By: Terry Holsinger

Personnel: Benjamin Heuss, Christopher Heuss, Keith Heuss, Butch Fralia, Rosanne Larson, Martha Deller, Mark Alman, Alex Alman, Chris Buntenbah, Ed Goff, Russ Johnson, Alicia Gale, John Gale, Brannon Gale, Morgan Gale, Sara Golightly, Brad Golightly , Roger Ginnett, Brad McClain, Tony Sultana, Darren ?, Bruce Watson, Paul ?, Terry Holsinger

March was just another wet soggy trip. At least unlike the Febuary trip, 40 and rainy, March was 65 and rainy. A number of the regular personal stayed home because of the rain. Still we were able to get some work finished. I forgot to get a copy of the release form, so I do not have a complete listing of the personal on this trip. After collecting the names and doling out work projects, I headed down to the Park HQ to drop off the forms. I talked to Robert Basse about the request from one of the parks "Smith Ranch" neighbor Tommy Cox, (work phone:512-xxx-xxxx) to use the parks existing water well as a reserve for his "wildlife preserve" plan for his 50+ acres. Robert stated that he should contact TPWD Austin to pursue this idea.  I left the park early Sunday morning leaving Butch and Keith in charge, as I need to get back to work on 3 other projects. I spent the day trying to relocate Mouse Hole as well as looking for other features higher on the hill, Railroad Ridge, then the Lost Petzel System, Mystery Hole, and Cicurina Cave. A number of Karst features were identified and will be documented at a later date. I also spent the time checking on the other teams in this pasture.

Team 1 consisting of Keith, Ben, Chris, Butch, Rosanne, Martha, Mark and Alex left camp at 10:15 to visit the McLarrin Fissure System to get GPS locations.  Three times is a charm; so it was that this is our third time to try out the military GPS that Rosanne was able to check out from her work.  We arrived Friday night late after the CTG meeting in Lampasas.  Shortly after arriving at camp, we got out the GPS unit to check it out.  Rosanne had additional instruction on the unit during the week and this time it seemed to be working correctly.  As we watched it in my camper, the coordinates were holding steady as a rock.  Saturday morning, we compared its reading with the DGPS, 1 meter accuracy reading we had on the fire pit.  They agreed within a couple of meters.  We had a good feeling about the day, in spite of the drizzly looking weather.
We parked at the usual parking area for the fissure system and headed for the first cave.  Ben read the GPS and entered commands to put it in and out of the average mode.  Butch recorded the numbers.  We were getting good readings on all of the fissure systems and things were going well.  Butch suggested that we do this area first due to the density of caves and the fact some caves are so close to each other, really accurate locations are necessary.  While at SAB 134, (Dagger Cave), Chris and Rosanne took the opportunity to drop the pit.  We rigged up and Chris went down first, checking for bad air.  Rosanne descended next.  Ben and Butch went off to GPS more caves while the rest of us waited at Dagger Cave.
At around 1:30 troubles began.  The GPS unit gave a low battery alarm.  A status page indicated that we had used two hours of battery and 21 hours remained on the battery, but the unit still gave an alarm.  Within 20 minutes, the battery was gone.  We checked the battery and it was a special size battery, so we couldn’t just drop a couple of D or C cells in it and go on.  We headed back to the trucks arriving at 2:15.
Back at camp, we brought out my digital voltmeter and measured the battery.  It was reading 5.5 Volts.  The battery was marked 6 Volts and we figured a fresh Lithium battery to read 7 Volts.  We figured that indeed it was dead so we were finished GPSing for the day.  In all, we got 15 cave locations done to within a few meters accuracy.  As the day went on, the weather got worse.
We were finished with GPSing for the day so we gathered some more people up and we went to Space Heater to check the air quality.  A light mist was coming down by now.  Chris went down first and checked the air.  Air quality was good all the way to the bottom.  Ben, Sarah, Rosanne and another caver went down the 35-foot drop.  Rosanne did some videotaping at the bottom of the drop and Ben taped Rosanne coming out of the pit from the top.  The mist continued.  We were back at camp by 6:00 that evening.
Sunday morning Rosanne, Ben, Chris and I went by and talked to Robert about the upcoming Earth Day project to be hosted by the Central Texas Grotto.  We were there about an hour.  We stopped by Dynamite Cave on our way back to camp.  Rosanne and I visited the cave and noticed a small snake at the last climb-up going out of the cave.  We wasted no time getting out of the area even though the snake seemed to be of the nonpoisonous variety.  Sunday it was also misting all of the day.  It misted on us all the way home back to Austin.

Team 1b: Mark Alman, Alex Alman arrived to a surprisingly quiet and sparsely populated cavers' camp Friday night. A couple of folks from the Sandia Grotto were already there, but that was all. We found a place to park the truck and thought we would check out Lemon Ranch Cave before it got too dark. We located the cave (although we were unable to locate it Sunday some rascal must have moved it. It couldn't be my lousy sense of direction!). We didn't go in as we had no vertical gear and thought we should have another adult along with us, just in case. Sat around the fire for a while and then turned in when the light rain began around 10:30 PM. Awoke Sat. AM to a cloudy day and got breakfast completed. Chris Heuss asked if we would like to accompany them on obtaining some GPS coordinates over in Gorman Falls Pasture (correct name?) We said "coitenly!". My son was under the impression that he would get to poke around in a lot of caves that day. Little did he know! Traveled with the above gang to our predetermined destination about 10 AM. Visited several varying types of holes in the ground while Butch and Ben documented their locations. Alex and I were the main "hole checkers", but most were fairly deep fissures that appeared to lead nowhere and no one seemed interested in checking out.
Finished up the cataloging at about 2 PM and came back to camp for lunch. Headed out to Lively Pasture to visit Space Heater Cave. Sara & Brad Golightly, Roger Ginnett, and Brad McClain accompanied us to the cave and Brad, Sara, Ben, Chris, and Ben rappelled to the bottom and got a good chance to see how well Jumar ascenders work in the rain (very well!). Alex returned to the truck after we discovered that there were no horizontal caves for him to check out. He has done vertical caves before, but wasn't interested today. Headed back to camp at about 5:30 after the rain picked up.
 Roger, Brad, Tony Sultana, Alex and I decided to head to Gorman Cave at about 8:30 PM. We used the trail that the Ranger uses on the cave tours, but lost the trail once we reached the river bluff. With the darkness, moisture, and no map, we decided to head back to camp rather than risk injury trying to find the cave. The same gang did finally make it to Gorman Sunday AM. Ran into Ed and a group of A & M students in the cave (we thought there would be no tours due to the lousy weather). Came in via the creek entrance and exited via the second hillside entrance. More water present than the last time we visited (Nov.) but a good (but damp) time was had by all. Found the cave this time using Terry's route from the campsite. I will use this route in the future as it is easier to locate and follow, although longer than other routes. This route is still more favorable than the Gold Mine Route (too hard on trucks and trail is made as you go!) and the Ranger route, see above for problems. Finally headed back to Mesquite at about 1:30 PM in varying amounts of rain all the way back.
Total hours for the weekend: 56 hours.

Team 2, Chris Buntenbah (tape), Ed Goff (sketch), and Russ Johnson (Suuntos) went to Chimneyers Delight (SAB 206) to continue the resurvey started in January by Ed Goff, Laura Goff, Walter Picket, and David Turner. None of the team members had ever approached this cave from the trailhead parking lot, so they relied on Ed's GPS receiver to guide them. It worked perfectly until they got out of the car, when it lost all satellite signals and refused to receive any for the rest of the weekend. The team headed in the general direction of the cave but failed to find the entrance. They decided to walk out to the road and approach the cave from a familiar starting point. They came out of the woods near the cairn that marks the beginning of the flagged trail to the cave and, following it, found the entrance within five minutes. They rigged a rope and descended the 10m fissure to the first room. The rope was rebelayed around a boulder for the second 5m pit. Once down, the team proceeded to the last station surveyed in January in the passage trending west and south from the pit. It was decided to explore to the end of the cave and survey out. Exploration ended in an approximately 7-m-wide bedding-plane passage with an average ceiling height of less than 0.3 m. A lead opening up into slightly less constricted crawling passage was seen southwest from this room beyond a low squeeze but will require digging implements to move some dirt on the floor. A rusted Golden Oil can was found in this area and could be evidence of a possible upstream connection to another cave. The 1 qt. can says "Golden Oil / A Quality Motor Oil / Sealed and packed by Golden West Oil Company / Your guarantee of quality." No oil weight is given on the can, which appears quite old. The last station of the original survey was noted and a new station was established about 6 m beyond it. Large brown fleas were lurking here, one of which stayed with Ed (the only caver without one-piece clothing) until the next morning and inflicted several painful bites. A few cave crickets and one bat (pipistrelle?) were also seen. 46.77 m of crawlway was surveyed back to the end of the January survey, including one moderate-size room by Colorado Bend standards. This room has 3 elongated columns of undissolved limestone bedrock at one end that give the appearance of a 4-lane tollgate. A few small stalactites and rimstone dams with pools and some tiny, fragile calcite rafts were found in this part of the cave. The total surveyed length of this passage is now 96.77 m. After completing this portion of the survey, the team returned to the bottom of the second drop and geared up to ascend out. The cave is quite chilly here and water drips from the upper room. Chris and Ed attempted some photography while Russ climbed out, then followed him. Chris was first up the upper drop, and as it was his debut in in-cave climbing, had some difficulty with the narrow chimney. It was dark outside, and nearing the top of the chimney Chris mistook the combination of Terry Holsinger's red-eyed dog and Terry Holsinger's inhuman growls for a wolf. Terry had graciously hiked out to check on the team since they had been a long time in the cave (1:30-9:00 p.m.)

Total of 22.5 volunteer hours

Team 3  was Alicia Gale, John Gale, Brannon Gale, Morgan Gale, John and Alicia had not been to the park since the mid 80’s. So despite the continuing rain, their party left camp at 10:45 a.m. to locate and map Mystery Cave. They were unable to locate the bluff under which the cave was supposed to be found. After searching for approximately 20 minutes we decided to return to the fork in the trail and try the left branch. They walked and searched for approximately 45 minutes during which time they located a ten foot diameter pit close to the trail. The actual entrance hole was at the bottom, about four feet down, and was burrow sized. It definitely takes water but would require digging out to make it accessible to humans. They also located a cave entrance (Gorman Creek Crevice) in a creek bed under a bluff and, upon further investigation, found a second, fissure pit entrance approximately twenty-five feet deep on the bluff above the first. They climbed down into the pit and then down the next approximately twelve foot drop into the first room of the cave. The cave had an entry room approximately thirty-five feet long by fifteen feet wide with three smaller duck walk/crawling passages going off. The passage on the left pinched down quickly. In the one at the far end of the room we crawled approximately 200' to a flowstone formation that almost sealed off the passage. However, on the left hand side of the formation we noted a passage with air flowing back toward us. This passage continues on the far side of the flowstone but they did not pursue it. The third crawl, on the right side of the entry room, yielded flagging tape located in such a manner as to indicate surveying had been done. They later learned that they had "found" Gorman Fissure Cave. Upon leaving this cave they walked the ridges and valleys in the area looking for other caves. They found a small hole, in a stream bed, approximately twenty-four inches in diameter and seven feet deep that led off in a fissure type passage approximately fifteen feet long. There may be more to this but they did not take the time to investigate further. A short distance along the same stream bed they found a second hole, partially filled, that looked like it was being used as a home by a small quadruped. When they returned to the original meadow off the right hand fork that they now surmised did, somewhere, contain Mystery Cave. With diligent searching, they did eventually find the bluff and, subsequently, the cave and proceeded inside. Beginning with the identifying plate on the tree as the original point of reference, they surveyed the cave. Mystery Cave proceeds in a generally ENE direction with no observable side leads. Toward the end of the cave they encountered a section that had been, and from the looks of things, is still being excavated. This excavation is generally toward the NE and is approximately twenty-six feet long. After checking our survey data they exited the cave and proceeded back to camp arriving, in the rain, at 6:20 p.m. Because it was still raining, and the tent leaked, they opted to break camp and return home to Collage Station.

Total of 28 volunteer hours

Team 4, comprising of Bruce, Darren, Paul, Tony, and one other person (Tony forgot his name), set out to Horseshoe Crevice with the main objective of pushing a passage to connect to Gorman Creek Crevice. Searching and finding the entrance after thirty minutes, we then started gearing up for the vertical entrance. Having limited vertical gear, we rotated three sets with the five of us to enter the crevice.
Once inside the crevice, the main passage began being pushed by just two of our party, Bruce and the unnamed person. The size of the main passage permitted only one or two cavers to easily dig the passage further. While this was occurring, the rest of the party took the opportunity to explore and map two holes in the floor of the crevice itself. Feeling warm air issue from both holes gave us high hopes of a connecting passage to another cave.
Peering into the holes, Darren and I quickly realized a complex of passages began and spread north and west out of the crevice. Both entrances required a few minutes of digging to permit easy access but we soon found out they linked together in a large loop. Discovering four passages that connected to the loop, the south one was quickly ruled out for the time being since it appeared closed off and would require a dig. The newbie Paul then got an opportunity to go underground and take my place assisting Darren while I returned to the crevice floor to map and take temperature and compass readings. The northeast passage continued about ten feet before becoming submerged in water and mud. The remaining two passages held the most promise for a continuing passage. The north passage goes about ten feet and then turns abruptly east, possibly connecting to the northeast passage. The west passage, blocked by debris, continued over fifteen feet before turning southwest. All four passages hold promise for connecting passage although they all will require a bit of digging.
Noticing the extreme temperature differences, we took temperature readings of the rock at the entrance to the holes (60 degrees F), the air inside the crevice (62 deg F), and the warm air coming from the holes (68 deg F). While the warm air may be due to heat coming off of water from the recent rains, hopefully it is an indication of another entrance nearby where the surface air temperature is 68 deg F.
Upon completion, about 4.5 hours later, the main passage was dug a few more feet before ending with a passage blocked by rock, the holes in the crevice floor were given a preliminary examination, and a fissure was explored at the west side of the crevice. Future trips will permit side passages to the main passage, and the four passages beneath the crevice floor to be explored.

Total of 22 volunteer hours

Total hours for whole weekend: 128.5