texascavers Digest 11 Jan 2012 23:32:52 -0000 Issue 1470
Topics (messages 19301 through 19305):
Re: Texas caver volunteer hours
19301 by: Geary Schindel
Re: How long is Punkin Cave?
19302 by: Josh Rubinstein
19304 by: Geary Schindel
cave lengths
19303 by: Mixon Bill
Re: Cave conservation
19305 by: Carl Kunath
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--- Begin Message ---
I might add that Scott needs to have this information by tonight to be included
in his report.
So, if anyone has anything they would like to add, please send it in ASAP.
Thanks,
Geary
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 1:07 PM
To: Geary Schindel; [email protected]
Cc: scottfee
Subject: RE: [Texascavers] Texas caver volunteer hours
Thanks for the heads up, Geary.
I just now sent Scott hours worked in 2011 at Longhorn Caverns, the various
Scout groups we have worked with at CBSP, and all of the cave talks I have
given throughout the past year.
A lot, I might add!
Thanks,
Mark
From: Geary Schindel [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 9:26 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: 'scottfee'
Subject: [Texascavers] Texas caver volunteer hours
Forwarded message from Scott Fee.
Scott is trying to assemble volunteer data for the Combined Federal Campaign
for donations. If you have any data you can send Scott, I'm sure he would be
appreciated. Note that he doesn't have anything from Texas. However, projects
at Government Canyon, Longhorn, Kickipoo, City of San Antonio and other sites
would certainly qualify.
Geary
By: Scott Fee (Birmingham, Alabama)
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
So far, I only have information from 7 states!! I need this information by
Wednesday night. Can you help?
I have information on Alabama, California, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky,
Tennessee, and West Virginia.
The NSS needs your input. Each year the NSS must file an application with the
Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) in order to qualify to be listed in the CFC
donation database. The hardest part of the application is to document the
nationwide NSS Conservation activities. Please take just two or three minutes
and send me an email that includes the
following:
1)State the activity took place
2) Closest City or the County
3) 2011 Date (Prefer month, day and year)
4) Brief description. (Only a line or two needed)
Ideally, please include how many volunteers and what you did. Any statistics
like number of bags, hours spent, truckloads of debris, etc. are a welcome
addition. Â That is it! Shouldn't take two minutes to convey where, when,
and what! This will help the NSS Document caver conservation activities
throughout 2011 in the USA!
Geary M. Schindel, P.G.
Chief Technical Officer - Aquifer Science
Edwards Aquifer Authority
1615 N. St. Mary's Street
San Antonio, TX 78215
210.222.2204
[email protected]
[cid:[email protected]]<http://www.facebook.com/edwards.aquifer.education>[cid:[email protected]]<http://www.youtube.com/eaatx>
[cid:[email protected]] <http://www.edwardsaquifer.org/rss.php>
[cid:[email protected]] <http://twitter.com/#!/EdwardsAquifer>
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--- Begin Message ---
Great discussion.
There is no more subjective metric than cave length. At best, we measure
the length a drunk would traverse through the cave. My own rules are if it
has walls, ceiling and a floor, it is passage. When surveying around a
large room, I include half the surveyed perimeter. And finally, since our
survey lines are biased towards greater length, I exclude any length I
question.
There is no "true" length to a cave. In its statistics, Compass offers the
2D and 3D area the cave occupies. I am not familiar enough with Walls but
I would guess they have something similar. To allow the readers a chance
to assess any survey I've done, I include in the write-up paired with the
map, the percentage of shots excluded from length.
Josh
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Pete Lindsley <[email protected]> wrote:
> It seems to me that in addition to "surveyed length of passage" we could
> use some other metrics. How do you measure "cave area"?
>
> How much area does Mammoth Cave occupy? How many entrances? What's the
> total volume? What's the longest path between entrances? What's the longest
> trunk passage?
>
> How much area does Powell's Cave occupy? 3 entrances if you count the mine
> shaft and the downstream siphon. How long is the longest "trunk" passage
> (i.e. the stream passage)? Ditto for Honey Creek.
>
> How much area does Inner Space occupy? At one time it had only 1 entrance
> if you count the first 24" core hole, zero if you don't.
>
> How much area does Fort Stanton occupy? Only 1 entrance and 1 resurgence.
> The Snowy River trunk passage is "5 miles long" making the straight line
> distance between extremities around 3.8 miles.
>
> How do you count long lava tube passages with multiple entrances? Ditto
> for gypsum caves. In Jester Cave you can travel between two portals around
> a mile apart.
>
> After you all answer these questions we could create an appropriate
> algorithm and re-rank all our favorite caves.
>
> - Pete
>
>
> On Jan 11, 2012, at 9:06 AM, Mark Minton wrote:
>
> I agree that it doesn't matter what configuration cave passages
> make. Stacked levels, parallel passages, tight groups of passages, etc.
> are all still passages as long as they are in solid rock. But how can you
> rationally count multiple routes through breakdown as separate passage?
> There is basically one (maybe more) larger space filled with rocks that
> one can go around and through in different ways. But it's still just one
> passage. One wouldn't count different routes through a thicket of
> formations as different passages. What if there were a single passage with
> a large block of breakdown mostly filling it. Say there is just enough
> room to squeeze around either side and over the top. Who would count that
> as three separate routes? Breakdown-filled passages or rooms are the same
> thing on a larger scale. Of course sometimes the breakdown is so extensive
> that it is not readily apparent where the walls really are, in which case
> it gets tough to define what is a passage and what isn't. The map usually
> reveals the basic outline, though.
>
> Mark
>
> At 08:52 AM 1/11/2012, Jim Kennedy wrote:
>
>> Punkin Cave is currently has just over 4 kilometers of surveyed passage.
>> There is almost 5 kilometers of total survey, but as Carl rightfully
>> points out, some of that is room perimeter shots and some is splay shots,
>> which do not count towards the total passage length. All of the current
>> 4km is traversable passage length. We are careful not to confuse survey
>> length with passage length. Note that I explicitly say passage length. If
>> you consider passage length the length of the cave, then this is a
>> meaningful number. It doesn't really matter if the passage is one long
>> straight line or all bunched up into a big ball. If you have to cover the
>> same distance (crawling, walking, climbing, swimming, or whatever) to get
>> "see" all the available passage in the cave, what does it matter whether
>> that passage is horizontal, vertical, spiral, air or water filled, or
>> whether it is a straight line or a jumbled mess? And I also disagree about
>> not counting passages through breakdown. If you can get through it, it is
>> a passage, no matter if the walls are solutional or the walls are tectonic.
>> If we pursue that bias, then suddenly entire caves such as Enchanted Rock
>> and Mount Emory suddenly are no longer caves!
>>
>> Jim Kennedy
>> Punkin Cave Survey Coordinator
>>
>> From: Carl Kunath
>> [mailto:carl.kunath@**suddenlink.net<[email protected]>
>> ]
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 1:08 AM
>> To: TexasCavers
>> Subject: [Texascavers] How long is Punkin Cave?
>>
>> How Long is Punkin Cave?
>>
>> Punkin Cave serves as a wonderful way to get new cavers and potential
>> surveyors underground to useful purpose. Kudos to those who keep plugging
>> away at this project.
>>
>> It has been announced that Punkin Cave, presently at 13,400+ feet, is now
>> the 10th longest cave in Texas and the 369th longest cave in the United
>> Sates, having surpassed such caves as Kartchner Caverns (Arizona), Adams'
>> Cave, and Caverns of Sonora in Texas.
>>
>> It seems to me that this is a classic example of confusing the length of
>> survey lines applied to a cave with its actual "length."
>>
>> When caves are reasonably linear and not too wide, a survey line down the
>> down the "center" of the passage with occasional shots to the side to
>> establish wall location will give a good idea of the length so long as the
>> side shots are not counted as length.
>>
>> The reality is that not all caves are that easy to assign a meaningful
>> length number.
>>
>> Consider Grutas de Bustamante. It's a huge, booming passage, often
>> several hundred feet wide but with little in the way of side passages.
>> There has been a lot of survey activity in there over the years, most
>> notably the heroic effort by Jan and Orion Knox. the passage is really too
>> wide to survey by just moving down the middle. Some survey efforts have
>> gone down one wall, and then returned along the other. Did the combined
>> length of those survey lines double the length of the cave?
>>
>> Consider Endless Cave (New Mexico). It's a complicated maze cave with
>> only a few traditional linear passages. I couldn't tell you how long it is
>> because the traditional notion of "length" is nonsense in this situation.
>> When the survey was completed, it was noted that more than 10,000 feet of
>> survey lines were required. Another way to look at that is to state that
>> by traveling a non-repetitious 10,000-foot circuit, one might reasonably
>> claim that they had "seen" the cave.
>>
>> The situation at Punkin Cave is even more extreme. Here, there is an
>> irregular but somewhat pyramidal void mostly filled with cemented
>> breakdown. To date, nowhere is it possible to be more than a few hundred
>> feet from the surface datum. To laboriously survey multiple,
>> interconnecting routes through such a three-dimensional maze and then add
>> the survey lines together for a "length" is absurd.
>>
>> The point farthest from the entrance datum is ~350 feet. If the "length"
>> of the entrance drop is subtracted, the figure is even less. The entire
>> known cave is contained within a space 460 feet long, 200 feet wide, and
>> 210 feet high.
>>
>> How "long" is Punkin Cave? You decide, but please don't ask me to
>> believe its presently known length is more than 2.5 miles!
>>
>> ===Carl Kunath
>>
>
> Please reply to [email protected]
> Permanent email address is [email protected]
>
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--- Begin Message ---
Diana,
You bring up an excellent point regarding damage to a cave and one which has
often bothered me. For example, I helped remap parts of Turner Avenue in the
Flint Ridge portion of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky in the late 1980's. This was an
almost pristine and incredible trunk passage discovered in the late 50's or
early 60's. The passage is mostly 10 feet high and 20-30 foot wide, sand
covered passage, that runs for thousands of feet. The original explorers left
a very narrow trail in the very fine sediments in this passage. However, folks
considered the survey in the 60's not up to the standard in the 80's so the
passage was resurveyed. (Turner Avenue is well described in the book The
Longest Cave by Roger Brucker.) The trip leader for the resurvey wanted the
distance to the walls physically measured at each station. This required
walking out across the undisturbed sediments which I wouldn't do. However,
there were others on the trip that were willing to do this. I tried to reason
with them but they were on a mission to survey the cave and were not going to
be stopped, come damage to the sediments or formations or not (common sense did
not prevail). Now, I could estimate the distance from the survey station to
the walls probably with an accuracy of a few feet. Using the scale at which
the cave map was to be drawn, this uncertainty was the width of the pen used to
draw the map. We forever disturbed these sediments and in my opinion, greatly
distracted from the aesthetics of the cave. In addition, sediments (wall
crusts, etc) have just as much geologic and aesthetic value and importance as
cave formations. Now there are laser range finders that can very accurately
measure that distance without damaging the sediment.
This weekend, on a survey trip here in Texas, there were four or five survey
teams in the cave. The cave has an established trail from the entrance to one
of the major junctions in the cave. Over the last 5 plus years, great pains
have been taken to keep new cavers on what I call the trade route to minimize
damage to formations and crusts. Probably close to 500 people have visited
this section of the cave with very minimal damage and disturbance. However,
some of the survey teams had no problems with getting off the well established
trail and climbing over formations rather than using the trade route on the way
to their survey objectives. I don't think the trip leaders were trying to
damage the cave, they just weren't properly educated in Leave No Trace ethics
and on the proper conservation ethics and practices for the cave.
Last Friday, I was doing a site evaluation of a ranch when we crawled into a
small cave entrance with the ranch owner's son. After about 100 meters of
crawling, we popped up into a fine truck passage and carefully walked down
about 500 meters of very well decorated virgin cave. We stopped in passage 20
feet high and 10 feet wide with a large white formation across the passage. I
convinced the owner's son to wait until we can come back with some clean
clothes and equipment so we don't soil the formation. (we'll see if that
happens).
So, while we complain about non-cavers doing damage to caves, organized cavers
can have just as big or bigger impact. Before we start casting stones, I've
broken my fair share of formations and disturbed my fair share of sediments and
then some. Maybe old age and wisdom are starting to get the upper hand on my
youth and enthusiasm (about time).
Geary
-----Original Message-----
From: Diana Tomchick [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 12:10 PM
To: Mark Minton
Cc: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Texascavers] How long is Punkin Cave?
One might also consider that it is not necessary to traverse every possible way
to get through a breakdown, simply from an environmental point of view. Does it
make sense from a cave conservation point of view to leave elephant tracks
everywhere possible, just to add some additional survey length? Not in my mind.
Diana
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Diana R. Tomchick
Professor
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Department of Biochemistry
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Rm. ND10.214B
Dallas, TX 75390-8816, U.S.A.
Email: [email protected]
214-645-6383 (phone)
214-645-6353 (fax)
On Jan 11, 2012, at 10:06 AM, Mark Minton wrote:
> I agree that it doesn't matter what configuration cave passages make.
> Stacked levels, parallel passages, tight groups of passages, etc. are all
> still passages as long as they are in solid rock. But how can you rationally
> count multiple routes through breakdown as separate passage? There is
> basically one (maybe more) larger space filled with rocks that one can go
> around and through in different ways. But it's still just one passage. One
> wouldn't count different routes through a thicket of formations as different
> passages. What if there were a single passage with a large block of
> breakdown mostly filling it. Say there is just enough room to squeeze around
> either side and over the top. Who would count that as three separate routes?
> Breakdown-filled passages or rooms are the same thing on a larger scale. Of
> course sometimes the breakdown is so extensive that it is not readily
> apparent where the walls really are, in which case it gets tough to define
> what is a passage and what isn't. The map usually reveals the basic outline,
> though.
>
> Mark
>
> At 08:52 AM 1/11/2012, Jim Kennedy wrote:
>> Punkin Cave is currently has just over 4 kilometers of surveyed passage.
>> There is almost 5 kilometers of total survey, but as Carl rightfully points
>> out, some of that is room perimeter shots and some is splay shots, which do
>> not count towards the total passage length. All of the current 4km is
>> traversable passage length. We are careful not to confuse survey length
>> with passage length. Note that I explicitly say passage length. If you
>> consider passage length the length of the cave, then this is a meaningful
>> number. It doesn't really matter if the passage is one long straight line
>> or all bunched up into a big ball. If you have to cover the same distance
>> (crawling, walking, climbing, swimming, or whatever) to get "see" all the
>> available passage in the cave, what does it matter whether that passage is
>> horizontal, vertical, spiral, air or water filled, or whether it is a
>> straight line or a jumbled mess? And I also disagree about not counting
>> passages through breakdown. If you can get through it, it is a passage, no
>> matter if the walls are solutional or the walls are tectonic. If we pursue
>> that bias, then suddenly entire caves such as Enchanted Rock and Mount Emory
>> suddenly are no longer caves!
>>
>> Jim Kennedy
>> Punkin Cave Survey Coordinator
>>
>> From: Carl Kunath [mailto:[email protected]]
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 1:08 AM
>> To: TexasCavers
>> Subject: [Texascavers] How long is Punkin Cave?
>>
>> How Long is Punkin Cave?
>>
>> Punkin Cave serves as a wonderful way to get new cavers and potential
>> surveyors underground to useful purpose. Kudos to those who keep plugging
>> away at this project.
>>
>> It has been announced that Punkin Cave, presently at 13,400+ feet, is now
>> the 10th longest cave in Texas and the 369th longest cave in the United
>> Sates, having surpassed such caves as Kartchner Caverns (Arizona), Adams'
>> Cave, and Caverns of Sonora in Texas.
>>
>> It seems to me that this is a classic example of confusing the length of
>> survey lines applied to a cave with its actual "length."
>>
>> When caves are reasonably linear and not too wide, a survey line down the
>> down the "center" of the passage with occasional shots to the side to
>> establish wall location will give a good idea of the length so long as the
>> side shots are not counted as length.
>>
>> The reality is that not all caves are that easy to assign a meaningful
>> length number.
>>
>> Consider Grutas de Bustamante. It's a huge, booming passage, often several
>> hundred feet wide but with little in the way of side passages. There has
>> been a lot of survey activity in there over the years, most notably the
>> heroic effort by Jan and Orion Knox. the passage is really too wide to
>> survey by just moving down the middle. Some survey efforts have gone down
>> one wall, and then returned along the other. Did the combined length of
>> those survey lines double the length of the cave?
>>
>> Consider Endless Cave (New Mexico). It's a complicated maze cave with only
>> a few traditional linear passages. I couldn't tell you how long it is
>> because the traditional notion of "length" is nonsense in this situation.
>> When the survey was completed, it was noted that more than 10,000 feet of
>> survey lines were required. Another way to look at that is to state that by
>> traveling a non-repetitious 10,000-foot circuit, one might reasonably claim
>> that they had "seen" the cave.
>>
>> The situation at Punkin Cave is even more extreme. Here, there is an
>> irregular but somewhat pyramidal void mostly filled with cemented breakdown.
>> To date, nowhere is it possible to be more than a few hundred feet from the
>> surface datum. To laboriously survey multiple, interconnecting routes
>> through such a three-dimensional maze and then add the survey lines together
>> for a "length" is absurd.
>>
>> The point farthest from the entrance datum is ~350 feet. If the "length" of
>> the entrance drop is subtracted, the figure is even less. The entire known
>> cave is contained within a space 460 feet long, 200 feet wide, and 210 feet
>> high.
>>
>> How "long" is Punkin Cave? You decide, but please don't ask me to believe
>> its presently known length is more than 2.5 miles!
>>
>> ===Carl Kunath
>
> Please reply to [email protected]
> Permanent email address is [email protected]
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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________________________________
UT Southwestern Medical Center
The future of medicine, today.
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It will never be possible to say exactly how long a cave is. Even in
the simplest cases, the measured length will depend to some extent on
exactly where stations are placed--the extent to which the survey
bounces from wall to wall, for example.
However, if the cave is a dense maze, like Amazing Maze, Aktun Kaua,
or Punkin, it is very hard to exclude unwanted survey length. For
example, if two 1-meter-wide passages meet at right angles and all
four survey shots tie into the same station on one corner of the
intersection, there will be at least 2 meters of survey in that 1-
meter square. This error will be less important in caves where the
intersections are farther apart.
It would probably be possible to find examples in which any suggested
measure of how "long" or "large" a cave is would be misleading.
Deciding which is the largest cave _passage_ in the world, much in the
news lately, is even harder.
At least the depth of a cave is pretty unambiguous, although even here
there can be questions of where the top of the entrance is. There
isn't usually a station on the ceiling of a horizontal entrance, for
example. Another unambiguous measure would be the "diameter" of the
cave--the greatest straight-line distance between two stations. Or one
could compute, God knows how, the volume of the smallest enclosing
convex polyhedron.
--Mixon
----------------------------------------
The world did not end yesterday, as I had predicted. I regret any
inconvenience.
----------------------------------------
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Good point Geary.
Our standards for cave conservation and "tread lightly" have changed and
evolved considerably in the past half century or so.
The book 50 Years of Texas Caving includes a chapter on conservation and ethics
that briefly traces some the changes in our collective thinking. There are a
couple of pictures that speak directly to the issue of traffic control.
Pictured (page 270) are two views of a sandy-floored passage in the Guadalupe
Room portion of Carlsbad Caverns. This area was restricted to "experienced"
cavers and yet it can be seen that the original pathway doubled in width within
a two year period. It may be even wider by now.
We have come a very long way but there are certainly some horrendous incidents
in our past.
===Carl Kunath
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: Geary Schindel
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 4:07 PM
Subject: RE: [Texascavers] How long is Punkin Cave?
You bring up an excellent point regarding damage to a cave and one which has
often bothered me. For example, I helped remap parts of Turner Avenue in the
Flint Ridge portion of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky in the late 1980's. This was an
almost pristine and incredible trunk passage discovered in the late 50's or
early 60's. The passage is mostly 10 feet high and 20-30 foot wide, sand
covered passage, that runs for thousands of feet. The original explorers left
a very narrow trail in the very fine sediments in this passage. However, folks
considered the survey in the 60's not up to the standard in the 80's so the
passage was resurveyed. (Turner Avenue is well described in the book The
Longest Cave by Roger Brucker.) The trip leader for the resurvey wanted the
distance to the walls physically measured at each station. This required
walking out across the undisturbed sediments which I wouldn't do. However,
there were others on the trip that were willing to do this. I tried to reason
with them but they were on a mission to survey the cave and were not going to
be stopped, come damage to the sediments or formations or not (common sense did
not prevail). Now, I could estimate the distance from the survey station to
the walls probably with an accuracy of a few feet. Using the scale at which
the cave map was to be drawn, this uncertainty was the width of the pen used to
draw the map. We forever disturbed these sediments and in my opinion, greatly
distracted from the aesthetics of the cave. In addition, sediments (wall
crusts, etc) have just as much geologic and aesthetic value and importance as
cave formations. Now there are laser range finders that can very accurately
measure that distance without damaging the sediment.
This weekend, on a survey trip here in Texas, there were four or five survey
teams in the cave. The cave has an established trail from the entrance to one
of the major junctions in the cave. Over the last 5 plus years, great pains
have been taken to keep new cavers on what I call the trade route to minimize
damage to formations and crusts. Probably close to 500 people have visited
this section of the cave with very minimal damage and disturbance. However,
some of the survey teams had no problems with getting off the well established
trail and climbing over formations rather than using the trade route on the way
to their survey objectives. I don't think the trip leaders were trying to
damage the cave, they just weren't properly educated in Leave No Trace ethics
and on the proper conservation ethics and practices for the cave.
Last Friday, I was doing a site evaluation of a ranch when we crawled into a
small cave entrance with the ranch owner's son. After about 100 meters of
crawling, we popped up into a fine truck passage and carefully walked down
about 500 meters of very well decorated virgin cave. We stopped in passage 20
feet high and 10 feet wide with a large white formation across the passage. I
convinced the owner's son to wait until we can come back with some clean
clothes and equipment so we don't soil the formation. (we'll see if that
happens).
So, while we complain about non-cavers doing damage to caves, organized cavers
can have just as big or bigger impact. Before we start casting stones, I've
broken my fair share of formations and disturbed my fair share of sediments and
then some. Maybe old age and wisdom are starting to get the upper hand on my
youth and enthusiasm (about time).
Geary
--- End Message ---
