PROJECT REPORT

This week, the cloudy, cool weather brought out a big group of cavers. However, the clouds parted and it was a quite-hot April weekend, probably around 90 degrees F each day. The “Across the River” project has drawn most of the interest out here lately. Several caves are being surveyed and others are found each trip. We will be assigning these caves LAM numbers soon, which will replace the CB numbers mentioned in this and previous reports.

Of special note: With the nice amount of rainfall this spring, the rodent population must be doing well: Five snakes were spotted in various parts of the park—four rattlers and one grayish, 4-foot long snake with no special markings.

Team 1: James Lopez, Grace Borengasser, Wayne Peplinski, Chris Hall, Chris Banterbah, R.D. Milhollin

Time: 10.5 hours * 6 people = 63 hours

This team surveyed CB12 and part of CB14, both of which are Lampasas County caves across the river. After getting across the river in a couple of kayaks and a raft, Chris Hall led the crew (or should I say “His GPS led the crew”?) up the bluff, through the brush to CB12. They rigged it and R.D. began sketching it. Hall read instruments and pointed out that although James set the stations very high, he does good work. They completed the survey.

Team 2: Will Harris, Rafal Kedzierski, Mark Gee, Carsen Sloan, Craig Bittinder, Wayne Peplinski

Time: 9 hours * 6 people = 54 hours

This crew surveyed CB11, another across-the-river cave. Then, Wayne found CB15, a long crevice at the end of a drainage that has four entrances. They surveyed the first level of the cave before stopping. There is a pit at one end of the crevice that goes down about 32 feet. A crawlway at the bottom of the pit goes at least another 100 feet. They did not get to the end (survey what you see!). Rafal was glowing when he talked about this cave at the campfire Saturday night.

Team 3: Denise Prendergast, James Overfelt, Ai Higosaki, Kevin Hogan, Howard Haddock, Laura Stauch

Time: 5.5 hours * 6 people = 33 hours

This crew went to the northwest corner of Lively Pasture (the “far corner”) to systematically ridgewalk along the north fence. Dale had seen a number of karst features that lacked tags near Great Danes’ Cave so it seemed like a good area to do reconnaissance. They tool the tag kit with them, along with the preprinted tags for new features. They also GPSed any existing features that they encountered.

They found a karst feature that they tagged as K43, although they suspect that it was already known. It was near Gorman Creek Crevice. This feature is upstream from GCC on the east side of the streambed low on the cliff face. It is a rock overhang with a 6-foot-wide, 1½ -foot tall horizontal crawlspace about ten feet deep (borderline “real” cave?). There are lots of leaves in the bottom. They tagged the rock face to the left of the cave.

They tagged another karst feature about 50 meters upstream from K43. This one is K44. It is close to the center of the stream. It is a 20-foot crevice, four feet deep, in the bottom of the stream bed. The tag is on the rock face.

They then walked to the NW corner of the pasture and GPSed the fence corner.

They then tagged a new karst feature as K45. It is an elongated rocky area about 15 feet wide with rocks and dirt filled in.

They then tagged K46. This karst feature is an intersection of two faults at the bottom of a drainage area close to the electric light pole (20 meters south of it).

The intersection of fences that is on the east side of the southern north fence (got that?) was also GPSed.

NAD27

SAB183 Gorman Creek Crevice: 14 546456E 3434380N

K43: 14 546377E 3434250N

K44: 14 546349E 3434231N

SAB183 Horseshoe Chimney entrance of GCC: 14 546330E 3434220E

SAB219: 14 545968E 3434342N

NW corner of Lively Pasture: 14 545165E 3435545N

K45: 14 546146E 3435502W

K46: 14 546710E 3435374N

Next fence corner to the E of the NW corner: 14 546838E 3435567N

Lively Pasture parking area: 14 547668E 3434896N

Team 4: Dale Barnard, Scott D. Boyd

Time: 10 hours * 2 people = 20 hours

I spent most of the morning helping to organize the various teams for the day. While I was starting this trip report, Scott Boyd arrived late after a longer-than-planned trip from DFW. He had little choice at this point but to join me in going down to the office to drop off the paperwork, and then to join the overland crew in Lively Pasture, which did not involve any actual underground work. Nevertheless, we had a good hike to the NW corner of Lively Pasture, I still convinced that we could find the overland crew. Silly me. We never linked up until we were back at the parking area. Oh well. At least Scott got a good overview of the park since it was his first time. On the way back toward the parking area, we stopped off at the Gorman Creek Crevice entrance for a few minutes of air conditioning on this hot day. Scott spotted a tiny nest with three tiny beaks pointing upwardly, one of which was wide open. It was hard to identify the little mesh of fuzz balls, but we could guess that they were going to be small birds when full-grown. He also saw a four-foot non-rattle snake. It was gray with no real patterns on it at all. Scott lucked out when Howard Haddock’s crew decided to head for an early trip to Gorman Cave. He finally got to go underground.

Team 5: Christopher Keimling

Time: 4 hours * 1 person = 4 hours

After arriving a little late, Christopher really started kicking himself because he realized that everyone was gone from camp except for Dale. Dale suggested that he try to catch the “Across the river” teams. He didn’t make it in time. Thankfully, for the sake of his reporting for the Texas Power Coop magazine stuff, Howard Haddock and his crew were heading for an early trip to Gorman Cave. Christopher finally got to go underground.

Team 6: Aimee Beveridge, Geoff Hoese, Terry Holsinger, Chris Vreeland

Time: 8 hours * 4 people = 32 hours

This crew went back to Falling Water to continue the survey from the previous month. Here is Aimee’s report:

We were amazed by how all the pools had dried up from the month before. The dead raccoon from previous month was still in place at second rimstone. As lead tape, Geoff had the pleasure of putting it into a plastic bag. I was right behind him and boy was it nasty. We all passed the bag out of the cave. The air was much better after that business was removed. We started with survey station TH-04 to TH-05 at the beginning of the rimstone dams. The passage continued into a higher-ceilinged room with formations, a dome, and three crawl leads (see cave description). I sketched as Geoff and Terry checked leads and ran stations. Terry read instruments. It was a perfectly lovely cave, soft dirt floor, beautiful formations. We saw a frog, a mouse, a large redine(?) beetle (1.5 cm long), small white millipedes, and cave crickets. We noted that the tape had a .3m lead on the end so survey stations TH-05 through TH-12 or 13 would need correction to subtract extra length. TH-14 and beyond were corrected already. Later, after Terry had left, Geoff added last survey notes, Chris read instruments, and Aimee ran tape. All notes are in Aimee's book with GPS locations also recorded.

Additional volunteer hours

In addition to the work hours accumulated on this trip, an estimated 25 hours was spent during November on project-related activities. An additional 162 hours was spent commuting to and from the project. This brings the total hours for this month to 25 + 206 + 162 = 393

What Should Be Done Next: