Colorado Bend State Park

7—9 November 2008

Reported by: Jim Kennedy, TSA Colorado Bend State Park Project Coordinator

Report Date:  13 November 2008

Person Hours: 179 total volunteer hours (including 76 travel hours)

Personnel:  Jim Kennedy,

Summary:  Despite the most perfect weather and plenty of pre-trip hype, only 13 cavers showed up for the November Project weekend, 6 of them Aggies.  A large trip was fielded to the McLarrin Fissure Karst to continue unraveling that confusing area.  Another, small team intended to continue the survey of Lost Petzl Cave System, but explored many small passages without any survey.  And a small group relocated some caves and karst features on Sunday, and found 2 new caves that need a little more entrance enlargement to explore.

Kennedy and Zenker showed up early on Friday and finally moved the outhouse to its final resting place, and got it up and running for the weekend.  They then cut up the downed cedar elm behind the campfire circle with Kennedy’s chainsaw.  Heuss the elder helped somewhat with the firewood, while Heuss the younger watched and smoked.  Graves arrived before dark and set up his campsite before making a group dinner.  Turner showed up after dark after an unsuccessful time hunting on a neighbor’s ranch, and the Aggies rolled in around midnight, after turning a four-hour drive from College Station into a six-hour marathon.  All were signed in by morning, team assignments made, and Kennedy and Zenker took the roster to the Park office and picked up parking permits.

Team 1          Zach Broussard, Krishna Gandhi, Ben Heuss (Heuss the younger), Keith Heuss (Heuss the elder), Erick Jackson, Michael Krell, Amanda Penn, John Sloan, Matt Turner, Drew Wendeborn

Keith put this team together in order to re-visit the McLarrin Fissure Karst in his continuing effort to re-locate and identify the eighteen caves from the 1978 Kastning survey of the area.  Team 1 left the caver campground at 10:00 AM Saturday morning.  Their plan was to start at the southern end of the line of caves and work their way north and back to the vehicles.  The first cave was therefore Crack Pot, but it was never found.  Heading north, they ran across a fissure that was not on the old survey.  Most of the group explored the cave, but it was not otherwise documented (surveyed and photographed).  Heading northwest, they encountered another sink, but it also was not properly documented.  A little more to the northeast they found another fissure.  Almost everybody entered the fissure, where the group spent some time.  Mike Krell got a GPS location on the cave.  As the group was about to leave, Keith noticed a nearby tree with the tag “SAB275”, confirming that the cave was Angel Fissure.  All coordinates taken by the TSA teams during this project are stored with the Texas Speleological Survey and witheld from the published version of this trip report.

From there, another fissure was found about 100 meters north that was not part of the Kastning survey.  They called it simply Cave 2.  The fissure was pretty similar to Crack Pot, but did not mach the map well enough.  A quick description of the fissure was written up.  The cave drops six feet near the southeast corner.  Then it drops another three feet into a crawlway.  The crawlway continues some estimated 25 feet to where it branches.  After the branch, the main passage continues another 50 feet to where it branches again.  One of the branches is five feet tall by ten feet wide.  Some soda straws and other formations were noted in the cave.  Near the end, about eight bats were observed, but not identified [probably tri-colored bats (Parastrellus subflavus) – J. Kennedy].  Lots of snail shells were found in the cave.  The Aggies wanted to call it Kick A.S.S. Cave, after their club, the Aggie Speleological Society.  Matt said it was blowing as much air as the entrance to Airman’s Cave in Austin.  Keith did a quick sketch of the entrance and took pictures of the entrance.

The group located their position on the topographic map, then took a compass heading to Slumped Rock Fissure (SAB330).  The cave was positively identified from the map and the slumped rock in the entrance.  There was no tag, so the group installed tag SAB330 on a tree near the fissure.  There is not too much to the cave and everyone was getting hungry, so after everybody checked it out, they headed to the cars by way of Debris Cave.

Debris Cave ( and also Wedge Cave) is located in the wrong drainage in Kastning’s documentation.  The entire group entered Debris cave.  There was a traffic jam in the cave as seven people tried to enter and exit the cave at the same time.  The cave was very dusty and the lead cavers reported that the map does not show all of the passage.  The left hand passage that takes off at the debris continues and curves around and goes out of sight.  With some digging, the passage will continue.  The cave is pirating water from the creekbed and diverting it down this passage.  Some airflow was noted.  Keith took pictures of the cave entrance.  The cave has a temporary tag, labeled SAB378, on a tree near the entrance.  This is incorrect, since other documentation has Debris Cave as SAB560.  This needs to be resolved and a permanent tag with the correct number needs to be installed at the cave.  The GPS location in the TSS database for Debris Cave is correct.

From there, the group stopped by Wedge Cave and some entered the cave.  Then they all headed back to the vehicles, and were back in camp by 3:00 PM.  An early dinner and quick (very quick) swim at Spicewood Springs completed the day.

Team one’s hours:  50.0, plus 10.0 additional hours for Keith prepping data for this trip at home.

Team 2          Lee Jay Graves, Jim Kennedy, Andy Zenker

This group’s objective was to continue the survey of the lower levels of the Chimniers Delight section of the Lost Petzl Cave System (SAB075).  The Chimniers Delight entrance was rigged and all three proceeded into the cave and to the end of the previous survey.  To their horror, they found that cave crickets had chewed the flagging off several survey stations, making them unrecoverable without copies of the previous survey notes.  Thus thwarted, the group then decided to familiarize themselves with the complex passages in that part of the cave.  Many crawlways were pushed, with thin Zenker always able to proceed further than older and stouter Graves and Kennedy.  A couple of silt-filled crawls were also excavated in hopes of following the ever-elusive airflow, but only connections with already-known passages were made.  There is still a lot of potential for more cave in this area, and even connections to other surface points that may be turned into entrances.  The unusual thing is that the water flow disappears down a couple of small crawls perpendicular to the axis of the rest of the cave.  The remain to be pushed.  Future surveys in this area should take along a small heavy hammer and some digging tools.  No survey was completed this trip.

After exiting, the trip went to the Jim & Chris Entrance to the cave to retrieve a pack left by Lee Jay on an earlier trip.  Pack recovery was an uneventful success.

Team two’s hours:  21.0 hours, plus 10.0 additional pre-trip prep hours by Kennedy.

Team 3          Jim Kennedy, Michael Krell, Andy Zenker

With great weather and not really hurry to go home, Kennedy put together a small team to relocate and check out some karst features and poke around a bit for new stuff.  After loading the GPS with the appropriate coordinates, the three left camp, parked at the gravel stockpile, and headed off into the woods.  The first stop was Blue Lead (SAB588).  This turned out to be a really tiny drain and not worth digging.  There is no tag.  It is included in the list for the record only.  Corrected coordinates were taken. (All coordinates on this day have less than 4m estimated position error.)  On the way down the drainage, Mike found a small hole and started pulling out rocks.  Jim joined him, saying “whenever I find something like this, I always look around to see if there is a bigger hole nearby.”  Sure enough, he spotted a slump about 30 feet away.  They were joined by Andy, and a mad frenzy of rock-pulling ensued.  Sure enough, it is a cave, but the entrance needs widened (no tools were at hand that day) before even super-skinny Andy can fit.  It was named Cracklin Cave, and was GPSed.  Next on the list and continuing down-drainage was Gravel Suckhole #1 (SAB284).  This is a real cave, and needs mapping.  It is tagged.  Mike also found another obvious rock-filled entrance nearby, and another rock-moving episode occurred.  This is also still too tight for Andy, but looks good.  It is now called Smiley Cave, and was GPSed.  In order to actually get underground, Mike and Andy checked out Gravel Suckhole #1 while Jim poked around on the surface, enjoying the sun.  Continuing down-drainage, the group located their last creek-bed objective, Gravel Suckhole #2 (SAB270).  This actually cleared up some confusion in the database, since there was another record nearby listed as SAB270 (with no name), and Gravel Suckhole #2 wasn’t supposed to have an SAB number assigned.  The feature was easily found, and no other features were any where nearby, confirming its identity.  There is no tag, but the feature is another for the record only, being a shallow undercut along a creekside outcrop.  Improved coordinates were recorded.

From there the team headed up the hill to re-find a few more caves on the way back to the car.  The first was a cave I remembered as Beginners Luck Cave (SAB213).  We found the tag clearly marked with those numbers.  But it was near the coordinates for Upper Cave (SAB112).  We never found the tag for SAB112, so we are unclear about this cave’s true identity.  It is located at 0548220e, 3434465n, 420m elevation.  Mike and Andy checked it out and had fun.  Then off to Psycho Cave (SAB240), at improved coordinates 0548316e, 3434544n, 420m elevation.  Finally, we relocated Fence Wire Cave (SAB209), one that Kennedy had mapped back in 1996.  The cave and it’s tag were found and recorded.  Nearby, Kennedy noticed another slump in line with the cave, and he and Mike moved more rocks while Andy scoped out the known cave.  A big rock still blocks the way, but it is possible that this new entrance will lead past the terminal restriction in Fence Wire Cave.  Location of the new dig iswas also recorded.

Team three’s hours:  12.0