[Texascavers] April Government Canyon Karst Project Report
April Government Canyon Karst Project Report April 7, 2014 Participants: Lasha Asanidze, Steve Gutting, Christopher Lafferty, Marvin Miller, George Veni Saturday morning we headed up the Joe Johnston Rd. to do some survey and push leads in Big Dome Cave. It was George Veni's first visit to the cave. Being quite familiar with the local geology he was able to identify the limestone of the entrance room as the Dolomitic member of the Edwards, and later to tentatively identify the contact with the Basal Nodular at approximately the floor level below Big Dome. George, Lasha, and I surveyed a pit in the breakdown where the Ramblin' Roland Passage leaves the Breakaway Room. The Ramblin' Roland passage goes to Big Dome. Lasha is a NCKRI student intern from the country of Georgia. He was learning to survey. George set stations and Lasha read instruments and we surveyed 8.48 meters to the bottom, starting at station 15. The lead at the bottom did not tie into the Velvet Underground survey as I had anticipated. The lead has airflow but is breakdown choked. A small hole about a third of the way down the pit looked into the beginning of the Velvet Underground but it wasn't navigable and we didn't survey through it. After entering the data into the Walls mapping program I saw that the bottom of the pit was the new deep point of the cave by 1.62 meters. The cave is now 17.92 meters deep. Steve and Chris surveyed a crawl under breakdown that started at a tight entrance by station A3 and ended by tying into station B6 at the bottom of 5-Way Pit. They surveyed 10.26 meters and Steve reports that the right wall of the passage needs to be checked for leads. When George, Lasha, and I finished our survey we went to work on a dig that Steve and Joe Schaertl had started on a few months before. The lead headed east from station DD4. A hole stepped down into a crawl-able space and then through another small hole into more space beyond. Both holes needed to be opened up. The three of us worked on chiseling off part of the rock obstructing the first hole until I managed to scrape through. Then I worked on the second hole, which was thankfully obstructed by fairly rotten rock. It wasn't long before I scraped through the second hole and found myself in a 3-meter wide crawl that went north at least 5 meters and south about 10 meters. Then, as I was looking south I saw a light coming into the crawl at that end. It was Chris and he had entered the passage without having to dig at all. As I was following Chris back out the easy way, I noticed some interesting space down through the breakdown at the beginning of the crawl that ought to be investigated on a future trip. The cave is now 329.54 meters in surveyed length. April 8, 2014 Participants: Christopher Lafferty, Marvin Miller Sunday was a rainy day and only Chris Lafferty showed up once again to help. The trails were closed but the rain was only light and intermittent so we set out to do some more ridgewalking in Area 5, just north of the Ranch House and east of Laurel Canyon. The two of us couldn't cover a whole lot of ground but we had a fruitful day, nonetheless, in that we found an interesting cave. Situated at the base of a stair-stepping cliff on a steep and brushy canyon side at an elevation of 1180 ft. was a small, dark triangular hole. I called out to Chris, who was on the slope above the cliff, and he announced that he was in a dry stream bed that was heading straight for my location. He appeared on the cliff above and it is obvious that a stream of water will fall to the base of the cliff and enter the cave during storms. This was also obvious upon entering the cave. The floor from the entrance to the near wall - approximately 2 meters inside - was clean washed. A dirt-floored crawl led off to the right. Directly ahead, by the wall, it looked like there might be a drop. I moved ahead on hands and knees and found myself looking down a nice pit. The pit entrance was about .7 meters by 1.5 meters but it immediately belled out to approximately 3 meters in diameter. About 5 meters down was a large sloping ledge but the main part of the pit continued down at least another 5 meters and it looked like there was another small ledge close to the bottom. Beyond that we couldn't see. We were initially going to name the cave Rainy Day Cave but that name is already taken in the TSS database, and after thinking about it I decided the cave needed a more auspicious name anyway. I chose the name Solitude Pit. Sitting alone in the cave twilight at the edge of a silent, but inviting, pit gave me a feeling something like that. We also recorded one additional karst feature that was already flagged but had no aluminum tag and was outside of our previously covered area.
[Texascavers] April Government Canyon Karst Project Report
Government Canyon Karst Project Report April 2 & 3, 2016 Participants: Lauren DeLeon, Steve Gutting, Leia Hill, Leah Miller, Marvin Miller, Greg Mosier, Victoria Sommers, Arron Wertheim Saturday Activities Greg Mosier, my daughter Leah, and I composed the Saturday team. We headed up to the northern part of the SNA to the sink that Greg had identified on the March trip and had opened to an obstruction over a pit. The feature is called JAG Sink. We worked on it until all of my rock-shaving supplies were used up, but we still hadn't cleared the bridge of rock over the pit. There are two small holes that look down into the pit and what can be seen is free-climbable. Some more work is required. We left JAG Sink at about 4:00 and took a little time to look at several of the other nearby identified features. On the March trip Greg had looked at FC-009, -010, and -011. Of these, FC-010 could probably use a little more digging before calling it done. Sunday Activities On Sunday Lauren, Steve, Leia, Victoria, Arron, and I headed north again, this time to Feature 20-54. This feature is about 56 meters north of JAG Sink and is a dig that Steve and I had worked during the March trip. Steve had assembled a rock-shaving kit of his own and was anxious to try it out. His first shot was a blast and we heard rock tinkling down into the hole - the sound of success. Leia and I left him and the others to keep working at it while we went to check out some other identified features in the area. We dug a little at FC-003 but didn't see anything that excited us and gave it up. While travelling to FC-015 we came across the nearby FC-014, which I didn't even have on my list to look at. Both sinks looked promising. At FC-015 we felt a nice breeze coming out of a little hole. We rolled aside a large surface rock but the dig quickly revealed an 8 cm wide crack extending down as far as we could see. By the time we had finished we didn't feel any more air either, so maybe our first sense had been an illusion. We left that sink and went back to FC-014. This sink was approximately 2 m long by 1 m wide by .3 m deep. There was a possible drain at each end. Leia took one end and I took the other and we both started digging. It wasn't long before Leia's dig started looking more promising than mine and I went to help her. We were stopped by a root that was holding in a large rock. We went back to FC 20-54 to see how the work there was progressing and to get a saw for the root. When we got there Victoria and Arron were in the cave! Steve had been the first one down and had already come out. The cave turned out to be a free-climbable pit that starts narrow at about a half-meter wide (after the smaller, blasted entrance) and bells out to about 1.5 m at the bottom. The depth to the floor is about 5 m. A short section of passage extends only about 2 m from the bottom. The floor is flat dirt and the ceiling in the passage section is about a meter tall. Some signs of life were observed: a cliff chirping frog and a spider web. Steve named the cave Double Shot Drop. Cave # 61 for Government Canyon. After everyone had exited the cave we packed up and I led the way to the dig Leia and I had started. We continued digging and by the end of the day had it about a meter deep. The dig is characterized by large loose boulders interspersed with smaller rocks and loose dirt. Lauren was the last one digging and she uncovered a small solution passage trending steeply down along one wall. The passage is too small to get into as of yet, but the walls of the sink are starting to bell out and we seem to be on top of a debris pile. While the dig was going on I took the drill, a couple of benchmarks, and the die kit and installed benchmarks at Government Canyon Blow Hole and Lilyhammer Cave. The numbers incised onto the benchmarks are the TSS Bexar County identification numbers for the caves. We left the sink dig at about 5:00. The next project weekend is May 21 & 22. This will be the last one until October. We start at 9:00 both mornings in the parking lot of the Volunteer/Research Station. To get there enter Government Canyon State Natural Area at the main gate and then take the first right. (Don't go as far as the pay kiosk). There will be a closed gate that opens to the code 1234. Follow the road for about a mile till it ends in front of a building. The parking lot is to the right. Camping is available. Contact me to set it up. Marvin Miller (210) 415-5190 ___ Texascavers mailing list | http://texascavers.com Texascavers@texascavers.com | Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/texascavers@texascavers.com/ http://lists.texascavers.com/listinfo/texascavers
