Colorado Bend State Park Project

Project Date: April 12, 2003

Reported by: Terry Holsinger

Report Date: June 4, 2003

Person-hours: 178.0

Personnel: (13 folks) Mark Gee, Ron Rutherford, Ashlynn Rutherford, Shannon Summers, Chris Hall, Hannah Nedrow, Eric Megahan, Terry Holsinger, Bobby de Vos, Butch Fralia, Sharon Mastbrook, Scott Boyd, Milo Marks

Travel hours: 72.0

Team One was Chris Hall, Bobby de Vos, Hannah Nedrow, and Eric Megahan

They crossed the river and proceeded to the following caves were they wrote descriptions:

KH4 Description:

A narrow, twenty-foot chimney leads to a small room. The room is a crevice twenty feet long and three feet wide. At one end of the crevice there is a drain in the floor that does not continue. At the other end of the crevice there is a large dirt pit with much loose, dry soil. A vertical squeeze leads to a large room. A partner to give a hand or a foothold is most helpful at this point, especially when coming up. This is due to the loose, dry soil and the lack of footholds.

The large room is twenty-five by twenty feet, with the ceiling twenty-five feet above the middle level. Here there is very white, live flowstone that cascades down a few ledges. The water starts near the ceiling and lands on a flowstone formation near the middle level of the large room. Also on the middle level are large soil formations. At the far end of the large room a lead which might continue straight ahead. To explore this lead would require a handline and a tricky traverse.

From the middle level the room drops fifteen feet to the floor. This last drop is not free climbable due to a severely undercut lip. On the floor there is a hole that appears to go deeper.

location: XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX

KH6 Description:

The cave entrance is an eight-foot climb-down, about five feet wide and ten feet long. On the floor there is a crawlway that leads down to a room about six feet high, with room for two people to stand up right in. A too small passageway leads off for about five feet.

location: XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX

Total hours for this team were: 32.0

Team Two was Mark Gee, Milo Marks, and Shannon Summers. They proceeded across the river and returned to Three skylight Cave to continue the survey. After entering the cave and getting to the end of the existing survey( 90 meters of crawlway), Milo’s shoulder was giving him problems so the aborted the survey and ridgewalked there way back to the river finding nothing new. Mark plans to return to finish the survey with a smaller crew to facilitate entry.

Total time for this team was: 28.5

Team Three was Ron Rutherford and Ashlynn Rutherford. This Father and Daughter team headed off to find caves SAB250 and SAB251 using only the GPS cooradies from the database. They found SAB250 and wrote a description( to be entered into the database at a later date) and then went to find SAB251. After getting to were the GPS said the cave was, and not finding a cave they started to cicle the area in wirening sweeps out to 60 meters from the spot they had. They never found the cave and then headed back to camp by lunch time.

Total time for this team was: 7.5

Team Four was Scott Boyd, Sharon Mastbrook, and Butch Fralia. They started the morning going to the park office (with Scott Boyd) and loading GPS locations and local area 1:100K topographic maps on the Park GPS unit. The unit is a Garmin eTrex Vista, identical to the one I just purchased a few weeks ago. During that process, we learned that Cory was at the conference center and talked to him there. There was a friends of the park get together going on.

After loading the GPS, Scott and I went to the Conference center and met Cory. We watched a rough edit video of the Gorman Cave Tour video that Keith Heuss and I (along with various helpers) shot last month. Cory had discussed a pre-tour video about 10 minutes long to show park visitors before the go on the tour. Most of the tape consists of Jon Bird doing his spiel for the park visitors along with just enough footage to indicate it’s a pretty long walk to the cave. We had lights and taped inside the cave. Several tour stops were missed because it was a live tour that we couldn’t interrupt.

Cory indicated he’d be interested in staging a couple of the shots in the cave, particularly the historical graffiti, the display of the light bending qualities of the calcite crystals, the Bat roost by the gate and calcium phosphate area. He would like two tapes, the first can be derived from what’s already been shot stopping at the cave entrance before going in. This will cover all the safety lectures and the walk down. This will be ten minutes or less. The second tape will be used for a school outreach program Cory has been working with and will include the current video plus footage added in the staged events. We didn’t work out when the staged event can be done but will do that later.

A few fades and dissolves will be added to both video’s to make a clear transition between some of the activities, i.e., The Ranger speech at the beginning of the tour and the start of the walk down. The walk down to the stop at SAB207 for a presentation on falling rocks and CO2, and so on.

I left the first cut for Cory for whatever he chooses to use it for. In the meantime I’ll work on the two tapes mentioned above sans the new shots that need to be made.

Another subject of discussion is a pre-tour tape for the self-guided tour being considered for Circurina Cave. The cave task force is working on the criteria for that. In the meantime, Keith and I may be able to tape inside of Circurina next month and voice over anything that should be described in the cave. When the cave task force decides on the other criteria, we’ll work on filling that in.

After the Conference Center we went back to camp for lunch. Sharon had remained there during the morning while we did the meeting stuff and baby sat the dogs.

After lunch, Scott, Sharon and I drove to Lively Pasture. There are a couple of mis-located caves there that Keith and I have been wanting to get back and find. Unfortunately I didn’t take my park map down so I didn’t remember the cave ID numbers. Before looking for the caves we took a short tour of Lively that Scott hadn’t seen. We drove to the area where Keith and had “fed the wildlife” (fire ants) with corn meal. There had been a large infestation in the area before we put the cornmeal on them. There was a serious rain the Saturday night after we’d fed them so I didn’t think it would work. When we arrived the ant mounds had either washed completely away or were still there without an ants. There were approximately 30 large mounds in the area that we’d used cornmeal on and two still had ants. There were very few ants remaining at those two mounds. I had ten pounds of corn meal with me so I used about a cup of cornmeal on each of the two mounds showing life.

After the ant hunt, we went to Centennial Cave and I got a GPS location with full WAAS at about 8’ location accuracy. We hunted around the area and found a cave/sink that could be one of the missing caves but wasn’t tagged. I got an 8’ location on it. There was another small sink in the area but located in the middle of the worst cactus beds. We opted to call it a day from that point.

Scott left the park for the metroplex Saturday night. Sharon and I left the park Sunday morning without any further work.

Total hour for this team were: 38.0 (18.0 field + 20.0 editing video)