texascavers Digest 29 May 2014 22:23:42 -0000 Issue 1988
Topics (messages 23896 through 23900):
Off topic - the Colorado earth flow.
23896 by: dirtdoc.comcast.net
Re: the skeleton in water-filled pit in Mexico
23897 by: Preston Forsythe
obituary related
23898 by: David
Tales of the Crackpot Cavers: Kim Kardashian gets her butt stuck in an Irish
cave :
23899 by: Jerry
the surveying device you've always wanted
23900 by: Mixon Bill
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Off topic - the Colorado earth flow.
These events happen on occasion in this type of a geologic setting. This one
was pretty spectacular. The rains and snowfall over the past days and likely
weeks, even months, set the stage by saturating a large volume of
poorly-consolidated material on a fairly steep slope. I don't have any real
details, but listening to the reports, it sounds likely that the mass started
to slowly move, opening cracks that then allowed additional heavy rains and
irrigation water (from a failing canal) to further saturate the ground. That
added water not only liquefied and lubricated the poorly consolidated earth but
made it much heavier, urging it to move down hill. And it finally did.
The attached video shows that at the head of the earth flow there is a large
rotational slump block that slid down into the space where the flow originated.
The earth flowed down the valley, initially filling it, and at one point more
than filled it and flowed over the side of the valley extending down and off to
the right in the video. The fluid material in the original valley continued to
flow down the valley, lowering the amount of material left behind at that
point, which shows the maximum depth of the flow were it extends out of the
valley over impressive relief.
Here is a good article from the LA Times that also has an embedded video
(helicopter footage of the flow as they flew from the toe - bottom of the flow
- uphill to where it started).
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-colorado-mudslide-footage-20140526-story.html
Colorado mudslide: Astonishing footage shows miles of devastation
Los Angeles Times
After a day of aerial and ground searches, Colorado officials failed to find
three men who vanished after a massive May 26 mudslide wiped out miles of
uninhabited land on Grand Mesa, the largest flat-topped mountain in the world.
The immense power and scope of the slide — which, according to rough estimates,
could be as much as eight times larger than the landslide that killed at least
41 people in Snohomish County, Washington, in March — astonished Colorado
officials who surveyed the area by air.
DirtDoc
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Very interesting link and I plan to read the entire article.
Preston in Outer Browder, KY
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Mixon Bill" <[email protected]>
To: "Cavers Texas" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2014 10:00 AM
Subject: [Texascavers] the skeleton in water-filled pit in Mexico
The on-line supplementary material for the article in Science on Naia,
the young girl whose skeleton was found in Hoyo Negro, a pit in the Aktun
Hu part of Sac Actun, Quintana Roo, is freely available at
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2014/05/14/344.6185.750.DC1/Chatters.SM.pdf
The actual article is not freely available, but the supplementary
material contains everything that was in the article and a lot more. It
is 55 pages in all, including figures and tables. Much of it is gory
"methods" details about age dating and DNA analysis, but the first five
pages are a good overview of the pit, and a couple of the figures are
maps.
Articles on Hoyo Negro appear in AMCS Activities Newsletters 33, 34, and
35. The large bones in the front cover photo on number 34 are from a
gomphothere, an elephant-like extinct American animal. -- Mixon
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Work is the curse of the drinking class.
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A Google search tonight revealed that at least 8 cavers recently passed away.
Below are links to their obituaries:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/star-gazette/obituary.aspx?pid=170977089
http://schrader.com/sitemaker/sites/SCHRAD2/obit.cgi?user=1299399Walsh
http://www.timesfreepress.com/obituaries/2014/may/18/jeffery-benjamin/
http://www.mcpeekfuneralhome.com/fh/print.cfm?type=obituary&o_id=2409789&fh_id=13361
http://www.bgdailynews.com/obituaries/donald-mitchell-rountree/article_4d78e28c-b97c-5a50-a9c0-d9a620b0e1d5.html?TNNoMobile
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sanantonio/obituary.aspx?pid=170509845
http://www.broussardsmortuary.com/services.asp?page=odetail&id=10375
This one is from the U.K.
http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/your_views/obituaries/11118825.Dennis_Hewitt_1937___2014/
Searching is not easy, as so many of the links are people named Cave or Caver,
or a town with names like "Bee Cave."
As much as some cavers dislike the word "spelunker," It seems most
appropriate
for obituaries for being able to find missing or lost friends that may
have passed away.
[ Disclaimer: My limited search was only in English, and did not
include Cave Divers, Cavern Divers, Karst Researchers, etc. Also, I
did not verify if I listed the same caver twice. ]
But I did stumble onto a cave diver obituary from December:
http://www.dailystatesman.com/story/2034758.html
David Locklear
NSS # 27639
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Emergency Services Called After Kim Kardashian Becomes Wedged In Ailwee Caves
THE honeymoon of rap mogul Kanye West and reality TV star Kim Kardashian got
off to a sticky start this morning, after emergency services were called to the
Ailwee Caves in County Clare to help free the new bride after she became
hopelessly trapped between two stalagmites.
Located in the heart of the Burren, the popular tourist attraction was high on
Kanyes to-do list during their five day stay in Ireland, and the couple headed
there early this morning following an arrival at Cork airport yesterday.
However, during their guided tour of the limestone caverns Mrs. West (nee
Kardashian) found herself posterially wedged and unable to continue, and with
attempts by onsite staff to free her proving unsuccessful the emergency
services were sent for.
“It was an honour to show the Wests around our caves. Kanye is an avid
spelunker, and was as excited as a child to get to explore the geology and
structure of the Ailwee network. “, said Burren Tourism chief Adrian O’Meara.
“Mrs.West seemed happy to indulge her husband, but as we neared the end of the
tour she began to cry for help having become utterly stuck after misjudging the
width of a passageway. Most people utilise the ‘cats whiskers’ method when
exploring caves, whereby if a persons shoulders fit through a gap, the rest
should too. Mrs. West is a lady whose proportions are the exception to this
rule, and she found herself in a lot of bother”.
Pupils from St. Benedicts primary school in Roscommon were on a class outing at
the time and became trapped behind the star as attempts to free her by Burren
safety staff and an E! Network camera crew only exacerbated the tightness of
the wedging.
After a fruitless hour of pushing officials made the call to a local unit of
the fire brigade to help free the mother of one using specialist equipment, and
within fifteen minutes the scene was attended by every fireman in a tri-county
area.
An hour later the glamorous couple emerged from the darkness in a somewhat
shaken state, and heaped praise on the emergency services for their
thoroughness.
They were whisked away in a Mercedes Limousine to enjoy the rest of their
honeymoon, although have cancelled plans to visit the Newgrange Monument in
Meath and the Sally Gap in Wicklow.
http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2014/05/26/emergency-services-called-after-kim-kardashian-becomes-wedged-in-ailwee-caves/
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http://www.3dlasermapping.com/news-events/news-stories/164-3d-laser-mapping-launches-mobile-indoor-mapping-system
The video link in that is to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj9BKcnXOyo
I think something must have been posted here about the Zebedee gadget
around a year ago, because I had heard of it before. I was reminded of
it by the NSS's journal's having accepted an article about using it in
a couple of Australian caves. Can't properly say any more about the
article because I've got it prepublication to edit, but it looks like
the damn thing works. Accessible (that is, freely available, not
necessarily accessible to the brain) technical articles are at
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7114463/publications/bosse_tro2012.pdf
and
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7114463/publications/bosse_zlot_icra13.pdf
No doubt it's way more expensive than a DistoX, but a lot less
expensive, I imagine, than the device that was used in Devils
Sinkhole. And a hell of a lot easier to use. Technology marches on.--
Mixon
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Work is the curse of the drinking class.
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You may "reply" to the address this message
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