Reported by:  Dale Barnard

Report Date:  11/16/2000

Person-hours:  190

Personnel: (15 folks)

Rafal Kedzierski	Chris Hall	Chris Vreeland
Jiyoung Cha	Erin Vreeland	Travis Scott
Micah Cooper	Will Harris	Jonathan Wilson
Paul Trowbridge	Dale Barnard	Brian Trowbridge
Jeanette Joost	Sean Vincent	Terry Holsinger

 
 

 Earlier in the week, Terry sent out an email to the caving internet list (CaveTex) about how the park had been seriously flooded a few days earlier when they got 8+ inches of rain. The park superintendent (and possibly others) was stranded at his house unable to cross the creeks to leave the park. The result of his email, which mentioned the muddy road to the caver camp, was to scare away most car cavers. Thus, we had only 15 or so cavers attend this month. There may have been other factors involved in the small turnout, but I don’t know what they might be.
 It was easy to organize teams with such small numbers and a lot of work was accomplished. The road was indeed muddy, but not impassable to an above-average driver of a low-clearance vehicle.
 After a day’s work, nearly everyone headed for Gorman Cave, tramping through slippery mud and trying their best to avoid plummeting into the Colorado River. The main draw was that a rumor of water flowing out of the cave had spread. Indeed, we found a trickle of water remaining after the floods. Clearly, the water had been much higher. Zane said that six to eight inches of water had been flowing out of it. The nicest result of the flood is that the cave smelled much better than normal.

Team 1: Rafal Kedzierski, Chris Hall, Chris Vreeland, Jiyoung Cha
Time: 7.5 hours * 4 people = 30 hours

 This team spent the day ridgewalking, which is always a good thing for Rafal. He knows many secret cave entrances and karst features in the park, or at least acts like he does. I tend to believe him. They began at the Dynamite Cave parking lot and headed north along the ridge. Aside from two karst features identified within 300 feet of the road on that ridge, no other karst features or caves were located on the ridge.
 They cut across the creekbed to the west within 1000 feet of the Colorado River and continued ridgewalking until hitting the visitor trail. Then, they took the visitor trail to the road and hiked back to the car. On the way back, they stopped by a cave “rediscovered” by Rafal & Co. on the last trip there, roughly in the vicinity of Polish Cave. The cave is 100-150 feet from the road, close to the first pole indicating change in the direction of the park fence (where the road kisses the fence). It is in a shallow sink 10-15 feet across on a slope (several degrees) falling towards the Colorado River. The cave is a 10-15-foot-deep chimneyable crevice that ends in a one-foot-high, one-foot-wide, ten-foot long room. A low one-foot-by-one-foot passage heads at 45 degrees downward to another low room. A large vertical block was blocking the progression, but could be opened by some manipulation. The cave was named Cute Cave, in accordance with Sweet Cave and Sour Cave in the area.

Team 2: Travis Scott, Micah Cooper, Will Harris, Jonathan Wilson
Time: 5 hours * 4 people = 20 hours

 This team finished the survey of Hernia Hole and explored all leads to no avail. From there, they went to SAB304 and named it Litho Cave. They surveyed it and pushed it to no avail. The GPS number for the new cave is below:

NAD27
Litho Cave XX XXX XXXX XXXX (numbers need to be checked)

Team 3: Jeanette Joost, Dale Barnard, Paul Trowbridge, Brian Trowbridge, Sean Vincent, Terry Holsinger
Time: 6.5 hours * 6 people = 39 hours

 Terry and Dale went to the office for two hours to discuss the project with Cory Evans, the park superintendent. Then, they joined the rest of the crew at Ice Box Cave. When they got there, Terry went off driving around some unfamiliar old ranch roads and Dale was shown to an apparently-new cave about a ten-minute walk from Ice Box that they had found.
 Sean and Terry went off to GPS caves, photograph entrances, and write a description. Dale rigged Ice Box and rappelled in to check the air quality. Air was fresh-smelling all the way to the bottom. I guess the floods washed out the bad air. Brian and Paul followed, performing their first-ever rappel. Their micro racks worked well. It was difficult for someone as light-weight as Brian to rappel on the rack, but he managed to get to the bottom. Dale took some photographs. Jeanette was moving the newly-exposed glass to the side of the passage. The floods had exposed about a bucket full of glass. Next month, a crew might try to clean it out.
 Once out of the cave, Dale filled out a cave description form. Then, they went up the hill to Mossy Cave where Paul and Brian climbed in to prepare their description. Once out of the cave, they filled out a description form.
 Sean and Terry had returned to the vehicles by this time. Terry agrees that the new cave is probably not named, although there may be signs of previous digging activity. The GPS numbers are below:

NAD27
Mossy Cave uphill from Icebox
XX XXX XXXX XXXX’Vertical
Josie Wales Cave (the new cave)
XX XXX XXXX XXXXVertical

Extra volunteer hours

 In addition to the hours accumulated on this trip, an estimated 10 hours was spent during April on project-related activities. An additional 91 hours was spent commuting to and from the project. This brings the total hours for this month to 10 + 91 + 89 = 190.

What Should Be Done Next:

· Tag the two karst features that Rafal found
· Remove obstruction in the cave that Rafal found
· Travis needs to draft the map to Hernia Hole and Litho Cave
· Litho Cave needs a tag
· Clean a bucket-full of glass out of Ice Box