Great report, Nancy! Do you or any of your cohorts have pix from this trip? Thanks, Mark
________________________________ From: Nancy Weaver [mailto:nan...@io.com] Sent: Fri 4/25/2008 8:12 AM To: Texascavers@texascavers.com Subject: [Texascavers] trip report fromCamp Eagle -- CAMP EAGLE CAVE QUEST Friday April 25, 2008: 8 cavers from San Antonio and Austin area converged on Camp Eagle about 20 miles from Rock Springs on the headwaters of the Nueces. The 1400 acre camp has a mile of river frontage with springs, shallow waterfalls and deep swimming and boating stretches and caters to mountain biking, rock climbing and challenge course events. Camp personnel were excited about finding a small cave on the land and rumours of others and issued a Texas wide invitation to cavers to come explore and ridge walk. Rene Shields, Nancy Weaver, Scott and Steve Serur, Barbara Noffsinger and JohnTirums, Kurt Menking and Kitty Swoboda arrived between dusk and late on Friday to set up camp under the live oaks or crash in the spacious dormitories. Over Saturday breakfast, which was provided by the camp, we met our host Matt, the activities director, got maps and hiked out toward the cliffs and the location of the rumoured caves - "an entrance big enough to walk into, but covered up with rocks 15 years ago as the ceiling looked unstable". With Red Arrow and Pape Caves are only a mile or so away in a direct line, this seemed promising. We found a few small features and one dig which several of the guys launched into, but Matt needed to leave soon and wanted to show us the known cave, so we headed cross country to a nice drop down entrance into a large collapse room. Kity and Kurt volunteered to survey the named on the spot, Eagle Cave, and the rest of us headed off to find more. Barely 200 yards away, contouring on game trails, Nancy spotted a nice entrance which she and Rene popped into after hooting for the others. Porcupine Cave, named for the enormous resident denned in an upper passage, is likely also a large collapsed chamber. What remains is a 12 x 20 x 4 foot high room with a hands and knees crawl that goes about 75 feet looping around the outer perimeter of the room. This information is thanks to Barbara and Scott who pushed the crawlway. John and Nancy were examining the very fresh, too big for a coon and hopefully too small for a bear scat, when John shined his light into the upper passage and discovered glittering eyes way in the back. As the rest of us exited rapidly, speculation included: a sheep, a rabbit, alive, dead and finally, definitively, a very large porcupine, alive. The cave is also host to one small brown bat who finally got fed up with our presence and fluttered off. Thoroughly invigorated by the find we split into pairs and spent quite a few more hours traipsing over hills and down arroyos. We covered perhaps a third of the camp with no new finds and limped back for hydrotherapy at the spectaular swimming section of the river. A steep set of steps down a cliff leads to gorgeous clear cold water with kayaks to paddle and a challenging plastic 'iceberg' with climbing holds attached. The goal being to swim out to the iceberg, haul oneself to the mid point or the 25 foot top and launch off the smooth side like a walrus or penguin. Then it was time for camp provided pasta dinner and brownies, lots of old tales and possibly tall tales and bed under the live oaks and full moon. Sunday's search did not find any new caves. A few small questionable sinks were found and dug on, and Kurt, Scott, Steve and John dug more on some of the features found Saturday, but nothing they found was very promising. Kitty and Kurt's eagle cave survey was 413' without any horizontal adjustments. The cave was mostly crawling over breakdown, much of which was popcorn covered. A few walking sized rooms were also surveyed. Camp Eagle is a birders paradise: the camp grounds above the river were in constant motion and song while male vermillion flycatchers chased one another, blue herons were seen mating along the river, whip poor wills, wild turkeys and owls called through the night and innumerable sparrows and wrens, woodpeckers, swallows and swifts and unnamed others flitted around us. The camp staff is friendly, knowledgable and hospitable and a return trip is planned for the end of summer camp season. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com