November/December Government Canyon Karst Project Report
*November 2, 2014* *Participants: *Luciano Bejarano, DiAnne Dahl, Lisa Hilbrands, Hanz Larson, Nicholas Martinez, Leah Miller, Marvin Miller, Brandon Parker, Matthew Shippen, Richard Silver, Joedy Yglesias Joedy brought a large contingent of Navy personnel—all but myself, Leah, and Richard Silver—to the project this morning. Joedy was the only one with any caving experience. I made up two teams. I put Joedy in charge of Matthew, Hanz, and Nicholas at The Dig to keep digging out the part of this cave that is a pit open to the surface. There is a possibility of uncovering more passage as fill is removed. The team dug out about about 1 cubic meter of dirt and rock but didn’t uncover anything that could be entered. I took the rest of the participants to Area 20 to continue ridgewalking. We found and recorded two features that do not hold much promise of leading into a cave. We also came across Feature 20-58, which Joe Schaertl found on the October trip. This narrow slot has good airflow, drops approximately 3m to a visible floor, and only needs to be widened slightly to make it accessible. It almost certainly leads to a cave. *December 6 & 7, 2014* *Participants: *Luciano Bejarano, Matthew Conner, Tom Florer, Lisa Hilbrands, Leia Hill, Chris Lafferty, Nicholas Martinez, Christin Miller, Leah Miller, Lisa Miller, Marvin Miller, Jake Miranti, Greg Mosier, Michael O’Campo, Donny Roland, Joe Schaertl, Matthew Shippen, Richard Silver, Joedy Yglesias *December 6* We had 3 teams on Saturday. Solitude Pit Team: Chris Lafferty attended the project again after having been out of town for several months. On his last project trip on a rainy day in April we found Solitude Pit. I hadn’t had a good team to go back to explore the cave, which has a 9+ meter pit requiring vertical rope work. Chris was raring to go, of course, and I sent Tom Florer and Donny Roland with him. Chris descended the pit, which lies just 2m inside the cliff-side entrance, while Tom and Donny waited to hear what he found at the bottom. What Chris found immediately past the bottom of the pit was a downward sloping constriction. The cave could be seen to open up beyond. He experimented with the squeeze, got himself stuck, extricated himself, and decided not to take any more chances. He tried hammering on it a bit but soon gave up with the report that it would take more technical rock-shaving techniques to enlarge it. With this report Tom and Donny elected not to descend. Tom checked a crawl inside the entrance to the cave and found it got too small. Iron Horse Team: Greg Mosier led Leia Hill and Richard Silver to the Iron Horse tract, recently added to the SNA, to look at two caves that are located there on the Texas Speleological Survey (TSS) GIS database map. Horseshoe Cave No. 2 was recorded by SWCA and the unnamed cave was described to George Veni and the location is an estimate. At the location for Horseshoe Cave No. 2, which the TSS database does not have a description for, they found a .3m diameter solutioned hole that dropped .5m to a bedding plane void. The feature was not big enough to get into. In the TSS database, the unnamed cave is described as a 1-meter-high tunnel that extends for several hundred meters. The only thing that Greg’s team found that was in any way comparable was a solutioned passage close to stream level that was only a little over 3m long. It is quite probable that the given location of the cave is inaccurate, and it may not be on SNA property at all. We will probably do some more looking for this cave in the future. 20-58 Team: I took Lisa, Christin, and Leah Miller and Joe Schaertl to the feature that Joe’s team found on the October ridgewalking trip. A meter-long crack, .2m wide, drops down almost vertically and can be seen to penetrate a ceiling or enlarge in dimensions about a meter from the surface. A dirt floor is visible 3 meters below. Our goal was to use the "straws" rock shaving method to break up a large rock chocked in the entrance and then to enlarge the entrance and get into the cave. Our first charge broke up the rock. That was the only success we had, as after that the next two charges set to open up the entrance just blew out the plugs. Subsequent charges didn’t go off at all, apparently a lack of battery power. It was my first time trying this method of rock removal, but it has been successfully used by cavers in other areas and I am confident we will overcome the difficulties on the next trip and gain access to this cave. When we realized we weren’t going to get anywhere at 20-58, we headed due south approximately 400m to FC-25, a cave found by Zara in 2011. This cave had not yet been looked at by the project and it needed to be surveyed. We got to the GPS location and didn’t see a cave. We looked around a bit and couldn’t find anything. The girls decided to take a rest after the long bushwhack and Joe and I started casting about for the entrance. After several hundred meters of back and forth, and triangulating off the location of FC-24, which I came across nearby, I decided we should give up. At that moment Joe spotted the entrance not more than 5m from where the girls were napping. The cave drops in two steps of about 2m each to a loose dirt and rubble floor 1.2m by .7m. Slight airflow and some holes along the sides indicate that digging this floor out might yield more passage. We found some interesting bones at the bottom and took a photo. Digging will wait on a determination on whether or not the bones are human. Due to all the time spent searching for the cave, we no longer had time to do the survey, and left it for another day. *December 7* Joedy Yglesias showed up again with his Navy “recruits”. Richard Silver was also in attendance so I sent him with a team of diggers to another feature on the Iron Horse tract. Besides Richard, the dig team was made up by Joedy, Matthew Conner, Nicholas Martinez, and Matthew Shippen. They worked on several features in the same general area. A large rock was removed from IH-3 and the team did well to excavate enough dirt and rock to be able to get down into the sink. At floor level it opens into a bedding plane void that goes in all directions for 2 to 3m but isn’t tall enough for a person to get into. Richard says that IH-4 “at first appeared to be large pieces of float. After removal of soil and rocks it seems with continued digging there may be some additional voids.” I led the rest of the volunteers, Luciano Bejarano, Lisa Hilbrands, Leah Miller, Jake Miranti, and Michael O’Campo to do more ridgewalking in Area 20. We had walked barely 30m before Luciano came upon a cave. The .7m by .3m rectangular opening drops 2m to a small room less than 2m in idameter. The floor is dirt and rock fill. A passage approximately 1m by 1m exits the room but access to is blocked by fill and a large section of flowstone that is probably connected to a buried boulder. A little digging and rock breaking on a future trip will give us something to explore. The cave was named Lilyhammer. Luciano and Lisa had obviously conferred on this matter before coming on the trip because they were ready with the name. Lisa is a fan of the television show and she said she has relatives in the town of Lilyhammer, Sweden, though I couldn’t find a place with that name by searching on the internet. After checking out the cave we continued ridgewalking and found another 2 karst features and 1 historical feature. The Government Canyon Karst Project is a TSA project. The next trip will be on January 3 & 4. We meet at 9:00 in the parking lot of the Volunteer/Research Station. Enter the park at the main gate and then take the first right. Go through the unlocked gate and drive about a mile to the VRS. The parking lot is on the right. Camping is available. Contact me for more info. Marvin Miller (210) 415-5190
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