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,VOLUHE 25 NO. 7

CASCADEInternationa I Journa I of

Vulcanospeleology

Published by the Cascade Grot to, N.5.S.

Editor: Hark Sherman

Assistant Editor: Ben Tompkins

JULY 1986

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C A S'C A DEC A V E R

The CASCADE CAVER is'published 10 times a year by the Cascade Grotto, a member of the NationalSpeleological Society.

,Meetings:

Mail:

Dues:

7:00pm 9n the third Tuesday of each month at the University of Wash-ington, Room 6 in the basement of Johnson Hall.

The Cascade Grotto, P.O. Box 75663, Seattle, WA p8125-0663.

Membership in the Cascade Grotto plus subscription to the Cascade Caverare $7.50 per year. Dues for family members is $1.00. Subscription tothe Cascade Caver only is $7.50. Send to Grottp Treasurer, Al Lundberg,at: 19221 38th Place N.E., Seattle, WA 98155.

Officers: Chairman:Vice Chairman:Sec/Treasurer:Regional Rep:Grotto"Store:Editor:

Mark ShermanJeff ForbesAl LundbergBen TompkinsJim Harp,Mark Sherman

524-8780524-2443365-7255524-9526745-1010524-8780

Cover: This month's cover by Linda Heslop includes Bob Brown's buzz-tailed buddylurking beneath the entrance grate at Bighorn Cave in Montana.

DUES

Please note your mailing label for the month your dues expire.

Dropped:

Overdue:

03/86 Dickey, Fred 03/86 Fichtel, John 03/86 Foord, Andrew03/86 Wilson, Mark

05/86 Rohrer, Jay 06/86 Gunsalus, Jerome 06/86 Rockwell, Julius07/86 Kiver, Dr. Eugene

Coming Up:

CASCADE CAVER

10/86 Gillard, Jeff 10/86 James, Richard

32 July 1986

,Grotto Information ••••Membership Dues •••Upcoming Events • :~eeting Notes •• ~

J

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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32• 3233

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fThe "Island Underground". Ben Tompkins. . " . 34Vancouver Island Speleofest Coming. • Ben Tompkins 34Little Red River Cave. . . . . . . . Jim Harp . . . . 35More on Little Red River. Ben Tompkins ~" • 35. . . " . . .Caving Enroute to 'the Grand Canyon

,. . . . W • R. Ha 11iday, MD. 35Badlands Pseudokarst in the Petrified Forest. W. R. Ha11iday, MD. 36Scouting the Clayoquot Plateau J Jeff Forbes 36. . • .Ramsey Cave, Skag1t County . : . Jeff Forbes . . . • 37Another Week at Bighorn Cave . . . Ben Tompkins . . • 38

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Aug 2-3

Aug 9-10

Aug 19

Windy Creek Cave. Contact Jeff Forbes

Deadhorse and JaR Caves. Contact Bob Brown at 569-2724.

Grotto meeting at the University of Washington, supposedly in room 6 of JohnsonHall. We got bumped last month and ended up in room 53. The program will bepresented by Sheila Balsdon on caving experiences in Mexico.

Aug 24-Sep 1 Vancouver Island SPELEOFEST at Thanksgiving Cave on Vancouver Island. See BenTompkins for information from the Speleofest folks.

Aug 30-Sep 1 Northwest Regional Association annual regional meet will be held at ThanksgivingCave on Vancouver Island in conjunction with the Vancouver Island SPELEOFEST.

Sept 13-14 Mclaughlin Canyon

Oct 1-1

Oct 21

Bighorn Cave in Wyoming. Contact Bob Brown.

Grotto meeting at the University of Washington.

MINUTES OF THE JUNE MEETING

The following bits and pieces were takenfrom notes by Jeff Forbes. Thanks, Jeff, forfilling in while the editors were mucking boutin the bowels of Montana.

The meeting began at 7:20 pm, the first to

CASCADE CAVER 33

be held in Johnson Hall on the U. of W. campus.There were 10 people in attendance.

Larry McTigue thanked the people donatingbooks and things to the new grotto library.

Jerry Gunsalus suggested that new membersmight be recruited from the Mountaineers vianewsletter and slide shows.

July 1986

JUNE MINUTES. continued

Rod Crawford requests that when visitingcaves with registers that grotto members jotdown any names with addresses or phone numbersfor recruitment purposes.

Larry McTigue brought up the need to removeflagging and garbage from the Ole's Cave trailon Mt. St. Helens.

An article in the October. 1985 NSS Bulle-tin about speleothems in Newton Cave on CaveRidge was pointed out by Jeff Forbes.

Dr. Halliday is having a book sale in Julysometime with Mark Sherman apparently havingthe deta ils.

There is a proposed timber sale on Mt. St.Helens along the lava flow containing all ofthe caves. See Rod Crawford for details.

Trips plans were announced for Cave Ridgeand Mt St. Helens.

The Windy Creek Cave road has been recentlyplowed of snow and is open. Jeff Forbes talkedabout a karst scouting trip to Dock 3utte.Sinks in the lower karst need digging while theupper karst is still under many feet of !now.

Rod Crawford looked at Indian Rock Cave akaManaresa Grotto in Pend Oreille County while ona spider collecting trip. It is a large. shal-low shelter cave eroded in conglomerate and hasquite a scenic entrance.

The program for the evening was a trulyexcellent talk and slide show on paleoecologystudies in caves in Nevada and Texas. it wasgiven by Dr. Geoff Spaulding. a University ofWashington Botany professor.

He divided his talk into two parts. Thefirst was about what caused the extinction ofmany species of "megamammals" such as the mam-moth. sloth. and North American lion. Theplant fossil record from sloth dung. mammothdung. etc •• indicates that there were no largevariations in the plant food supply in thesouth western United States. Dr. Spauldingmade a case that the extinctions were not dueto climate change. but rather to predatation(hunting) by early man. The timing of theextinctions coincides almost exactly with theappearance of man in the New World.

The second part of the talk concerned thepaleoclimatic data that can be gleaned fromexcavation of ancient packrat middens found incaves in desert areas. The older middens areover 30.000 years old and are cemented togetherby crystalline rat urine. This material con-

CASCADE CAVER 34

tains a sampling of twigs. seeds. and otherplant material growing near the cave at thattime.

Grotto members had a lot of questions fol-lowing the talk. After viewing Geoff's fossilspecimens, we adjourned at 9:30 and headed outfor pizza.

THE ISLAND UNDERGROUNDBy Ben Tompkins

received my first issue of a new Van-couver Island caving newsletter called theIsland Underground.

I haven't seen the first three issues butthis one contains five trip reports, three cavemaps, a general interest article, and a list ofcoming events plus a cover drawing by LindaHeslop. All of the material pertains directlyto Vancouver Island caves and caving.

These folks keep busy and I am lookingforward to following their exploits in futureissues. When I have collected a representativesample I will bring them to a grotto meetingfor review and possibly subscribing for thegrotto.

The editors are Steve Grundy of Victoria,B.C. and Patrick Shaw of Vancouver, B.C. andprinting was done by Bill Bourdillon. It ispublished bi-monthly and the subscription priceis $7.00 (Can).

VANCOUVER ISLAND SPELEOFEST COMINGBen Tompkins

From the north comes more news of the up-coming Speleofest amongst which we will holdour Northwest Regional Association meeting overthe Labor Day weekend.

The Speleofest itself will be going on fromAugust 23 to August 30 and will be working theThanksgiving plate~u and Thanksgiving Cave inparticular. Thanksgiving Cave is expected tobecome the second deepest and second longestcave in Canada by th~ end of the week. Ther~are also a number of'other caves on the plateaJand a lot of surface work yet to be done witHplenty of potential :for more caves.

The actual caving will be fairly demanding,cold, and not too:friendly. There will 'be alot of vertical wo~k rigged using rebelays s6us Gibbs folks should plan accordingly. Trip'

July 1986

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, SPELEOFEST. continued.

1engths'range from 3 to 20 hours.Two-wheel drive trucks. vans. arid cars with

good clearance should make it to the cabinwithout too much trouble but regular cars mayhave some difficulty.

I have directions and a few more detailsfor those who are interested. I've been want-ing to see the northern parts of the island forsome time and am looking forward to the tr1p.

LITTLE RED RIVER CAVEJim Harp

My daughters Amanda and Katrina. myself.and Jerry Thompson began our weekend trip onJune 24th with a self-guided tour of Lake Cavein the Lava Cast Picnic Area.

From there we headed up to the flanks ofthe mountain towards Little Red River Cave. Bythen it was late so the night was spent inJerry's van and we found the cave in the morn-ing.

Jerry and Amanda rappe11ed directly fromthe entrance to the floor of the main tubewhile Katrina and I took the roundabout free-climb route. We were all quite impressed withthis cave and put it near the top of our listof favorite lava tubes.

While down in the cave we met two caversfrom the Kansas City Grotto. One of thefellows. Randy Rose. told us that he was work-ing in Seattle and had contacted grotto memberFred Dickey about caving activities. Fred toldhem that the Cascade Grotto was not very activeand that he should contact the Oregon Grotto todo any caving. I wonder what he thought aboutsuddenly meeting four inactive grotto members.

Randy's NSS card introduces him as directorof the Resource Protection Division of the NSSand he is also the owner of Ennis Cave inArkansas.

Both Little Red River and Lake Caves showsigns of use. Lake Cave has been spray paintedwhile Little Red River has finger writing inthe wall slime. Hinges on the gate to LittleRed River have also been broken so that thedoor now hangs by the chain.

We spent the night at Merrill Lake andreturned home Monday morning.

CASCADE CAVER 35

MORE ON LITTLE:RED RIVERBen Tomp~ins

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The kids and I spent a week down homehelping mom around the far.m and by Thursday Iwas ready for a break. If 'it was determi ned torain all week we might as well be undergroundas trying to put up gutters; So on July 17 thetwo boys, an uncle, and twq cousins headed forMt. St. Helens.

I had spent a restless night trying toguess how a one-armed unc1~wou1d do in LittleRed River but we decided to give it a go ratherthan automatically head for Ape Cave.

I had just typed Jim's article (immediate-ly above) and expected the 9ate to be in muchworse shape than it was. Qn1y the top hingewas broken. The gate itself is intact and canstill be placed in position so that it looksgood from the surface.

Some body had installed a new tree in thenotch with nice big limbs to climb down on soall my fretting was wasted. The finger-writingon the walls is increasing with every trip andwas a lot farther down the cave this time.Cigarette and cigar butts are increasing too.

There was a dead rabbit in the cave abouthalf way to the first lava fall. It didn'tlook like a predator had munched on it nor werethere any maggots but a bright white mold wastaking over. I'm not sure what a self-respect-ing bunny would be doing down below all thosedrops and the mud slopes and bleak passage orhow much help he had in getting there.

We turned around at the beginning of thebreakdown so I don't know what has transpiredbelow that point.

I really enjoy taking people to Little RedRiver to point out so many different featuresof lava tubes and it is a little more rigorousthan Ape Cave. It is also interesting to watchthe mud flow changing year after year. I'msorry to see the cave getting abused.

CAVING ENROUTE TO THE GRAND CANYONWilliam R. Halliday. M.D.

For those using US 180 between Flagstaff.Arizona and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.Government Cave is a quick. easy drive. It isshown on the official map of the CoconinoNational Forest as Lava River Cave. I alwaysthought Lava River Cave was near Bend. Oregon,

July 1986

CAVING ENROUTE, continued.

in the Deschutes National Forest -- I wonderwhy the U.S. Forest Service wa~ts to have twoLava River Caves.

About 15 miles north west of the junctionof US 180 and Interstate 40 the map showsForest Service road 245. The cave is about 3miles west on FS 245, 1 mile south on FS Ill,and 1/4 mile east on FS Ill-A.

It is a pleasant, largely unitary caveabout 3/4 mile long with one re-entrant sec-tion. When I was there in May, in the processof celebrating my 60th birthday, there was apretty frozen waterfall in the twilight zone.

The map also shows the location of anotherlava tube called Slate Lakes Cave 8 milesfurther north and closer to US 180 but theaccess road is not as good.

BADLANDS PSEUDOKARST IN THEPETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK

William R. Halliday, M.D.

On May 10, 1986 I had a quick look at thebadlands type of pseudokarst in the PetrifiedForest National Park in Arizona to compal'e itto the Spirit Lake Pseudokarst at Mount St.Helens.

This area was reported many years ago in apresentation to the Geological Society ofAmerica but only an abstract was published andthis gave little information for comparison.Little has been published on this type ofpseudokarst subsequently.

Darrel Tomer has told me that the AnsaBorrego State Park in California has publisheda booklet on similar pseudokarst there and heis attempting to get me a copy. I also havequeried the National Park Service about publi-cations on pseudokarst at the Petrified ForestNational Monument but have not yet received areply.

In the park I observed significant pseudo-karst of the badlands type in a poorly consoli-dated clay. In nearly horizontal areas betweenRainbow Forest Museum and the Flattops I photo-graphed linear vertical pipes somewhat likethose near Pyroclastic Cave at Spirit Lake Cavebut much less developed. At the Tepees and atBlue Mesa a slightly different form was notedon steep-walled clay hillsides. Here shallowrivulet channels 'often disappear into im-

CASCADE CAVER 36

penetrable swa1lets formed by slumping of therivulet walls.

Usually there was no resurgence orifice butthere was one prominent orifice that gave theappearance of a tepee door to one of theconical hillocks generically called The Tee-pees.

Based on a report from a staff person en-countered by chance in the park, I need toreturn and spend more time on foot in the BlueMesa area and also study the area betweenKachina Point and Onyx Bridge.

SCOUTING THE CLAYOQUOT PLATEAUA Trip to the Holy Land

Jeff Forbes

The Holy Land. Or so it seemed on June 28,as our helicopter took us in for a sweepingpass over the C1ayoquot Plateau - SteamboatMountain karst west of Port A1berni on Van-couver Island. Picture a high alpine karstplateau, never before seen by cavers, battle-ship gray bare limestone surface riddled withcaves and shafts, and a booming resurgence farbelow.

Cavers had made several previous attemptsto reach the area but were thwarted by nearlyvertical headwalls in the valley below. Notto worry, we thought. We have the technology.Namely, the "Hughes 500", shining bubble ofmetal and plastic, average airspeed: 120 knots,maximum altitude: 16,000 feet (10,000 fullyloaded), capacity: 4 persons plus gear, cost:$400,000 plus tax. Every caver should own one.Thus for a mere $65, we would be whisked ontovirgin karst for a few days of leisurelycaving, then stroll down the valley to a wait-ing vehicle.

As the chopper descended to our chosencampsite, the small ,tunted fir trees appearedtoo close for comfort to the whirring rotor.But under such circum~tances it must be assumedthat the pilot know~ more than I about thesethings. We quickly unload the gear, the chop-per idling loudly. It occurs to me that thereis no need to duck when approaching themachine, as the rotor is an honest 10 feetabove ground. Mark h~d warned us before take-off about the most common type of helicopteracc ident. It seems the sma11 vert ica1 rea'rrotor is completely invisible while spinning'."Never walk behind an idling helicopter", he

July 1986

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, SCOUTING, continued.

had said. Wouldn't dream of it.After a flurry of half a dozen shuttle

flights, the helicopter flew away and we wereleft in the silence of wilderness. Our partyof ten consisted of Mike Evans, Steve Grundy,Brian Bischoff, Jim Jasek, Mark Grappelle, andRon Kozan of Victoria, Pat Shaw, Peter Norris,and Tich Morris of Vancouver, and yours truly,a lone Yankee. The first day of scouting pro-duced several caves. Jim and Brian found asmall lake whose outlet stream flowed directlyinto a cave. Tich and Peter had found a lowelevation resurgence cave. Meanwhile, PatSteve, Mike and I had run across a good-lookingsinking stream dumping down a 30 foot pit whichwas too wet to enter. Also found was a compli-cated vertical maze cave, a 94 foot pit, andmany large snow-filled shafts and sinkholes.All in all the prospects seemed quite encourag-ing. Several comments were made that the areahad more the appearance of a Rocky Mtn. karstarea than of those more typical of VancouverIsland.

On the second day it rained. We spent theentire day eating, sleeping and generally bull-sitting around the campfire. Nothing of notewas accomplished, except for the taking of anoath that tomorrow would be a scouting day,come rain or shine.

And so it was. Several of the previouslyfound caves were surveyed (see upcoming IslandUnderground.) Rambling about on the jaggedbarren surface proved amusing. The character-istic "tear-pants weathering" of the QuatsinoLimestone gave friction climbing new meaning.One could ascend near vertical limestone slabswith ease, realizing that if a $lip occurred,one could just as easily kiss one's ass good-bye.

Toward the end of the third day it becameapparent that a return trip would be needed.We had barely scratched the surface, leavingdozens of shafts unchecked. And many of themost promising sinks were still full of snow.

Next morning our departure was delayed by atypical west Vancouver Island downpour. Hardcavers that we were, we eventually struck camp,packed gear, and headed out at the crack ofnoon. The bushwhack to the ~oad turned into anepic beyond our worst expectations. It wasliterally a forced march through the mostdensely packed devil's club and slide alder

imaginable. When sundown came and we werestill nowhere near the road, a bivouac seemedin order. Since we had thrown out all foodbeforehand to save weight, it was to be aSpartan evening. Such times remind one oflife's simple pleasures. The "Hughes 500" forexample.

The following day about noon, the "SpaceShuttle", official VICEG cavemobile, appearedlike an apparition to weary cavers. We hadseen The Holy Land, and it was good.

RAMSEY CAVE, SKAGIT COUNTYJeff Forbes

Date: June 14, 1986Personnel: Roger Cole, Larry McTigue, Jeff

Forbes.Our party of three arrived at Ramsey Cave

northeast of Concrete on a stormy Saturdaymorning with high hopes of performing a dyetrace from a small sinking stream located about500 feet north of the cave entrance. A slowdrizzle soon became a steady downpour as wethrashed about in the overgrown clearcut insearch of the swallowhole. Newcomers to thearea, Roger and I began to doubt the actualexistence of the sink until Larry at last re-deemed himself by finding it in a copse amidstthe devils club.

I had brought along dye traps constructedof nylon mesh window screen material folded inthe form of a pouch and filled with activatedcharcoal. (see NSS Bull v.46 no.2) One ofthese packets was placed in the cave stream atthe top of the waterfall entering the north endof the cave. The dye trap acts as a proxydetector should the dye appear when cavers arenot present to see it visually. We used aboutone ounce of fluorescein dye contained in a35mm plastic film can. Larry dissolved this ina gallon of water and proceeded to get thebrilliant green stuff allover his person inspite of my warnings. Water discharge into theswallowhole was only about one liter per secondon this day and the flow of the cave streamappeared to be even less leading me to specu-late that perhaps the two weren't connectedafter all.

We returned to Ramsey Cave to wait for thedye to come through. Roger and I amused our-selves by resurveying the short cave. A few ofour observations are as follows:

CASCADE CAVER 37 July 1986

RAMSEY CAVE, continued.

1. The entire cave floods to the ceilingperiodically as evidenced by sticks and leavesplastered throughout. Floodwater apparentlyenters via the entrance sinkhole. Woe is thecaver who witnesseth such an event from below.

2. Much of the cave appears to be developedalong a fault zone, and marble breccia (brokenre-cemented rock) is visible in the floor andwalls about 50 feet inside the entrance.

3. The configuration of the cave has changedsignificantly since it was surveyed in 1973 byHank Ramsey and Rod Crawford. Much sedimenthas been washed into the cave through theentrance during wet weather, and this mud hasbeen accumulating in the downstream (north)portion of the cave. The effect of this mudhas been to reduce 30 foot tall SalamanderAlley to a four foot high crawl within the spanof 13 years. The large salamanders which stillinhabit the cave are apparently undaunted bythe influx of mud.

4. Visitation to Ramsey Cave has been quitelight of late. No one had signed the registerfor a year prior to our trip.

When the dye failed to appear immediately,we drove to nearby Jackman Creek Cave, butdecided not to enter. Roger and his Honda verynearly made an unscheduled trip to the bottomof precipitous Jackman Creek Canyon while turn-ing around.

I returned to Ramsey Cave the following dayto retrieve the dye trap 30 hours after the dyeinjection. The trap tested negative and wemust conclude that the sinking stream is notthe source of the cave stream as previouslybelieved. Larry later recalled a spring down-hill from the cave, and the dye may have emerg-ed at this point.

CASCADE CAVER 38

ANOTHER WEEK AT BIGHORN CAVEBen Tompkins

A number of Cascade Grotto members wereamong the thirty-five or so cavers to survivethe second week-long work session at BighornCave in Montana. I would. call this session aneven bigger success than last year, an intensebut enjoyable experience.

Thirty-two cavers came from 10 statesincluding Georgia and New Jersey as well asMontana, Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, andthe Pacific Northwest states. About half ofthem were returning for their second year ofwork on the project. There were also visitorsfrom the Bureau of Indian Affairs this year aswell as a reporter from the Denver Post.

There was not quite as much passage mappedthis year because the large, easy stuff alreadydone but between Bighorn and Horsethief Cavesplus surface surveys we've done about 39,000feet in the two one-week sessions. Of thisdistance, 42% was done with transits and customsoftware was used to handle the mixture oftransit and compass data.

The program was expanded this year to drawfull scale line plots of all survey data on adot matrix printer at the site and this workedvery well. It allowed the verified surveys tobe plotted to scale and slid underneath theworking mylar and traced. The notekeepers thendrew their sections of the cave in detailaround the lineplots and a good looking pre-liminary map was produced before breaking camp.

A lot more of the inventory was completedbut I haven't compiled any statistics on ityet.

Thanks to a wet spring all the flowers wereat their peak in mid June whereas they were al-ready gone in mid-May last year. There wasalso a boat ride in mid week up the BighornCanyon to provide a change of pace and to seethe region from a different perspective.

July 1986

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