Missouri Speleological Survey
Files Report for April – May 2003
Ben Miller sent locations of three more new caves in Stone County, this time on the Galena and Hurley quads. And he helped answer questions about a cave in Boone County. Ben has also got a pile of maps in the works.
Gary Johnson of KCAG sent in a lengthy trip report which included descriptions of caves along the Jacks Fork River in Texas and Shannon Counties. He also sent a link for a number of photographs for the files.
Micki Feakes sent a very nice and interesting map of Morgan Big Spring in Laclede County. This is an interesting cave, the entrance of which is in the bottom of the Osage Fork. I’m glad cave divers do what they do ‘cause I’m way too chicken to ever learn, and boy, is the information great!
Bill Elliott sent some additional information on Smittle Cave.
Jon Beard sent information and updates on cave lengths in southwest Missouri.
Joe Sikorski sent information and questions on a number of caves on the Herculaneum quad in Jefferson County. Joe is getting some work done in that area and he tried to tap my memory about a couple of caves I had visited, gulp, some twenty years ago. Naturally I was of little help.
Dan Lamping sent a jpeg of a topo map with the cave he and others recently found marked on it. This really helps as we now have something more than just a location – in this case the GPS location was not so good (hey, this happens!) but Dan marked the cave on a map, scanned it and got it to me.
Mick Sutton sent a copy of CRF’s Ozark Riverways Winter Bat Census. This runs to 40 pages and includes lots of descriptions that will be added to the reports. This project involved visits to some 43 caves this past winter, looking for hibernating bats and/or guano piles.
A cave report and map on a new cave in McDonald County came courtesy of MoDOT. It’ll get a number as soon as we get some inconsistencies in the location worked out. This is part of the process that we go through: the location of each new cave is referenced to electronic and paper topos to insure that “old” caves aren’t turned in as new. The consistency of various locations are checked as well to insure that they agree. This is one very good reason for turning in cave reports with different location systems (e.g. UTM and public land survey system). In this case, the locations were inconsistent so we need further information. Many times, a jpeg of the location plotted on a topo map is the best and most useful thing.
Tim Harrison turned in new reports and maps of Holt Hutch Cave and Bowen Cave in Shannon County along with a new map and report on Tomfoolery Cave, also in Shannon County, by Joe Sikorski. Great work, gents.
Via Hal Baker, Danny McMurphy of the Corps of Engineers sent a photo and topo location for Peter Cave, Iron County. This has long been a problem cave as there are two much smaller features located on the topo map (both of which peter out), but the real Peter Cave had never previously been identified. And it’s tough to keep these Peters straight!
Scott House
1606 Luce St.
Cape Girardeau MO 63701
573-651-3782