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)