texascavers Digest 10 Nov 2012 17:42:34 -0000 Issue 1662
Topics (messages 20999 through 21009):
mexico travel
20999 by: Nico Escamilla
Re: Be careful out there
21000 by: pstrickland1.austin.rr.com
speleolympics results
21001 by: Jill Orr
another request for photos
21002 by: Jill Orr
clarification
21003 by: Jill Orr
very sad news
21004 by: vivbone.att.net
21005 by: Sheryl Rieck
Veteran's Day Appreciation
21006 by: NSS Announcements
TPWD Announces Intention to Add 461 acres to Government Canyon SNA
21007 by: R D Milhollin
TCMA-Rolling Oaks Work Day on Saturday, November 10th (San Antonio)
21008 by: ellie watson
More TCR pics?
21009 by: Frank Binney
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--- Begin Message ---
Good news (or sorta) for those who still travel to Mexico.
My local congressman is trying eliminate or waive the security deposit to
get a vehicle permit for traveling. I recall that being 400 dollars iirc,
but he mentions 650, either way its pretty good news. Lets hope it passes,
keep your fingers crossed
Nico
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--- Begin Message ---
The way I understood it, an agreement was made with the arc. people in Oaxaca
city, that the study would be done without moving anything, and everything
would be left,"in sito" in this hidden room, in this nondescript cave. I
visited the cave in 2002, many years after the study, and everything looked in
place to me.
---- bmorgan...@aol.com wrote:
> But Nancy, your story isn't complete. Didn't the Arc narks try to have you
> arrested for going to the cave in the first place? That has happened to me
> three times in Belize.
>
> The first time a humorless jerk named Tom Miller tried to have me thrown
> out of the country for visiting the Chiquibul cave without his permission.
> (Logan can tell you all about it.) That didn't work because I was already
> there. He wrote letters to the forestry department and the University of
> Florida accusing me of being a temple looter and drug user who consorts with
> known outlaws (specifically Arturo and Brother Moses of gales Point). The
> first accusation is untrue but the second two are true. Upon exiting the
> Vaca
> plateau but before writing the letters he burned down my friend Santiago's
> house along with all of his meager belongings, then left a ten dollar bill
> and a note saying "sorry".
>
> Then there was the time the director of the Belize Audubon society tried to
> get the Belize Defense Force (BDF) to search for me in the jungle for the
> crime of entering the Bladen nature preserve without his personal
> permission. The BDF just laughed because they never go into the jungle,
> there could
> be snakes out there! On my way out I ran into a so called "Rapid
> Environmental Assessment" team funded by the Nature Conservancy and
> supported by the
> British army (those damned helicopters again!) They had catered meals with
> fresh salads and dessert yet denied me a pinch of salt. Even though they
> could see I had nothing but a small pack and the clothes on my back they
> accused me of being a looter. While saying this they were standing next to
> large sack loads of looted artifacts.
>
> Then an archeologist named Dunham? took great exception to the fact that I
> had explored the valley of Sleazeweazel branch, an upstream tributary of
> the Bladen branch even further up the Monkey river. There is a small ruin
> there and he wanted credit for being the first person to discover it (by
> helicopter of course!) He apparently brought in a large number of Mayans and
> utterly destroyed the place. His reported pilferage of a large amount of jade
>
> may or may not be true. I can't bear the thought of it so I haven't been
> back. I tried to cooperate by sending him photographs of what I had
> discovered. Unfortunately the aforementioned criminals had in fact dug open
> a grave,
> I caught them and reinterred the remains. Perhaps it was unwise of me to
> take a photo of the king's skull with a snake crawling through the eye
> socket. Dunham was eventually thrown out of the country. Some years later a
> friend of mine who is a real (i.e. non insane) archeologist attended a
> conference in Belmopan. He heard my name mentioned and turned to say, "he's
> a
> friend of mine". For that they tried to throw him out of the country too.
>
> Not all archeologists are insane. What about Logan? (although I have my
> doubts) Why doesn't he pipe up?
>
> SW
>
>
> In a message dated 11/6/2012 1:23:25 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> nan...@prismnet.com writes:
>
> ah always such a gust of fresh air. thought you might enjoy my experience
> with 'legitimate' grave robbers.
>
>
>
>
>
> BLADE CAVE
>
> I was suffering a surfeit of testosterone. We were midway through a 3
> month expedition to explore the massive Sistema Huautla, the multi entranced
> deepest cave in the western hemisphere, at one time 13th deepest in the
> world. We had rented 2 rock houses in the miniscule pueblo of San Augustin,
> a
> collection of perhaps a dozen 2 story homes, a one room school, a
> basketball court and a jail cell in the basement of the municipal building.
> Between
> the cobblestone dead end road and the buildings all the flat land was
> taken. Subsistence farming took place on the 45 degree angle hillsides that
> formed enormous sinkholes or dolinas funneling the wet season floods into
> the
> cave system, both carving it out and scouring it slick. Where the
> hillsides steepened into cliffs, small boys herded goats looking for
> vegetation or
> gathered twigs for cooking fires. The village had no electricity, running
> water was a much repaired plastic pipe that snaked from miles away and
> dripped steadily over by the basketball court. Our 4wd schoolbus and
> assorted
> Toyota trucks filled to the brim with cavers and caving gear were the only
> vehicles to bump down this road. Once a week, a bus careened past the
> intersection of the cobbled turnoff, heading even deeper into the mountains
> of
> Oaxaca, Mexico; occasionally a pipe bed cargo truck could be flagged down
> for a scary ride on the one laned s curved dirt road. Burros carried
> everything else that came in or out.
>
>
>
> The village had no sanitation facilities, using the flat ground that
> doubled as main street. We hacked steps into the clay cliff behind the
> house
> and constructed a marginal out house.
>
>
> The inhabitants of San Agustin vied to surrender their homes to us for the
> wealth of rent money, so we had a fieldhouse kitchen on the main floor,
> with propane stoves, pallets of canned and freeze dried food, cartons of
> local beer, whatever wilted produce and flats of eggs that were available in
> the market town of Huautla, about an hour away on foot or by grinding
> jouncing low gear in the trucks. The downstairs also housed duffel bags of
> rope,
> the cave required thousands of feet, surveying and mapping gear, barrels of
> carbide to power our acetylene gas caving lamps, kerosene lanterns, well
> hidden explosives for enlarging recalcitrant rock passages, digging tools,
> helmets, rock climbing equipment, a rescue stretcher, first aid supplies and
> anything else we could imagine might be required.
>
> Upstairs 11 men, my partner and myself staked out sleeping bag sized
> living areas in what was the family's corn loft. Upstairs and down was
> shared
> with rats, fleas, village dogs and cats. At night the room was a cacophony
> of belches, farts, and snores. The villagers went to bed at dark and got up
> an hour or so before dawn. All night every night was punctuated by
> crowing, braying, barking and wailing of the assorted populace. I was in
> the
> constant company of men who were eating drinking and expending massive
> calories, who had last bathed 6 weeks ago, and for whom delicacy of feeling
> or
> conversation was not a priority.
>
> So that morning when a firsttimer asked if he could join me and Mark on a
> day hike to an entrance Mark had found previously - I snapped No, go find
> your own cave. And much to all of our amazement Frank did.
>
>
> Mexico has some of the richest karst regions of the world. The massive
> bedded limestone has solutioned over the millennia into vast underground
> networks of huge passages and black rivers. These cave systems compete with
> the known depths and complexities of Europe's best, the caves of the
> Pyrenees
> and those of the Ural mountains, with a bonus. The tropical temperatures
> of Mexico made exploration far easier and far less life threatening. And
> the North American cavers had them all to theirselves. In the '60's a
> motley crew of college students from around Texas began to take their
> vacation
> breaks in Mexico, venturing as far as trains and 3rd class buses could take
> them, to stand on the edges of breathtaking pits far out in the jungle, to
> come home with stories that could hardly be credited. The caving fever
> took hold of these few and those who listened to their stories. Communal
> housing was established, old buses and power wagons purchased, group forays
> were made deeper and further into the mountains, always coming back with
> more
> extravagant finds. Deeper pits, more entrances, big black beckoning
> wilderness all in the matrix of an intoxicatingly foreign landscape and
> culture where the dollar went a long ways for these underemployed students.
> In the land rush to explore this vast underground wilderness fiefdoms were
> gradually established, loose affiliations of cavestruck dreamers who
> cooperated somewhat and competed more for longest, deepest. Against this
> backdrop, one group had instituted a policy of hammering a small metal tag
> at the
> entrance of each cave they explored. Nominally the numbers on this tag
> were meant to let others know that the cave had been surveyed and mapped,
> the
> data to be shared, not to waste your time here, to go on to the next
> undiscovered cave. Effectively, the data was back in Austin, often released
> reluctantly and worst case, cave entrances were sometimes marked for future
> reference without ever being entered - a sort of finders claim. I had
> decried this policy for a number of reasons: the attempted ownership of
> areas,
> and the dismissive attitude of explorers toward a cave thus marked. Despite
> the sure knowledge that there were often overlooked passages and leads
> there was an obsession by cavers who wanted to be the first into a cave,
> some
> special status conferred on the one who 'scooped booty' as running headlong
> down virgin passage was called. Our group didn't use the tag system.
>
> So it was on this spring day in 1987, that Frank went out from San
> Agustin, wandered around the mountains until he found an entrance, and
> explored it
> on his own, never quessing that the cave was well known, had been mapped
> and was considered to be 'done'.
>
> When he reached the back of the two medium sized rooms, he poked into a
> crawlspace following the air, that breath that the cave breathes, exchanging
> its volume of space each day with the outside world: one long inhale, then
> an exhale. Here the ceiling dipped down near the floor, compressing the
> air and making its flow more powerful. After wriggling for a body length or
> so, Frank came out into a room where he could stand up and he must surely
> have gasped at what his light picked out. Everywhere he turned, there was a
> jumble of sophisticated pots. A far alcove looked like a dish drainer,
> dozens of pots stacked atop one another and glistening with calcite deposits
> indicating that they had been here for a very long time. The floor was
> littered with finely worked beads. The center of the room had a single
> oblong
> rock oddly alone on the sandy floor. And on the rock was a 6 inch
> obsidian blade. Alongside it was another longer blade. A human skull lay
> there
> as well and all about the skull were the tiny squares of turquoise tile that
> had once decorated it.
>
> He came back to the fieldhouse, bubbling with excitement, which was
> contagious. All plans were set aside the next day and all of us in camp,
> followed him to the cave. We explored in amazement, poking into corners and
> exclaiming over new treasures. Very few of the caves in this region were so
> amenable to human access. Most had entrance drops over 60 feet in depth and
> took such vast quantities of water in the rainy season that there was rarely
> any gravel, much less a stash of antiquities. Despite the suspicions of
> the locals that we must be after gold or uranium or treasure, this was in
> fact the first place we had found anything other than rock and water.
>
> For several days there was no activity other than admiring Blade Cave as
> it was promptly named. Photography, speculation, and solemn agreements all
> around not to divulge the secret outside of the group. There was no
> consideration of taking anything. One of the strongest taboos in caving is
> taking anything from a cave. And the taboo is enforced with the tacit
> understanding that anyone who broke it would be kicked out of the group. It
> was a
> powerful threat.
>
> What happened next was worse.
>
> Some months after the expedition had returned to the States, we received a
> formal note from the wife of one of the explorers. She was an archaeology
> student and had found the perfect thesis. Without consulting any of the
> rest of the group, she and her husband had returned to Mexico, had gotten in
> touch with the authorities in Oaxaca City, had taken them to the cave and
> all the material that could be, had been removed from the site. According
> to the authorities, it was stored in the basement of the government museum.
> I'll bet the items hit the black market before the end of the day and are
> now displayed in the home of a smug collector. A gate was constructed in
> the tiny crawlspace to prevent looting - unofficial looting - of the pots
> that had been cemented in place.
>
>
> A thesis sits in a library somewhere unread, surrounded by hundreds of
> similar ones; a collector gratifies his ego; an official pockets a payoff;
> a
> sacred site undisturbed for centuries, is ransacked; and a little more
> mystery and wonder vanishes from the world.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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--- Begin Message ---
Does anyone have the speleolympic results to send me for the Texas Caver?
Articles? Photos?
Thanks in advance! Jill
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--- Begin Message ---
If anyone has photos of any of the Chuck Stuehm Award winners - I'd love to
have them for the TC
Austin McRee - Greater Houston Grotto
Kris Pena - UT Grotto
William Quast - UT Grotto
Natasha Glasgow - DFW Grotto
Gregg Williams - Bexar Grotto
Rachel Saker - Aggie Speleological Society
Recipients are welcome to send your own J
Thanks! - jill
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--- Begin Message ---
Chuck Stuehm Award winners photo request : photos do not have to be from the
TCR awards announcment. Any nice photo will do.
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--- Begin Message ---
Many of you already know, but I haven't seen an announcement here on
texascavers yet.
Tragically, we lost one of our own unexpectedly and suddenly this week. Caver,
Nathan Parker passed away of a heart attack. He was just a fine human being and
will be greatly missed. I'm sure I'm not the only one at the UT Grotto meeting
last night who kept glimpsing him out of the corner of my eye, or hearing his
voice nearby at the Posse.
Here is the relevant information:
Services for Nathan Parker, PhD, will be held Saturday, November 10th at
Weed-Corley-Fish, located at 2620 South Congress Avenue.
Family will be receiving friends beginning at 10:00 am; service to begin at
11:00.
A private grave-side burial and luncheon will follow. In lieu of flowers,
please make donations in Nathan's name to one of the following charities: Texas
Cave Management Association, (see below) or to the Boy Scouts of America
Capital Area Council (www.bsacac.org).
Please visit Nathan's Facebook page or the online guestbook at
http://www.wcfish.com/ to leave messages for Nathan's family.
Donations to the Texas Cave Management Association (TCMA) should use the
following steps:
1. Go to this website: http://www.tcmacaves.org/financial/
2. In the “Donate To” space, pull down “other” from the menu. This alerts TCMA
that the donation is for a special honor.
3. Fill out the remainder of the donation information.
4. *Important final step* is to email ronra...@tcmacaves.org with the
information that this donation is in honor of Nathan Parker.
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
My thoughts are with you all and my sympathy for your loss.
Sheryl Rieck
Sent from my iPhone-Resistance was futile.
On Nov 8, 2012, at 8:35 AM, vivb...@att.net wrote:
> Many of you already know, but I haven't seen an announcement here on
> texascavers yet.
>
> Tragically, we lost one of our own unexpectedly and suddenly this week.
> Caver, Nathan Parker passed away of a heart attack. He was just a fine human
> being and will be greatly missed. I'm sure I'm not the only one at the UT
> Grotto meeting last night who kept glimpsing him out of the corner of my eye,
> or hearing his voice nearby at the Posse.
>
> Here is the relevant information:
> Services for Nathan Parker, PhD, will be held Saturday, November 10th at
> Weed-Corley-Fish, located at 2620 South Congress Avenue.
>
> Family will be receiving friends beginning at 10:00 am; service to begin at
> 11:00.
>
> A private grave-side burial and luncheon will follow. In lieu of flowers,
> please make donations in Nathan's name to one of the following charities:
> Texas Cave Management Association, (see below) or to the Boy Scouts of
> America Capital Area Council (www.bsacac.org).
>
> Please visit Nathan's Facebook page or the online guestbook at
> http://www.wcfish.com/ to leave messages for Nathan's family.
>
> Donations to the Texas Cave Management Association (TCMA) should use the
> following steps:
>
> 1. Go to this website: http://www.tcmacaves.org/financial/
>
> 2. In the “Donate To” space, pull down “other” from the menu. This alerts
> TCMA that the donation is for a special honor.
>
> 3. Fill out the remainder of the donation information.
>
> 4. *Important final step* is to email ronra...@tcmacaves.org with the
> information that this donation is in honor of Nathan Parker.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Visit our website: http://texascavers.com
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com
> For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
>
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--- Begin Message ---
The members of the NSS Social Media team are planning to put together
a special post for Veterans Day.
If you are a member of the NSS and a Veteran or active-duty member of
the Armed Services, please send us a photograph of yourself in uniform
by Saturday, 11/10 at 9 PM EST. We will also accept photographs from
deceased NSS members who served in the Armed Services if you have them.
Email your photo to n...@caves.org with the subject: Veterans Day
Thank you!
-Dean
Dean Wiseman
NSS#32690 RL, Director
Chairman, NSS PR Division
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--- Begin Message ---
Great move by the State of Texas PWC. Thanks to all Texas cavers involved
behind the scenes in this project.
http://tpwd.state.tx.us/newsmedia/releases/?req=20121108a
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--- Begin Message ---
Cavers,
Here is a reminder that the Texas Cave Management Association (TCMA) will
be having a work day this weekend, Saturday, November 10th at the the
Rolling Oaks Cave Preserve in Northwestern San Antonio to dig on Niche
Cave. (Not to be confused with the Rolling Oaks in Wimberly.)
Volunteers are needed to dig debris and old ranch trash out of the entrance
of Niche Cave. We need people, buckets, and cave-digging tools. Bring your
own gloves, drinks, and snacks for the work. TCMA will provide bottled
water.
I will be on-site if anyone wishes to enter the other caves on the preserve
(Chimney Cricket Cave, Obvious Little Cave, and World Newt Cave) after the
dig. Bring your own cave gear.
The cave preserve is located at 224 Laurel Ridge Lane, San Antonio, TX
78253. All visitors to the Preserve will be asked to sign a liability
waiver. Look for cavers and park along the street. Meet at 10:00 am.We
should be finished with the work by 2pm or so.
Please contact me off-list with additional questions. There is no need to
RSVP if you are attending. Just show up! If it is raining the clean-up
will be canceled and rescheduled for a later date.
Thanks for your support of TCMA and cave management.
Ellie Watson
TCMA Rolling Oaks Preserve Manager
509-899-0007
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--- Begin Message ---
Is it possible to see too many poorly edited photos of exuberant young
cavers, vaguely familiar-looking oldsters, scavenging camp dogs, vintage
military vehicles, and raparian Central Texas karst scenery?
I don't think so!
Here's another album from last month's TCR:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4906884827934.2190445.1172443723&t
ype=1&l=5cf4f19182
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