A really interesting, descriptive, and well written trip report. Great for us
temporary shut-ins!
Mark
From: Marvin Miller
Sent: Sunday, June 5, 2022 5:34 PM
To: texascavers@texascavers.com
Subject: Re: [Texascavers] Dinosaur Cave
Good name. We will keep it!
On Sun, Jun 5, 2022, 1:29 PM Kurt Menking <kurt.menk...@gmail.com> wrote:
Flaco in Spanish is skinny. Team skinny
On Sun, Jun 5, 2022, 12:06 PM Marvin Miller <cave0mil...@gmail.com> wrote:
team flaco? I don't get the reference.
On Sun, Jun 5, 2022, 8:15 AM Kurt Menking <kurt.menk...@gmail.com> wrote:
Great trip. Congrats to team flaco.
On Sat, Jun 4, 2022, 9:14 PM Marvin Miller <cave0mil...@gmail.com> wrote:
Kelsey Dennis and Mio Kitano joined me today to finish up a little bit
of muddy survey and to push leads in Dinosaur Cave. Dinosaur Cave is a 642
meter-long cave in Comal County. The survey went about 2 meters down a hole
that had been too tight for the previous survey team. Both Kelsey and Mio have
slight figures ideal for these kinds of leads. The next survey shot was 3
meters through a muddy trough into a small terminal room with some drops
falling from the ceiling. The drops had been a trickle when I had first seen
this room last year. The room isn't really terminal because there is a slot in
the floor that could be enlarged to get down to the next little space 2 meters
below but then there is another, tighter constriction. There is no airflow so
this is not a high priority lead.
We struggled out of these muddy confines and headed back towards the
entrance till we stopped at a hole that dropped down in the middle of the
passage. This hole leads to a bit of walking passage in the breakdown that
makes up the floor and fills the lower part of the main passage. 10 meters
along the breakdown passage a small hole in the floor drops down into a small
room, the floor of which slopes further down to the opening of a small,
horizontal tube in bedrock. The tube is straight and clean-washed and can be
seen to extend at least 5 meters. The tube is intimidating (to me, at least)
because it looks barely larger than body-sized. Once you get into it there is
actually a little more space than that, and only one spot where you are
scraping floor and ceiling. At about the 5-meter mark you encounter a
cross-joint which provides some relief, and immediately after that the floor
drops down into a fissure and then the passage widens, opens up to the right,
and drops over a ledge into a small room. Bennett Lee pushed this passage and
discovered this room. A small trickle of water falls from a too-small tube in
one wall. At floor level a duck under the ceiling leads to a short 5-meter
section of passage, at the end of which was today's objective. At that point
the floor trends slightly down and the ceiling comes down to within 20 cm of
the floor, which is clean-washed from that point. I had tried to cram myself
into this lead when Bennett, Greg Mosier, and I surveyed the preceding passage
but it was a no-go. I couldn't even get far enough to see around the near
corner. Kelsey is a skinny girl and had no problem with it. There is a pool in
the floor just after it gets tight so she had to consider whether she wanted to
get wet, but in the end she committed to it and soon disappeared around the
corner. She kept a running commentary and informed us that just ahead it was
going to open up to walking - or at least stoop-walking height. She was soon
there and continued, sometimes in several cm of water. There was another short
constriction to be passed and then the passage dimensions resumed. She had to
stop, probably about 20 to 25 meters along, due to a boulder that was filling
the passage. She could see the passage continuing past the boulder. Her
assessment was that it could probably be broken up with a sledge or rolled out
of the way. There is good airflow coming out of this passage, really the only
airflow we have seen anywhere in Dinosaur Cave.
When Kelsey came back out, excited by her discovery, we set to work on
the other passage that exits here, stacked almost right on top of the water
crawl below. The problem with this one was that it was almost filled with a 2
meter-long, 1 meter-wide slab of breakdown. It wasn't very thick so we had some
hope that we could break it up somehow. We took turns beating on the near end,
and some bits broke off easily, but then it got hard. I decided it was time to
employ the hammer drill and straws. I had barely drilled 4 cm into the rock
when my bit got stuck and would not move. The only way to rescue it was to beat
on the rock some more. I started in on that and suddenly the rock broke across
its width about half-a-meter back. This large chunk fell to the ground in front
of the lower passage, and the remainder of the slab started to slide down what
must have been a slight slope towards us! Fortunately, it stopped moving after
10 or 15 cm. We then had a discussion that if a survey team was going to come
back and attack the lower passage, the slab would first need to be eliminated.
We continued pounding on it - with some care to have an escape route - and
eventually were able to lever it and chock it in a more stable situation. What
all of that ended up doing for us was open up space over the top of the slab to
crawl across and see what lay beyond. A quick look showed that the passage took
a sharp right turn and followed the trend of the lower passage. Mio ventured in
and I noticed that I could see a reflection of her light on the pool in the
lower passage. There were holes in the floor. In fact, she remarked that the
floor was not stable and there was a danger of falling through. Several rocks
were dislodged and fell into the lower passage. About 4 meters in, the passage
was blocked by flowstone, but she could see around it into a larger space. It
is almost certainly the same passage that Kelsey traversed. This is a possible
bypass to the lower level constriction.
The new discovery is at the lowest point of the cave and the air was
not very good. We will wait until winter to organize further survey trips. We
left the cave happy, muddy, and tired.
Marvin Miller
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