Good question, Carl. I can't figure out quite how to calculate that in WALLS, but it is less than 200m. If you know the cave well and don't get lost, a strong, fast-moving caver can get from anywhere in the cave to the big Entrance Room in 20 minutes. But it is really easy to make a wrong turn and go for "de tour." I've done it a few times myself, and I probably know the cave as well as anyone. I can take you on a 4-5 hour rinky-dink without crossing your path once and out of daylight the entire time. You will be so turned around you wouldn't be able to say which way is north anymore. Punkin Cave is an incredibly dense 3D maze. Think Chandelier Maze in Lechuguilla or Confusion Tubes in Purificación, only on a smaller, more compact scale. The average survey shot is around 3.4m. That is not because we can't make longer shots (we could), but because there are intersections everywhere and we need to set the stations so that we can survey in all directions. Just based on known leads alone, we have another kilometer or so of passage to survey. We are currently at 4090m (4443m of actual survey), which is just over 2.5 miles of passage. And after we make the big breakout, who knows! The cave blows really strong air from everywhere. I'm trying to get the latest trip report and lineplots posted on the UT Grotto website with the rest of them, but we are currently having some site access issues. Hopefully they will be up soon.
-- Jim From: Carl Kunath [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 3:10 AM To: CaveTex Subject: Re: [Texascavers] Punkin Cave What is the straight line distance from the entrance datum to the most remote part of the cave presently surveyed? Just curious. ===Carl Kunath
