The Colorado Bend Project

 

Project Date:  December14, 2002

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


Person-hours:258.5

Personnel: (23 folks)

 

Wayne Peplinski, Roger Mercer, Bobby de Vos, Dale Barnard, Denise Pendergast, Carol Schumacher, Wesley Schumacher, Eddie Baker, Milo Marks, Lauren Fuka, Mathew Fischler, Collin Neikirk, Spencer Craven, Katelin Craven, Barret Hudson, Rebecca Jones, Chris Hall, Benedict Kim, Ron Beach, Andrew Beach, Anna Beach, Paul Trowbridge, Terry Holsinger

 

Team One was Wayne Peplinski and Roger Mercer. This team visited Lemons Ranch Cave and Turtle Shell Cave and did a bat count. Lemons Ranch had a small cluster of 10 Miotis Velifer and 6 lone Miotis. Turtle Shell had 8 Mitios. They intend to contine bat counts on future trips.

 

Field hours for team two was: 11

Travel hours for team two was: 7.0

Total hours for team two was 18.0

 

Team Two was Chris Hall, Benedict Kim, Milo Marks, Bobby de Vos, and Eddie Baker. They headed across the river on this fine day and then visited CB3. Chris Hall was the only one on this team who could fit into the tight entrance to this cave. It was a 6.3-meter drop to a drain in the floor. This cave takes a lot of water when it rains and should be opened up and pushed. After this cave the team went to CB22, a cave discovered by Milo on the Oct ’02 trip, and proceeded to start the survey of this cave. All went well with the survey and Chris will be drafting the map. The team except for Chris then went to Soot Cave for a breather before retuning across the river. Chris used this time to check out the water level in CB7. This was the first trip when the cave was not full of nice clear water, however the smooth walls and mud at the bottom of the main entrance drop and the tightness of the deep crevice continuing beyond the bottom of the entrance prevented Chris from completing the exploration of this cave and made it very sporting for his return to the surface. All then met up at the river and crossed it and then had a nice cold ride back to camp in the back of the pickup trucks.

 

Field hours for team two was: 42.5

Travel hours for team two was: 28.0

Total hours for team two was 70.5

 

Team three was Carol and Wesley Schumacher, Paul Trowbridge, Ron, Anna, and Andrew Beach. After crossing the river they went to CB9 and from there to CB11 and CB12 Here they started ridgewalking and found 3 more features and a “large crack” that drops at least 20 feet. Next they headed over to where Chris Hall’s team was and joined them for the trip into Soot Cave. On their hike up the bluff they spotted 8 adad (sic?) sheep (noticed by other teams as well) moving around the bluff like it was their home.

 

Field hours for team two was: 48

Travel hours for team two was: 24

Total hours for team two was 70.0

 

Team four was Lauren Fuka, Mathew Fischler, Collin Neikirk, Spencer Craven, Katelin Craven, Barret Hudson, Rebecca Jones, Dale Barnard, Denise Pendergast and Terry Holsinger. Terry met with park superintendent Cory Evans early in the morning to see about getting permission to dig at a small spring feature near the river. Terry thinks this may be the outflow point for the caves between the Gorman Cave and the Gorman Spring karst drainages. Both took a short hike up the bluff from the feature and Cory found his first cave. Cory said he would have to make sure there were no sensitive features near the spring feature before we could dig on it. Cory went to the office and Terry Went to camp to collect a team to look into features in this area. Once at the spring feature, the team headed up the bluff to relocate Cory’s cave and to continue looking for caves in the area. Cory’s cave was found and a couple of folks started to remove the loose rocks in the entrance. Meanwhile the others had started looking for features in the thick cedar covered hillside. Their efforts were rewarded with the discovery of four other features. All would need the removal of loose dirt and rocks to determine their full extent. After a while everyone headed further up the hill following a series of cairns through the brush. We soon came upon a large fissure area, containing many different fissures of different sizes and depths. Terry believes this may be a feature known from the late 70’s or the early 80’s. (A quick search of our old trip reports does not show this feature as know. So these “dates” are still the best info we have.) Dale took GPS readings at all the separate features and one location for the fissure area. Future work in the area would be to GPS each of the fissures in this “new” area and to survey each of them.

All are in NAD27 Zone 14

Cory’s Cave                        XXXXXE                        XXXXXN                        1210

Critter Crevice                        XXXXXE                        XXXXXN                        1211

Barret’s cave                        XXXXXE                        XXXXXN                        1202

Tree cave                        XXXXXE                        XXXXXN                        1190

Becky’s dig                        XXXXXE                        XXXXXN                        1177

“New” Fissure area                        XXXXXE                        XXXXXN                        1365

 

 

Field hours for team two was: 60

Travel hours for team two was: 40

Total hours for team two was 100.0

 

After Cory checked with the folks in Austin Terry was informed that as long as the dig at the spring feature was limited to the area of the spring that there were no concerns with cultural items in the area. The dig will most likely start on a future trip and will continue only if it looks like it will be productive and will not damage any other aspects of the park.