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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.
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