Missouri Speleological Survey
Files Report for November and December 2003
Wow! An avalanche of data has come in during the last few months and I am happily snowed under. Things are going great guns, there’s been some great networking going on, folks are actively beating the brush and beating the keyboards turning up new information. All I can say is I’m behind! So if you’ve been communicating and are waiting for feedback: well, sorry about that. But if the snows ever come and shut me in perhaps I can get more office work done.
Also, I am continuing to work on a revision of the database which will give us better functionality at the cost of somewhat less flexibility. Keeping things simple is a goal which is why this isn’t finished yet. When finished it will have enhanced “relativity” which will enable us to relate the database on cave entrances with databases on cave reports and cave maps (as maintained by DNR).
Another thing I do is look at incoming biological information in reports and incorporate such material as is reliable and useful into the Bill Elliott’s Cave Life Database. We are very careful about adding new records; the occurrence (sighting) needs to be precise and well-founded; e.g. cave salamanders are relatively easy to identify but some people confuse the name with that of the grotto salamander. Further, while pipistrelle bats are easy to identify, specific species of Myotis are difficult to do. So take notes and if you aren’t positive, say so. It is valuable information and will be used.
A files night work session with Stan Sides, Howard Kalnitz and I turned up a bunch (8?) of caves from Cape Girardeau County that weren’t in the database. Stan and Howard plan on going out to get some photos and GPS locations on a variety of caves whose locations appear to be suspect as well. This should help clear up a bunch of questions. Our process was to place the known locations (from our topo maps) on the electronic Topo program version. This gives us exact locations which we can put into the cave database. Since then, Howard has been afoot in Perry County relocating caves near Ball Mill Resurgence.
Kelly Hagen, who lives in South Korea, was looking for information on Enloe Cave (Kelly is of the Enloe family) in Shannon County. She knew something of the history of the land and the people thereof. We didn’t have a lot of information on the cave, but Kelly added quite a bit on the history of the land, which will be incorporated in the database. This is in Sinking Creek drainage and anyone wanting a good, long-term project should take on the Sinking Creek basin – lots of known caves to survey and a lot of unknown area to ridgewalk.
Bill Elliott sent information on a cave in the Osage River drainage that the Department of Conservation is purchasing. Bill had new information on the cave and an improved location.
Leonard Butts sent a report and photo of a new cave in Crawford County on the Cherryville quad, including full locations, description, and directions. Getting complete reports like this really helps the process of assigning new numbers and keeping the database in good shape. Like me (and others), Leonard is using the Topo program from NGS to put cave locations on and check them versus what is known.
Jeff Crews sent a location and brief description of a new cave on Forest Service land (maybe) in Phelps County (Kaintuck Hollow Quad). A group of folks from the Rolla area are busy mapping the cave. Which brings up…
Quad of the Month: Flat Quad, Phelps County. A) Has seven known caves on it, most of which we don’t have good data on. B) Most of it ain’t flat but what is flat has sinkholes. C) Lots of local relief with plenty of carbonate rock. D) The quad has 10ft contour intervals on it, which helps you spot distortions and sinkholes.
Mike Freeman of Rolla sent a new location for a cave which I need to follow up on and see if it is a new cave. Mike also sent a sketch map of new discoveries in well-known Cave X (not its real name) in Pulaski County.
Bob Osburn sent a roll of maps and their digital files. Included was Chilton Cave in Carter County surveyed by Bob Osburn and Dawn Cardace of CRF along with Randy Orndorff and Dave Weary of the US Geological Survey. The cave is about 750ft long. Bob also sent maps of Guano Cave (still incomplete) near the Current River (900ft of passage) and Chimney Rock Cave in Barry County. Chimney Rock Cave was surveyed by Mick Sutton, Sue Hagan, Danny Vann, and I back in 2000. It has about 500ft of passage.
Ben Miller continues to swamp the system with his extensive ridgewalking and survey efforts in Stone County. This is great and shows what you can do in some overlooked areas of the state. Ben just sent me a list of 20+ (yes, twenty-plus) new locations along with a number of questions.
I spent the better part of a day perusing Ken Thomson’s extensive files in Springfield. A number of “new” maps were turned up. These actually were done some time ago and never found there way into the files. At least one new cave was “unearthed”, actually a cave that was destroyed by highway construction. The cave didn’t have to be destroyed; the “span” (passage) was less than 10’ wide and had 20-40ft of solid rock over it, but engineers tend to be suspicious of anything that is not man-made and the bulk of it, including the entrance, was imploded. The maps “found” included Ash Cave, Indian Ladder Pit, Piber Hollow Cave and Fairy Cave, all in Barry County. Most of these maps were in unfinished form; perhaps someone can scan and “ink” them electronically. Also turned up were new reports on a variety of caves, including Ash Cave and Indian Ladder Pit. There were also a number of reports from project caves I Taney County which I typed into the database.
An evening session with Michael Carter, Jon Beard, and James Corsentino was helpful in demonstrating the Topo program and getting some input into exact cave locations. My recollection is that we corrected quite a few locations in the database that night.
For those who think the MSS never does anything; it is possible that you are just out of the loop. For example, recently a FEMA official sent a request to DNR for info on a cave in Stockton. This was forwarded to me and I spread the word to Jon Beard and others to see what they knew. A flurry of activity resulted with information and emails from Jon, James Corsentino, Matt Forir, Marty Griffin, Tom Lounsbury, Carl Thayer, Tom Grey, Carl Wagner, Lawrence Ireland, and others. A crack crew is planning on mapping the wet and nasty thing some time when weather conditions permit. This is how the MSS works – by networking people who are active in the Survey’s goals. There is a strong network of active cavers in the Ozarks – this keeps developing and getting stronger all the time. This was exemplified by a recent CRF trip to Fitton Cave in Arkansas, where a good group of active cavers who “knew” each other actually got to meet and go caving together.
Rita Worden followed up on a cave lead and spent a day on a landowner’s property looking at a new cave. This is another example of networking where we got a lead and forwarded it on to someone who spend time tracking down the information.
Mike Flannigan sent information on caves on the Brownfield quad, a result of correspondence back and forth. It looks like he has at least one new cave as well as information on known caves.
The paper cave files gave forth a new cave, which had been turned in back in 1992 and was never assigned a new cave number. This cave was located by Will Feltman (of Wisconsin) in 1982, is in Shannon County and may be on MDC land.
Michael Carter has completed the cave leads list. This is a tremendous amount of work, as Michael, is very complete in his work, tried to add as much information as he could get or figure out. I can now distribute this in FileMaker runtime format. The best part is that the cave leads list is in the exact same format as the cave files; when a cave lead is verified as a cave, we can move it straight in to the master database.
Michael also sent some location corrections that will take some time going through. And Michael has finished editing Perry County reports and has come up with a long (like 60!) list of entrances that are not in the database. Most of these are secondary, tertiary, and quaternary (?) entrances to known caves. Michael found them by carefully perusing the digital cave maps. Now we will have to decide which ones should have new numbers and or entries in the database. Sometimes separate entrances are too close to each other to make a separate entry geographically worthwhile.
Michael Carter has also tracked down some other errors which I am working through; fixed one, Michael discovered an error in a Howell County location that has now been fixed.
Paul Woods continues to send a stream of material from McDonald County where he and others have undertaken a new project to continue locating, mapping, reporting, and restoring caves. They have made a number of very good landowner contacts and have some future trips planned. Anyone wanting to help should contact Paul at pue@sbcglobal.net. One of the issues that frustrates is the destruction of cave entrances along a new stretch of highway (thanks to Spike Crews, Marty Griffin, and Paul for info.). I just don’t understand the necessity for doing this; even a “dangerous” cave can be gated or stabilized with a culvert entrance. Local cavers and Bill Elliott are working the issue.
Mick Sutton submitted maps of the Peter Caves in Iron County, as mapped by a CRF crew of Mick, Sue Hagan, Jeff Page, and Darla White. Mick also submitted a map of Sisco Cave in Oregon County, mapped in 1999 by Mick, Sue, and George Bilbrey. Mick also sent some new/revised reports on Forest Service caves at Yancy Mills , based on information from the files and from Jeff Crews.
Just in time for Christmas, Earl and Lannis Hancock sent in a huge amount of material on a cd. Included was 25 pages (yes, pages) of updated cave information (including new caves) and hundreds of digital photos. Here are Earl and Lannis’ own words in describing the project purpose and need:
“This
information was gathered while searching for an 11 year old boy who went
missing Oct 6, 2002 (almost a year ago) from Richwoods MO, Washington county.
By
mid July of 2003, his parents had received many tips that the body and bicycle
of Shawn Hornbeck were disposed of in a pit or shaft in northern Jefferson
county and enlisted the aid of local cavers to have a look. Some 35 pit caves,
mostly in three northern Jefferson county townships, 43N4E, 42N4E, 42N5E and
one in St Louis County were searched between July-September 2003. There was no
evidence ever found of Shawn or his bicycle.
·
Twenty
two cavers, mostly from MVG, searched on 12 days and were able to gather this
information and photographs. Mark Andrich, Robert Bilbrey, Kim Chiles, Bob
Cline, Jon Cline, Bruce Cox, Bryan Ealick, Brian Goertz, Earl and Lannis
Hancock, Tim Harrison, Dan Kesel, Mike Kuszaj, Dan Lamping, Charles May, Adele
Ming, Jessica Nave, Matt Platter, Tony Schmitt, Brian Strothcamp, Dan Tadrick,
Ben Thomas, Doug Wessel, We were
accompanied at times by the parents of Shawn, Craig and Pam Akers and members
of the Shawn Hornbeck Search and Rescue (SHSAR) team.
·
Landowner
information for each cave was obtained 8-13-2003 from the Jefferson county
Assessors office.
·
Locations
were usually taken with three GPS receivers and were in good agreement.
·
Associated
photographs with captions, for all caves, are stored as JPG images on the
enclosed CD.”
Wow. What an effort in a distressing cause. Once again, cavers have shown that they are some of the finest people in the world.
As the year came to a close Al Quamen and Joe Walsh dropped into Cape Girardeau for a day of working on the Perry County files. We spent all day and into the evening working on improving locations, discussing old caves (and cavers!) and generally cleaning up a large chunk of the cave areas of the county. Basically our procedure was to use our old topo map cave locations (and lots of other materials) to put locations onto the Topo program on the computer. While plotting the caves onto the electronic topo is good, what is even better is that the program then stores each location as a waypoint with latitude/longitude or UTM locations. The resulting file can then be manipulated, saved, or imported into databases or GPS receivers. Basically our procedure saved a lot of time by identifying caves that need better locations. Then we can produce printed maps, with cave locations, and send folks out to relocate and get better locations on the “problem” caves. We also piled up a bunch of “new” (unreported) caves plus additional entrances to systems that need entering. Another work session, perhaps a series of them, will be required to adequately sort out all of the information. The great thing is that in the long run, this will give us much better locations for caves in Perry County. We had a lot of fun and should have had a tape recorder going to save dialogues that went something like:
-I remember it well, it had a cedar tree in it.
-But where was it?
-On the south side of the road.
-But your location has it on the north side of the road.
-Oh hell, I don’t know – there’s a bunch of them out there. It’s not the one so-and-so was stuck in…
Lastly, Paul Hauck sent a map of Camp Cave in Ozark County as surveyed by a large CRF survey crew: Paul and Dee Hauck, Mick Sutton, Sue Hagan, Richard Young, Scott and Patti House, and our rat terriers Floyd and Max. It was, sadly, Floyd’s last cave trip – he died a month later, having helped survey about 20 caves over 14 years.
Scott House
Missouri Cave Database
1606 Luce St.
Cape Girardeau MO 63701
573-651-3782