Government Canyon Karst Project Report
January 7, 2017 (No activities occurred on Jan. 8 due to the TSA and TCMA meetings held at the SNA) Participants: Julian Garcia, Liz Herren, Marvin Miller, Kevin Pride, Will Quast, Joe Schaertl Activities Two teams left the VRS parking lot on Saturday morning. Liz and Will hiked up the Laurel Canyon trail and then turned west to Solitude Pit. Their objective was the dig at the end of the Solitude Pit drain passage. After locating the cave entrance in the thick brush, their second challenge turned out to be removing a small Black-tailed rattlesnake from the edge of the pit. The pit is only 2 meters inside the entrance, the morning was very coldabout 38º F, but the snake was apparently plenty warm from the air rising up the pit. Will moved the snake out of the cave. They then rigged the pit and rappelled to the bottom. Liz couldnt make it through Superman Squeeze into the drain passage so Will had to go to the end and dig on his own. At the end of about 6 m of crawl passage is a small room in which one can sit up comfortably. From there the passage continues as a crawl but sediment has raised the floor level to where it is too tight. Will dug out some of this sediment but decided against getting muddy and so didnt investigate the passage any further. Back at the bottom of the pit Liz was taking photos and got a nice one of a millipede, probably Speodesmus reddelli. The two left the cave at about 2:00. Julian, Kevin, Joe, and I drove up the Joe Johnston Rd. to the parking area at the Rockpile and then continued north to Lilyhammer Cave. Our goal was to survey down the blind pit that Joe had explored on our last trip and also survey some of the upper level passage above the pit. I also wanted to make a definite plan for accessing the large space beyond the far lip of the pit. We entered the cave about 11:00 and quickly made our way down Shrieking Leia Pit and Kevins Slot to the bottom of the 6-meter climb down where we had stopped on our last survey at Station 23. I sketched 22-23, which I hadnt had time for on the previous trip. While I was doing that Joe rigged the blind pit. Then we did one shot to define the small room at Station 23, and from there down the short bit of passage to the ledge at the pit. At Station 23 we had been at -26 meters in depth. The deepest cave so far in Government Canyon is Lost Pothole, surveyed to -26.9 meters, so I knew we were going to break the depth record with this survey. The pit taped out to 6.1 meters from the survey station, which was a bit over a meter above the ledge. Later, after entering the data into Walls, I found out that the bottom of the pit is at -31.77 meters. The walls of the pit were interesting, with many thin, stacked ledges of white limestone that stuck out into the pit. The interstices between the ledges were full of red mud. The floor of the pit was mud and rock and there were a couple of small drains leading down. Its probable that the pit could be dug out to access the space on the other side of the wall, but it would be a big job. When I ascended the pit, while still on rope at the top, I worked out a plan with Joe and Kevin for bolting a traverse along the wall to where the 2nd pit can be dropped. With the hammer I was able to identify solid rock for bolts and to clear mud off of a small ledge for an initial foothold. It will take 3 bolts to get across. Bolting the traverse and dropping the next pit will be the goal of the next trip. While I had been sketching earlier Kevin had climbed up into the passage area above the pit. There are at least four ascending chimneys, one of which he was able to climb up for a good distance. One problem is that everything is initially covered with the slippery red mud, which doesnt make climbing the chimneys easy. Its also hard to keep a survey book clean. We did two shots to access this area and will survey up the chimneys on a later date. We started out of the cave about 5:40 and emerged into the frosty evening about 6:30. The hike back to the truck and drive down the canyon took another hour-and-a-half. In all we did 23.85 meters of survey in 6 stations. The cave is now 77.80 meters long and 31.77 meters deep. The next Government Canyon Project trip will take place on February 4 and 5. For details see the project page on the TSA website. Links to pictures: Critters at Solitude Pit (taken by Liz Herren): https://www.dropbox.com/s/cmbl6rpw6avij5b/20170107_110957.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/3wtrp0i1vquhxxl/20170107_122258.jpg?dl=0 Kevin Pride climbing down from the muddy upper level above the blind pit in Lilyhammer Cave: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wjrsjp1bm3ejw7f/IMG_4558.JPG?dl=0 Marvin Miller
_______________________________________________ Texascavers mailing list | http://texascavers.com Texascavers@texascavers.com | Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/texascavers@texascavers.com/ http://lists.texascavers.com/listinfo/texascavers
