Saturday, Aug 1 was the latest Deep Cave survey trip. With 19 cavers turning out from around the state, we were able to put 6 survey teams in the cave. Ellie Falgout led a team with Gary Donham and Wade McDaniel to finish off two leads in the Crystal Water and Junction Room areas. Bennett Lee led a team with Pam Campbell and Lindsay Smith to continue their previous survey off of Lillie’s Leisure which eventual led to a new, but difficult connection to the Bear Scratch Hall area. Their team had a nice long day in the cave, coming back to the cabin about 1am. Saj Zappitello led a team with Matt Zappitello, and Tom Rogers to work on one of several leads in the Rust Room. This lead down into a new area below that also connects to the route to Bear Scratch Hall. Marvin Miller led a team with Gerry Geletzke and Jake McLeod to work on the seemly endless maze in the Miller Time area. On this trip they surveyed back under the Forest of Columns Room and made a couple of connections up into it. Their survey continued further and eventually tied into the Lost World survey. Though they left the cave at the same time as most other teams, they did an amazing 124 m of survey finding many new leads. Don Arburn lead a team with Arron Wertheim, Vicki DeLeon and initially Mike Harris, although he elected to work on trail markers in the Forest of Columns area and eventually hooked up with Marvin’s team. Don’s team continued work below the Helictite Room work on some remaining leads and it looks like this extensive maze is starting to be wrapped up. Finally, my team included Galen Falgout and Jill Orr and we started by visiting the MCM Room to get photos, collect a mud sample, and check for remaining leads. After concluded there were none, we proceeded down to an area below the Helictite Room but back under the Forest of Columns to work on several lead there. Two of these connected to another survey while the other two eventually ended, completing this area.
All told, the teams had a great day surveying 269.2 total meters. After subtracting for overlapping shots and tie-ins, this brings the new length of the cave to 5518.3 m. A more detailed report on this on other recent survey trips will appear in the next issue of the Texas Caver. Thanks, Joe Mitchell joemitch...@satx.rr.com _______________________________________________ Texascavers mailing list | http://texascavers.com Texascavers@texascavers.com | Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/texascavers@texascavers.com/ http://lists.texascavers.com/listinfo/texascavers
