All right. I give up. All those great Colorado Bend project reports make me realize I've got to do the same thing. We had two teams at Government Canyon on November 10. I led Rick Corbell, Christin Miller, Sierra Ostrov, and Petra Ostrov to Big Dome Cave to continue the survey. We concentrated our efforts in the entrance room and surveyed 44.14 meters in 12 stations. We tried to follow the perimeter of the room as closely as possible but on the east side the rising floor comes too close to the ceiling and the furthest extents of the room cannot be verified. We also surveyed into two small rooms at the southeast corner that have interesting solution features in the bedrock floor. While Christin and I were giving Petra and Sierra a tour of the lower part of the cave, Rick removed a rock at the northwest corner of the entrance room to gain access to another small, low, dirt-floored room. In the entrance area we still need to survey the new room that Rick found and survey out the second entrance to the cave. Significantly, the cave length is now 258.15 meters, making Big Dome cave officially the longest cave in Government Canyon SNA. The cave that was knocked from the top spot is Dancing Rattler Cave at 225.24 meters.
The second team was made up of Christopher Francke, Leslie Bell, Tom Rogers, and Jill Orr. They took the long hike to the top of the hill loaded down with rope, vertical gear, hammer drill, batteries, hammer, chisel, etc. to continue pushing the lead in the bottom of Lost Pothole. They were successful in getting into Rebecca's Pit, but, against all expectations, there was no going cave or leads of any kind at the bottom. It was a blind pit. So where does all the air come from? Everyone was so focused on the pit that no one had noticed that the airflow was coming from the solution channel that crosses over the pit and continues on the other side. After finding that the bottom of the pit had no leads, the team confirmed that, indeed, the air was coming from the channel at the top. The opinion of the team was that the channel was too small for an indefinite length and that continuing to try to follow it by micro-blasting or hammering was not feasible. We will do a survey trip to survey Rebecca's Pit, since it is likely the lowest point in the deepest cave on the SNA. Otherwise the cave will be considered finished. The next Government Canyon Karst Project trip will be on December 7 & 8 and will continue the first weekend of the month until further notice. Marvin Miller
