TSA CBP project report
Personal: Terry Holsinger, Mark Gee, Chris Hall, Paul Trowbridge, Brian Trowbridge, Eddie Baker, Will Harris, Carol Schumacher, Wesley Schumacher, Scott Boyd, Alan Blevins, James Lopez
Total Hours for weekend: 96 hours
The First trip of the 2001-2002 season started off with a 1.5” rain Friday night making for a wet camp. Come Saturday morning, the camp awoke, with no good stories of flooded tents, so all were in good sprits.
After filling out the release forms, camp separated into two teams, one for each side of the river.
Team one, lead by Will Harris and including Carol and Wesley Schumacher, Scott Boyd and Alan Blevins, stayed on this side of the river.
They headed over to SAB263 to survey the cave. However the air was bad a short way into the cave, so instead of surveying the cave Will gave an impromptu survey class for the inexperienced in the group. After practicing the team exited the cave, and headed over to SAB261. Here they found a small stream flowing down the entrance climb, formed from the water from the past the evenings rains. This added slickness and the lack of any vertical gear, prompted the team to abandon the survey.
They then spent some time GPSing the entrances to a few of the other caves in the immediate area. All agree that the caves still need to be surveyed and a retun trip when the air is better is planned.
SAB261 14R XXXXX XXXXX
SAB263 14R XXXXX XXXXX
SAB248 14R XXXXX XXXXX
SAB208 14R XXXXX XXXXX
Unmarked Cave 14R XXXXX XXXXX
All data in NAD27CONUS
Total time for team 20 Hours
Team Two Lead by Chris Hall and including Mark Gee, Paul and Brian Trowbridge and Eddie Baker headed for the caves across the river. They headed into the thick brush on this side of the river and found their way to Marshall’s Manhole. From this known point they proceeded to bushwhacked their way to cave numbered CB17. They then explored the cave and surveyed it. Then they went off to Falling Water and explored to the dig at the end of the survey and dug a little, before heading back to try and make the river crossing with some daylight. Cave crickets and millipedes were noted in Falling Water. The team needs to draft the map of CB17.
Total time for team 40 hours
With the teams headed out into the field, Terry Holsinger took the release forms to the Office and then proceeded to the Conference Center to talk to Cory and help with the Friends Group. After everyone finished here he headed back to camp to enjoy another fine evening in the park.
On Sunday, Chris Hall, James Lopez, Carol and her son Wes Schumacher headed back across the river to find and explore the cave known as Carlsbad Connection
Here is Chris’s report:
The weather was much drier and sunnier than the previous day, although the Colorado river was somewhat angry from the very recent heavy rains. The gravel bar usually used for the launching of our vessels was submerged, and various debris was swept past. We got to cross the river on a canoe, since some folks had borrowed our raft and ferry system to visit the other shore, leaving their nice spacious canoe with outboard motor on this side. We hiked up the cliff and fought our way through the evil vicious nasty sharp brush, stopping to feast on seed-filled prickly pear tunas. Carol did an admirable job in hauling the rope bag, and James carried the kitchen sink in his giant pack. We stopped to rest and watch the grass grow and to show everyone some of the local caves, such as Perturbed Mouse Pit. At last, on to Carlsbad Connection. I took a nice GPS reading on it, and in we were. On a previous trip, we had moved a particularly large and unstable rock from the entrance room. Although this entrance room is most likely safe, caution would be advised here, as there is much loose rock. We rigged an etrier here for the first 10' drop, an easy climb, but a steep drop-off impossible without an etrier or handline. Down we all went, the new cavers did great, to the next drop, 15' or so, a free climb down a sort of tube thing. To the next room, a slight up climb and a crevice, and to the pit entrance where exploration had stopped the previous trip due to lack of time and a decent rig point. The passage, a tight squeeze at the top, appeared to open into a going crevice passage. James took out his hammer drill and gear. We rested and took five while he went back for the forgotten drill bit. Back comes James, who did a fine job of setting a bolt and rigging. I went down first. The top of the pit was a tight squeeze, even for skinny me, but a decent descent after that. The passage went! I waited for larger Lopez to come down, and off we went. Some more crevice passage, a decent amount of flowstone, and there was a dome passage. There was a passage leading off from this, another one going down to a pool of water that may be a sump. This needs to be checked another day during a drier period than the past two days had been. An up climb led to more passage. Leads remain, including a decent sized upper passage that appeared to go although I couldn't enter due to the fact that it was at the top of a sheer vertical wall of slick flowstone and I needed a boost up and we were short on time by this point. Carol and Wes left first and James and myself derigged the cave and then left. James and myself had an interesting cliff descent in the dark. I lost my gloves due to stupidity (setting them down while I stopped) so if anyone finds some gloves up there, they're mine. Crossing the river by moonlight is usually one of my favorite parts of these trips. There's just something about the blackness of the water in front of you. I was the last one over, and James hauled me back. Carol and Wes were already behind schedule so they left. By the time James and myself took everything down and paused to relax and change, it was 10:00pm, sort of late for a Sunday trip and presumably too late for James to make it to Chuy's in Austin. We left, and due to my frequent naps at gas stations, I didn't make it back to Houston until the next morning. Carlsbad Connection is superb, a major cave in this portion of the park, and worthy of a survey project. This we plan to begin the next project weekend, and will probably take a few trips to complete.
Total hour for team: 36 hours.
GPS locations from Chris for the caves on the Lampasas side of the river:
All data in UTM, NAD27 datum.
CB3: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB6: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB7: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB8: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB9: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB10: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB11: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB12: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB13: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB14: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB15: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB17: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CB18: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
Carlsbad Connection: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CBK1 (karst feature) 14R XXXXX XXXXX
CBK2 (karst feature) 14R XXXXX XXXXX
Soot Cave: 14R XXXXX XXXXX
Things to finish from this trip:
SAB 261 and SAB263 need to be surveyed, once the air quality improves.
The caves on the other side of the river need to be tagged and numbered in a consistence fashion, like they are done on this side of the river. I believe that CB17 has now be “discovered” by every team that goes to this area. Caves on the other side of the river also need to be surveyed and descriptions written.
This trip also brings to mind a somewhat unsettling aspect of the cheap GPS craze.
It seams like almost everyone on each trip has a GPS and is logging the location of the caves they visit. In itself this is not a major deal, but this information is now getting around. I would not be surprised to start “seeing” folks coming to the park outside of the project and visiting the caves on non project weekends. Maybe just for fun or maybe to push a dig, or some other unpushed aspect of a known cave, or use it as a starting point to look for other caves. It may already be happening. It is time the park started to consider the management aspects of owning this many caves in an open park. It may be time to implement a recreational permit system, maybe modeled after the one the NPS, NFS and BLM use.