Project Dates: December 12-13, 2015 Volunteers: Kris Peña, Will Quast, Tyler Forbes, Jorge Carcamo, Jeremiah Schoenert, Brendon Brown, Heather Tuček, Jeffrey Nichols, Liz Herren, Craig Sherrell, Elizabeth Copelin, Stacy Vanderworth
Total Hours: 85 hrs work time + 42 hrs drive time = 127 volunteer hours Summary: We had 12 people come out for an unseasonably warm December trip and we hiked in just jeans and t-shirts. The threat of a rainy weekend kept a few people away, but the rain didn’t fall until Saturday night after everyone was in their tents. We divided into 3 teams. Will and Kris’s team headed out into the Upper Gold Mine area to karst walk some previously scoped out areas. A few known caves were visited, a few holes inspected and a potential new cave was found. Heather and Jeff returned to their dig on Meatbag Cave after first helping the park with a cave tour. Tyler took his team for another successful trip across the river into Lampasas County. They used kayaks to cross quickly and spent a long day in numerous caves. All teams returned to camp by evening in time to enjoy dinner and time around the campfire. A Garmin 60CS was damaged on this trip and we will need to use project funds to replace it. Full Report: Names: Will Quast, Kris Peña, Elizabeth Herren, Stacy Vanderworth, Craig Sherrell, Elizabeth Copelin Times: 10 am - 5:30 pm Purpose: To relocate and survey known caves and karst walk Data: Will’s GPS Report: We parked at the Permit Lot across from the Lemons Ridge Trail. Just a couple hundred meters on to the trail, we found some rusted out barrels. Then we investigated a sink that was found at the base of the tree (CS1KF). The team dug a little at the sink while Liz and Kris flew off into the woods, excited to karst investigate the area. The girls were so excited they forgot the GPS so they could not plug in the karst feature they found. Alas it was not humanly passable anyway. Next we trounced through the woods until we came upon Sumps Below (SAB 245), a known but untagged cave. We kinda just poked our head in and headed off to Red Gate Cave (SAB 234 tagged). Craig was the only one brave enough to free climb this cave and the rest of us just agreed our free climbing skills needed work. Next we were off to Grand Cedar (SAB 292 tagged). Here Will and Kris rigged some webbing for the short drop and went in first to dig a little on the end room. Craig wandered off and found an unknown cave but sadly did not save it into the GPS correctly so it is temporarily unknown again. Stacy, Liz and Elizabeth dug on a sink outside. It seems the sink is right above this room as they could hear us through the ceiling. The air inside the end of the cave got bad so Will and Kris emerged. Stacy, Liz and Elizabeth dropped into the first pit. On the way out Liz and Elizabeth found three tri colored bats! We then headed off in the direction of Sheep Den (SAB 242) but Will found a previously unmarked, untagged cave we nicknamed Fern Gully since it's entrance was covered in ferns. We all dropped into this cave. Below the first drop was three more tricolored bats. It opens up into a big room where Craig and Will were able to stand on a platform overlooking a pit. Will rigged it with rope and dropped the pit. It was about 40 feet down but the air was super bad. He came right back up. We left Fern Gully and headed to Flaky Rock (SAB 266 tagged). It had a sloping path with no good foot holds and went only like 20 feet. We moved on after Kris climbed out cursing, and Kris does not curse. No fun to be had there. Yellow Ribbon (SAB 265 tagged) was next. Craig once again was the only one who free climbed all the way down into this cave. The rest tried but didn't go far. Last stop was Sheep Den (SAB242 no tag). It was too late in the day to survey the cave but we all poked around in the cave for a bit. Seven total caves, seven and a half hours hiking and caving. I'd say it was a productive adventure. Future Objectives: Relocate Craig’s missing karst feature, return to Fern Gully when the air is better and survey Names: Heather Tuček, Jeffrey Nichols Time: 12:00pm - 5:00pm Purpose: Continue to Dig on MeatBag Report: We went to MeatBag (no ID) once again to continue working on the promising dig that we have there. We dug quite a bit of loose dirt and rocks out of the entrance hole, and it looks to be a nicely fractured solutional feature, but full of dirt. We can see into the feature 3.6metres, from the bottom of the entrance hole, which is 2.3metres deep from the ground surface. Looks promising! The plan is to visit again when we can and dig straight down to try to find the main pit of the fracture. Name: Tyler Forbes, Jorge Carcamo, Jeremiah Schoenert, Brendon Brown Time: 9 am - 4:30 pm Purpose: Karst walk across the river Data: TSA GPS #2 Report: With a lot of excitement about more to discover across the river, we used this Saturday to explore more of the Lampasas county side of the park. We needed kayaks again because the river was even more up than last time. With permission from the rangers yet again we loaded kayaks up and headed down to the River Trail by the conference center to launch. During the launching process we foolishly left a pair of loppers in the truck. This was a huge mistake as it is overgrown with dead cedar over majority of the land over there. We realized the lopper problem as we started our hike up the canyon bluffs of the Colorado. Taking a route more eastward than the track we plotted last November, trying to stray away from known caves on the map and previous tracks I’ve walked. As soon as we neared the higher elevation, we found more and more exposed limestone and an apparent karst area. Jeremiah points out a small hole in the ground, a small clogged sink with some large limestone slabs wedged in, and you can see down about a foot and a half. Maybe if the slabs came out, it might go somewhere but probably not. Dug on this for a bit, and found a couple 30-30 casings causing us to suggest the name, Casing KF (no ID). We spread out and hiked this area, slowly but surely for a while. During this search, I came across a really cool ’49 – ’50 Plymouth hubcap sitting under a Cedar tree, not too far off from the old “road” that runs through part of this park. In the same area, Tyler found a pretty cool intersection of crevices that were clogged by rock at the surface. Not too far off from the hubcap, I’d suggest naming this one something along the lines of Plymouth cap crevice, or something. The main crevice which runs about 20 degrees north, for about 40ft exposed on the surface, meets up perpendicularly with another crack, following the hill down and possibly draining further off east that way. As I’m standing with each of my legs over the crevice marking the point on my GPS, I can smell warm cave air blowing up at my face. This got me excited, and we started yanking rocks out. We got to a point where you can stand on the clogged rocks, but your waist up is still poking out of the surface. You can see past these rocks, And it’s assumed that the cave proceeds in the direction that the perpendicular-lying fissure is the way that this cave might “go”. The area that this KF was found, might be worth a double check over. There was some pretty cool stuff around, but we didn’t find anything else on this exact walk. We headed up towards the creek that runs from the top of the park down into the neighboring southeastern property. At the top of this creek isn’t as karsty as we were hoping, but more so down the creek, and sadly it looks like into the neighboring property as well. Before getting to the fence though, we did find a set of 2 clogged sinks along a drain, they weren’t very large or open so we just marked them and kept moving on. We reached the fence, which just like the fence on the other side, is pretty clear most of the way and serves as a highway for faster movement into the backcountry, yet on the contrary you cannot access this fence directly from the river due to the high steep bluffs near the fenceline. After more exploring and not too much finding, we used the SE fenceline as our highway to head back, and maybe check out some of the known caves along the cliff face on our way back to the kayaks. On the top part of the cliff, the fence runs right through the middle of an interesting karst feature / small shelter cave. One could theoretically crawl in one side, and into the property on the other side. We didn’t do that however, as that would be trespassing. The fence got us back a lot quicker than expected, and If we didn’t have the kayaks we could have jumped in the river and swam right back to River Trail from here. We carefully descended down the cliff face, and zig zagged our way back up the river checking out the caves in the cliff face, most notably LAM 051 which was a pretty cool shelter cave, with a sketchy chimney up into a hidden room. The paddle back and porting the kayaks back to their owners were the end of our day. Future Objectives: - Renovate cabin / Set up second caver camp for Lampasas county -Dig on Plymouth Cap crevice, karst walk area a little tougher. -Keep exploring over there, a lot is thick and unwalked. Don’t forget loppers.
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