Good point Geary. Our standards for cave conservation and "tread lightly" have changed and evolved considerably in the past half century or so.
The book 50 Years of Texas Caving includes a chapter on conservation and ethics that briefly traces some the changes in our collective thinking. There are a couple of pictures that speak directly to the issue of traffic control. Pictured (page 270) are two views of a sandy-floored passage in the Guadalupe Room portion of Carlsbad Caverns. This area was restricted to "experienced" cavers and yet it can be seen that the original pathway doubled in width within a two year period. It may be even wider by now. We have come a very long way but there are certainly some horrendous incidents in our past. ===Carl Kunath -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: Geary Schindel Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 4:07 PM Subject: RE: [Texascavers] How long is Punkin Cave? You bring up an excellent point regarding damage to a cave and one which has often bothered me. For example, I helped remap parts of Turner Avenue in the Flint Ridge portion of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky in the late 1980's. This was an almost pristine and incredible trunk passage discovered in the late 50's or early 60's. The passage is mostly 10 feet high and 20-30 foot wide, sand covered passage, that runs for thousands of feet. The original explorers left a very narrow trail in the very fine sediments in this passage. However, folks considered the survey in the 60's not up to the standard in the 80's so the passage was resurveyed. (Turner Avenue is well described in the book The Longest Cave by Roger Brucker.) The trip leader for the resurvey wanted the distance to the walls physically measured at each station. This required walking out across the undisturbed sediments which I wouldn't do. However, there were others on the trip that were willing to do this. I tried to reason with them but they were on a mission to survey the cave and were not going to be stopped, come damage to the sediments or formations or not (common sense did not prevail). Now, I could estimate the distance from the survey station to the walls probably with an accuracy of a few feet. Using the scale at which the cave map was to be drawn, this uncertainty was the width of the pen used to draw the map. We forever disturbed these sediments and in my opinion, greatly distracted from the aesthetics of the cave. In addition, sediments (wall crusts, etc) have just as much geologic and aesthetic value and importance as cave formations. Now there are laser range finders that can very accurately measure that distance without damaging the sediment. This weekend, on a survey trip here in Texas, there were four or five survey teams in the cave. The cave has an established trail from the entrance to one of the major junctions in the cave. Over the last 5 plus years, great pains have been taken to keep new cavers on what I call the trade route to minimize damage to formations and crusts. Probably close to 500 people have visited this section of the cave with very minimal damage and disturbance. However, some of the survey teams had no problems with getting off the well established trail and climbing over formations rather than using the trade route on the way to their survey objectives. I don't think the trip leaders were trying to damage the cave, they just weren't properly educated in Leave No Trace ethics and on the proper conservation ethics and practices for the cave. Last Friday, I was doing a site evaluation of a ranch when we crawled into a small cave entrance with the ranch owner's son. After about 100 meters of crawling, we popped up into a fine truck passage and carefully walked down about 500 meters of very well decorated virgin cave. We stopped in passage 20 feet high and 10 feet wide with a large white formation across the passage. I convinced the owner's son to wait until we can come back with some clean clothes and equipment so we don't soil the formation. (we'll see if that happens). So, while we complain about non-cavers doing damage to caves, organized cavers can have just as big or bigger impact. Before we start casting stones, I've broken my fair share of formations and disturbed my fair share of sediments and then some. Maybe old age and wisdom are starting to get the upper hand on my youth and enthusiasm (about time). Geary
