The Colorado Bend Project

Project Date:  November 9, 2002

Reported by:  Terry Holsinger
Report Date:  January 6, 2003

Person-hours:166.5

Personnel: (19 folks)

Kathy Scanlon, Kate Walker, Scott Beadle, Sarah Beadle, Adam Skordik, Paul Aughey, Debbie Blackburn, Keith Heuss, Sharon Mastbrook, Butch Fralia, Jennifer Peplinski, Wayne Peplinski, Roger Mercer, Bobby deVas, James Lopez, Dale Barnard, Shannon Summers, Will Harris, Terry Holsinger

Team One was Roger Mercer and Wayne Peplinski. The headed into the Windmill pasture to revisit a feature they had dug in last season. They were checking the air quality and if there was an increase in erosion from the past few rains, that would have blocked the now open way on. Lack of air quality kept them from pushing this lead further at this time.

Field hours for team two was: 16

Travel hours for team two was: 7.0

Total hours for team two was 23.0

Team Two was Keith Heuss, Butch Fralia & Sharon Mastbrook

On the continuing effort to get GPS locations for every cave entrance with post SA being off, Butch and I visited the Lively Pasture. We had about 8 caves to GPS to be complete with the Lively Pasture.

Our first stop was where the road enters the Lively Pasture. We got GPS locations for the fence corner and a fence intersection as well as the road center as it goes through the gate. We located a karst feature, which we are calling K63 located nearby.

Our first cave to locate would be SAB223, Be Snakey. Butch selected the old location we had for the cave and we did a go to with his GPS unit. Stickers were abundant due to many recent rains and hiking through the grass was difficult with stickers in shoes and socks in just a short time. We found the location where it was supposed to be, but no cave was found. We circled around and eventually found a cave. Since we came to it from a different angle, I was not sure if this was the cave. We could not find the identification tag at the site. Butch took us to Shari's Diet Cave nearby and we headed back. Approaching the cave from that direction, I recognized the cave to indeed be SAB223.

On our hike back to Butch's Jeep, we ran across a karst feature near the telephone pole. We did a GPS location on it and we called it K64. It was getting to be around lunch time so we returned to camp to eat and remove stickers from our shoes and socks. After lunch, we met up with Wayne Peplinski and Roger Mercer who were also going to the Lively Pasture. We followed them to a dig which has been dug out and is now a cave. The previous identification was K21. We watched them rappel in as they checked for bad air. Wayne said it is called Pep's Pit. Pep is short for Wayne's last name which is Peplinski.

From there, we drove to the point where the roadway exits the Lively Pasture. We began a track log from there to the road intersection. This road is not on the map and the road log can be pasted onto my base map to complete the road and trail system.

After the track log, we went to and got GPS locations for SAB199, SAB200 and SAB201. At SAB201, we noticed numerous and some very large fire ant mounds. Butch made the suggestion that we start treating these mounds. He mentioned that corn meal was a good natural control for the mounds. It is not poison, but it does get rid of the fire ants. We will seek Cory's permission to use it and start doing some experiments with it and document its effectiveness.

While at SAB201, Butch found and did some GPS locations for a section of the old Scholten Rail Road bed. He has the information in his GPS unit and I will get it from him and put it in a spreadsheet.

On the way out, we continued our track log, beginning at road leaving the Lively Pasture and continuing to the main road at the trailhead located in the Cicurina pasture. We were back at camp at 6:00 PM.

Sunday, we returned to the Lively Pasture to continue gathering GPS locations and to retag two caves. First, Butch got a GPS location of the fence corner of the Lively Pasture in the Southeast corner. Next, we retagged SAB218 with SAB314. This is in accordance with the earlier decision to not reuse SAB numbers. We would retire a number if one cave connects to another and made a single cave. This reuse of numbers caused too much confusion.

Next, we retagged K21 with SAB315. This is Pep's Cave that was previously a karst feature. Butch gave me the GPS location of the cave that he had gotten on December 9, 2000. On our way back to camp, we ran into Dale. He was going to walk the trail that he had worked on for several years. His GPS was not working well, so I gave him my GPS and we showed him how to record a track log. We set it for 10-second record interval. We calculated that would be enough to capture all of the trail data.

We headed back to camp from there, having spent two hours out and about. We spent an hour during which Butch gave me some more GPS locations stored in his unit and we also discussed future trips to the park.

Field hours for team two was: 31.5

Travel hours for team two was: 19.0

Total hours for team two was 40.5

Team three was Will Harris, Shannon Summers, James Lopez. Team three tried to relocate a feature that James Lopez had found a year or so ago. They spent 5 hours in an unsuccessful attempt to relocate this feature. They did manage to relocate a few already known and tagged cave and they re-GPS’d SAB293.

Field hours for team two was: 15

Travel hours for team two was: 15

Total hours for team two was 30

Team Four was Kate Walker, Kathy Scanlon, and Shannon Summers. Sunday morning, team four headed into Cicurina Cave to try and push the “first lead”. Shannon proved to be too large to follow the girls through the tight spot halting the chance of assisting with the survey. Kate and Kathy proceeded for about 30 meters further before finding another tight spot and returned to collect Shannon and return to the surface. They plan on returning with another small person (or Shannon and a hammer) and to start the survey of this drain on a future trip.

Field hours for team two was: 9

Travel hours for team two was: 8

Total hours for team two was 17

Team Five was Adam Skordik, Paul Aughey, Debbie Blackburn, Bobby deVas, Dale Barnard, and Terry Holsinger. Having talked to Cory about the condition of the “Entry Prohibited” signs placed at some of the cave entrances, we headed out the new hiking trail, hooking up with it near camp, to visit a number of the entrances. The trail is doing fine and is seeing some use by other park visitors. We concentrated our visits o the cave that are “easy” to find by visitors to the park. The sign is missing from Gorman Creek Crevice. The sign at Be Excellent is battered by the floodwaters but is still readable; the sign at Horseshoe is doing fine as it does not take the full force of the floodwaters. The sign at the upper entrance to Cicurina was not checked, but should be there. There are a number of other caves in the open part of the park that could use a sign at the entrance to help dissuade the casual visitor. Cory has mentioned that he has some more signs and we will place them on trips when we have the portable drills along.

Field hours for team two was: 30

Travel hours for team two was: 26

Total hours for team two was 56

All in all a good trip on a nice weekend.