texascavers Digest 13 Jan 2012 14:14:45 -0000 Issue 1471
Topics (messages 19306 through 19314):
Re: Cave conservation
19306 by: Pete Lindsley
Speleomusic competition: UIS Anthem -- new deadline
19307 by: George Veni
Parking a car for long trips out of San Antonio Airport?
19308 by: Sean Lewis
Re: How long is Punkin Cave?
19309 by: Marvin and Lisa
19310 by: Mark Minton
19311 by: George Veni
>From Austin to Houston?
19312 by: Mallory Mayeux
Call for NSS NEWS Conservation Issue Articles
19313 by: R D Milhollin
TCC Winter Conference: February 24-26, 2012: 1 of 2
19314 by: Leslie Bell
Administrivia:
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--- Begin Message ---
Carl, I also recall that the initial explorers that found the
Guadalupe Room went very carefully through the Sand Passage, each
stepping in only the footsteps of the person in front because the
"sand" was 6" or so deep. But after the Chamber of Commerce was
"allowed" to see the new discovery the path was 2 feet wide, with
trails going to each wall. All it took was one big trip without proper
instructions or guides.
- Pete
On Jan 11, 2012, at 4:32 PM, Carl Kunath wrote:
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 ---
--- Begin Message ---
Dear Speleo-Musicians, Artists, and Friends,
Below is a message I sent several months ago, with one small change. If you
are interested, please note that the deadline is now 15 April 2012. This is
the final deadline.
-------------------------------------
The Arts and Letters Commission of the International Union of Speleology
(UIS) is organizing a competition to create an anthem for the UIS. The
details are below. Please forward this message to anyone or any list you
believe may be interested. For more information, contact Ian Ellis Chandler
below.
George Veni
UIS Vice-President of Administration
************************
UIS ANTHEM: Conditions of competition
1. Entries to be between 60 to 90 seconds in length
2. All entries must be provided digitally to the UIS Bureau through the
UIS Arts and Letters Commission (Ian Ellis Chandler).
3. Entries to be received by Arts and Letters Commission by 15 April,
2012. They will be considered by the Bureau summer meeting 2012. The Bureau
retains the option not to select any entry as suitable.
4. The digital entry will not include lyrics. Lyrics can be attached,
and a digital audio version can be presented. Lyrics can be in any of the
following languages of the UIS: English, French, German, Italian, Russian or
Spanish.
5. Entries must be original and not based on any existing music.
6. Entries should be universal and not in a style generally associated
with any country.
7. The style should capable of appealing for many years and not based
on any particular modern style.
8. Entries should try to capture the spirit of speleology.
The winning entry (if one is selected) will be revealed at the Opening
Ceremony of the 2013 ICS in Brno, Czech Republic, as the UIS flag is
hoisted.
There is no financial award, except the honour of composing the UIS anthem.
Initial contact to:
Ian Ellis Chandler.
UIS Arts and Letters Commission
[email protected]
Telephone: 0034 942619903 (Spain)
***************************
George Veni, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Cave and Karst Research Institute
400-1 Cascades Avenue
Carlsbad, New Mexico 88220-6215 USA
Office: 575-887-5517
Mobile: 210-863-5919
Fax: 575-887-5523
[email protected]
www.nckri.org
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Hi all,
Does anyone have any recommendations for a free place to stash a car
while traveling out of the San Antonio Airport? Would anyone be
willing to let a fellow caver park their car at their place and
provide an airport ride even? Have a friend arriving in San Antonio
tomorrow morning. He is flying out to Mexico for a caving trip and is
not well connected with Texas cavers. Sorry, he only just now asked me
for help. I told him Austin was too far to give him a ride to the
airport....
Sean
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
"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?"
In Powell's Cave there are situations just like this, but the breakdown
blocks are huge. You think you are traversing along a cave wall until you
get to the end of the block and realize that you can get on top of it. The
block is tall enough that it doesn't completely clear the ceiling notch that
it fell out of except on one end. So yes we surveyed it all and counted it
all as passage.
Marvin
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Minton [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 10:06 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [Texascavers] How long is Punkin Cave?
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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--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Just because you did it doesn't make it right. ;-) I know
the maze area of Powell's well and I agree that there are spots that
look like passage that are really just along breakdown
blocks. Nothing wrong with surveying all of that and putting it on
the map, but I wouldn't have counted redundant routes in the cave's length.
One definitely has to take reported cave lengths with a
grain of salt. It helps a lot if you know the cave, or at least have
a map to look at. There is a big difference in the length of a cave
like Powell's and one like Honey Creek, which does not have mazes. I
have worked extensively in both. It's a little like comparing apples
and oranges...
Mark
At 12:14 AM 1/12/2012, Marvin and Lisa wrote:
"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?"
In Powell's Cave there are situations just like this, but the breakdown
blocks are huge. You think you are traversing along a cave wall until you
get to the end of the block and realize that you can get on top of it. The
block is tall enough that it doesn't completely clear the ceiling notch that
it fell out of except on one end. So yes we surveyed it all and counted it
all as passage.
Marvin
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Minton [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 10:06 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [Texascavers] How long is Punkin Cave?
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]
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
A fundamental part of the length debate is that each person has their
priority on what is important. As a geologist who studies the origin of
caves, I've greatly enjoyed surveying in Punkin but the tallied length of
random gaps amid breakdown blocks is of relatively little interest. As a
caver who has greatly enjoyed surveying in Punkin, it is of high interest to
have a reasonable idea of how much passage is traversable, whether it is in
breakdown or not.
But here is another thought. While crawling though the breakdown maze of
Punkin and thinking as a geologist, I couldn't help but wonder what geologic
factors are involved that make most breakdown piles essentially impenetrable
beyond a few meters while a few have very extensive and interconnected
openings. For that answer to be worked out, it will take dedicated teams to
survey and define the extent and configuration of those openings. No matter
how anyone feels about if they constitute true cave length, they do
constitute an important source of data for better understanding and managing
caves. Maybe those random gaps amid the breakdown blocks aren't so random.
George
***************************
George Veni, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Cave and Karst Research Institute
400-1 Cascades Avenue
Carlsbad, New Mexico 88220-6215 USA
Office: 575-887-5517
Mobile: 210-863-5919
Fax: 575-887-5523
[email protected]
www.nckri.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Minton [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 08:07
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [Texascavers] How long is Punkin Cave?
Just because you did it doesn't make it right. ;-) I know the
maze area of Powell's well and I agree that there are spots that look like
passage that are really just along breakdown blocks. Nothing wrong with
surveying all of that and putting it on the map, but I wouldn't have counted
redundant routes in the cave's length.
One definitely has to take reported cave lengths with a grain of
salt. It helps a lot if you know the cave, or at least have a map to look
at. There is a big difference in the length of a cave like Powell's and one
like Honey Creek, which does not have mazes. I have worked extensively in
both. It's a little like comparing apples and oranges...
Mark
At 12:14 AM 1/12/2012, Marvin and Lisa wrote:
> "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?"
>
>In Powell's Cave there are situations just like this, but the breakdown
>blocks are huge. You think you are traversing along a cave wall until you
>get to the end of the block and realize that you can get on top of it. The
>block is tall enough that it doesn't completely clear the ceiling notch
that
>it fell out of except on one end. So yes we surveyed it all and counted it
>all as passage.
>
>Marvin
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Minton [mailto:[email protected]]
>Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 10:06 AM
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: RE: [Texascavers] How long is Punkin Cave?
>
> 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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Are any cavers coming from Austin to Houston between now and tomorrow
afternoon? If so, please let contact me ASAP! I am hoping to get something
small transported from Crash's house.
Thanks!
Mallory Mayeux
225-933-9885
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--- Begin Message ---
Call for NSS News Conservation Issue Articles
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[Forwarded]
We are still looking for conservation articles for the upcoming NSS
News conservation issue. The deadline for submissions has been pushed
back to January 30th and the articles will appear in the April issue
this year. A detailed call for articles was on page 25 of the December issue.
Please send articles for this one to Val and Jim Hildreth-Werker:
[email protected], but send any photos that accompany the article
to the editor, [email protected] or upload them to the News FTP
site mentioned in the January issue on the contents page...
Dave Bunnell
NSS News Editor
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--- Begin Message ---
I am posting two messages (due to size limit) regarding the TCC Winter
Conference on behalf of the Texas Cave Conservancy.
Regards, Leslie Bell
TCC Winter Conference Activities Friday- February 24Camping & caving
Saturday-February 25Breakfast Tours& Workshops – 10:00 AM• Geology-Caving
Tour• Twin Creeks Tour • Cave Restoration Workshop - 9:00 A.M.This year
we will be holding a Cave Restoration & Clean Up at Beck Ranch Cave. We ask all
cavers visiting this cave to carry out any trash observed. . Avery Ranch
Cave- All Day . Dies Ranch Treasure Cave-All Day . Dies Ranch Shelter
Cave-All Day
. Cedar Park area Caving-All Day
. Bob Finger Napping(Making arrowheads) TCC Headquarters - 5:00 PM . Dinner
- 6:30 PM Texas Caver Cooking Crew . Special After Dinner guest presentation
on the old Southwest Texas University Grotto of San Marcos, Texas . . Hall of
Texas Cavers Slides & Party
. Dave Cave ’s Salon (Strawberry Margaritas & more) Sunday-February
26Breakfast & Caving
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