We probably spent half an hour playing with that lighter.  I pulled out my piezo striking lighter, and would  not light at all. Then came the matches. I wanted to see what kitchen matches would do.  Once we figured out how to light them, we discovered that they heads would burn just fine, but the wooden handles were fireproof.  This is so far outside my realm of experience we tried the experiment about 10 times, in different configurations, until the chamber was full of sulfurous smoke.  OOPS. We performed cognitive tests on each other (Recite Quickly -"I'm not the fig plucker, I'm the fig plucker's son, but I'll pick your figs 'till the fig pickings done"), and our reactions were tested against someone's collection of pedophile jokes. Glenn decided that he would be able to breath better topside, but other team members who were not afraid of a little bad air proceeded to the bottom of the second pit.  The sound of rushing water could be heard, and the smallest of our team nearly dislocated himself (or some part thereof)  in a vain attempt to follow a small passage to the source of the sound.  In the process, his light began to fail, and I used that as an excuse to drop the second pit and check it out, delivering a light in the process. The space was cozy, with interesting colors and shapes about, and it turned out to be easier to free climb (with my chest ascender fully engaged on the rope) than it was to frog out.
We had done as much as we could do, it was time to start heading out.  It was too smoky to take any more pictures. I learned by watching that spectra webbing does not make good prussic knots, but was still impressed that people still use prussic for ascending.  I though I was cheep!  I managed to stuff a very wet, and extremely muddy rope into my cave bag.  Funny, I had always used a cave bag to keep my stuff more or less free of mud. This was a new paradigm.  I learned that a wet and muddy rope is a heavy rope, and took liberal opportunities to make observations about the same. We were all up and ready to roll by 7:30.
Roll may be the optimal word.  Would have worked for me if the passage was wide enough. My knee pads were constantly falling down. No manner of adjustments had  solved the problem, I even tried to put one of them on upside down.  Still no luck.  As I was pondering removing the lower strap altogether, I dawned on me that if were not so tight, it might help.  It did indeed. Much fewer problems with the kneepads.
After a few false starts we were maintaining a full evacuation of the cave.  Glenn and I held back, and let the younger, more energetic folk lead the way. It could be that they were a little tired of hearing me spout on about getting stuck with the rope.  In spite of their offers, I chose to carry the rope myself if only to have a reason to complain...
Close to the end, I gave Glenn my elbow pads (they were his old kneepads, and did not stay on my elbows worth a darn anyway), and we made slow but steady time back..  We crawled back through the stinking pools, and the deep pools and the running water, and finally made it out of the cave, to be greeted by a starry night, and temperatures that stepped up their efforts with  the wind to maximize the possibilities of hypothermia for wet cavers.
I peeled out of my wet shirt, put on my dry sweatshirt, and coat and mittens, and ear muffs over the appropriate appendages, stuffed my muddy cave bag (and the associated 100' of wet muddy heavy rope) into the plastic bag that had kept my coat dry, and climbed out of the crevice.  It was just like caving.  That's when I realized that the landmarks that had been evident on the way in, were not be useful as navigation aids until sunrise the next morning. By this time it was 10:00, and we were starting to loose flashlight batteries.
Over the next two hours, we probably crossed our own path several times, and with the aid of a compass we headed south for a while, then headed north for awhile, the whole time being pulled east by some mysterious force. We had a few false clues, coming across a cave entrance that we may or may have not identified correctly.  If we identified it correctly, then we would have gotten lost leaving it in the dark as well.  By 11:15 were listing for barking dogs, occasionally shouting, and trying to navigate through the occasional puddles of water, and  thick brush by the haze of lights of Lampasas. At 11:30 we were ready to hole up for the night, and fight off hypothermia with the comfort of a warm fire (we hoped it would be warm), when Terry and his fearless cave puppy made contact, and we followed him the 40 or so feet to the old road that lead to the parking lot, and were at our in time to get a group picture taken at 11:53.
I pulled the heavy wet, muddy rope out of my cave bag, and put on clean pants, hopped in Glenn's truck and we headed back to town stuffing down cookies and crackers as we negotiated the road out of  the park.
We were hoping for a fast food restaurant in Lampasas, but we had to settle with a quickie mart in a gas station.  We got stares, but no comments. We were both covered with a thin layer of mud.  I took time to wash my hands, but decided that the mess I would leave trying to wash my beard and hair would be to much to deal with and left to pay for my Frappachino. Glenn went back to wash up, and I idled my time watching an endless of stream of people buying beer.  As he came up front, I commented, "Wow you don't' even look like you dug your way out of a prison" and we left.
I took my turn at driving a while later, and settled into a routine late night dive when the red flashing light made me recall the word "dug your way out of a prison"..  The expression of the officers face was quite puzzled as he played the flashlight over the gear in the back of the pickup.  He explained that I was doing 12 over the 45 MPH limit.  I suspect he was looking for drunks, and he bought the story that we had been caving since 10 that morning,  I think that caving was written all over my face He gave us some sound advice about local speed limits and let us go.
I was in bed by 3:00 am, and slept much better, then I did the last time I spent the night at Colorado Bend!
I woke up with bruises where my ribs were dragged over rocks, but otherwise none the less for wear.
I would like to return the favor of exploring this cave by taking the gang to a cave in Indiana called Waynes Cave. The crawl is a little tighter, but smoother, it takes 2 - 3 hours to make the 1200 passage. At the end is a very nice walking passage, with lots of rooms, domes, and wells. We can get there in just under 20 hours  from Austin if we stay under 12 over the speed limit.
Is this a beginner cave?  Well, climb in was a tiny bit dicey, but at the beginning of a trip one is fresh and vital, and that the end of the trip, one is motivated to get out.  A little assistance at that point, and the rest of the cave presents no true challenge where the life span of a new caver might be foreshortened considerably by some poor judgment, or faulty sense of balance.  The pit at the end is an exception, they new caver should know how to ascend and rappel if they are going to try the pit, but even that was not technically challenging.  It's a safe cave, just grueling and painful.  The kind you save for just the right people...
Let me know when you're up for it.
Rob Tait

Rob got his done before me, so I said "Hey instead of duplicating effort, why don't you send me yours I'll add my comments and forward it to Terry?"  Well, as you can see, he did a 'bang up ' job of it, and I really don't have anything to add. Other than, I would really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really(ain't cut and paste grand) like to find an entrance to that crevice. I had an English teacher who once said "'Really', doesn't add anything to the sentence and should be left out". I disagree, don't you?
Glenn Rogerson