GaryMc
Explorer
I missed out on the trip, but was treated to the report and thought I would share it. Good friends of mine, makes me wonder why I left Texas....
Peter and Charley both have 1950's vintage Dodge Power Wagon 4x4 school buses. Short bus', if you will. Peters is battleship gray and Charley's is an audacious "International Orange" The buses are rigged with various sleeping platforms and other fun accoutrement's that make their Mexico caving forays very luxuriousl . Charley is a master welder and fabbed up a big 'ol BBQ pit out of an oilfield elbow, he attached a 2" square pipe and it slides into his custom rear bumpers receiver.
Good folks, some of the hardest caver's in the world.
Like any story it is made better if you know the personalities involved, I do and it reads pretty funny. I hope you find it entertaining as well.
Rancho San Judas Tadeo
April 2005
Every now and then Peter Sprouse and Charley Savvas
start thinking about waking up the Power Wagon buses
and taking them out for a spin. Waking up cranky
50-year-old buses usually means at least a day or two
of mechanic work - replacing carburetors, charging
batteries and grinding out frozen lug nuts - then a
drive or two around the neighborhood to round out the
tires. Then they go at least a half-days' drive
somewhere south and west towards a hole in the ground
surrounded by dried-out cow pies on some dusty ranch
in the desert. This time they aimed the buses for the
caves created by the sulfur water that flows toward
the Río Bravo through the Rancho San Judas Tadeo,
that is located just outside of Cuidad Acuña and
within sight of Lake Amistad reservoir and dam.
We arrived at the ranch well after dark, met the
cavers from Saltillo, and soon headed off-road
following GPS coordinates. With night vision shadowed
by wind-blown dust and the occasional agave and sage,
we closed in on the waypoint. Obscured by the brush,
the pit entrance remained elusive as the buses circled
eerily through the desert. There is something surreal
about riding off-road through the desert in a lurching
and lumbering four-wheel-drive bus. Stranger yet is
riding in such a bus at night towards a pit. Sensing
that the entrance drop was near, those who could
bailed out of the buses, offering to work as
"spotters." Some of us who remained braced ourselves,
anticipating that one or both of the buses might
locate the pit first and go barreling over the lip.
But soon the cave was spotted, and the buses inched
close to the edge so that the bumpers could be used as
rigging points.
Next morning we saw that one of the buses was in primo
position for rigging the entrance drop, so a rope was
dropped from the front bumper. This was the second
trip in as many months to Cueva de Casa Blanca, that
was named for an old abandoned ranch house nearby. The
entrance drop appeared to have been caused by a
collapse that plugged the dry stream passage on one
side, creating a dig lead, but which was open and
going on the other side. On the previous trip, two
survey teams had pushed the going passage that warmed
considerably as the cave developed into a multi-level
canyon with a hydrogen sulfide stream flowing at the
lower levels. The stream was hot and smarmy,
containing gooey biomats, aquatic isopods and a small
mystery organism. Dry passage continued large above
it, where the teams collected some small, pale,
interesting-looking scorpions. The two teams had
eventually tied their surveys together, with the front
team calling it quits with a 15-meter shot waiting
ahead.
The plan for this trip was to continue the survey in
the going passage, and then have a dig team work
through the breakdown on the other side and try to
open the plugged passage. During the first exploration
of the cave, a colony of owls was found perched in the
entrance drop. This time, the first cavers to rappel
noticed a nest of owlets located off to one side of
the entrance drop. The call went out for our trip’s
ornithologist, Rob Myers, to scurry down the drop to
assess the impact our presence would make on the owls
and to ensure their safety. He determined that the
nest was well away from the rope and the drop zone,
but we were advised to minimize our intrusion to
ensure that our presence would not cause the nest to
be abandoned.
Bev Shade and John Fogarty each led a survey team down
the going passage while Charley, Andy and Philip
worked on the dig. After several hours of digging, the
dig team appeared to be pooping out when Andy emerged
from the hole all dusty and sweaty. Several hours
after that, the remaining diggers climbed out with
long faces and immediately started complaining about
how hot it was down there and how hard the dig was and
how tough it was going. Charley and Philip insisted
that Andy needed to go back down and finish the dig.
After an hour or so of whining and complaining, and
just as Andy was heading down the hole to finish the
dig, Charley and Philip sprung back into action,
jostling to get back down into the pit to claim their
going lead. They had not let on that they had broken
through the breakdown and all the while they were
goading Andy they actually had virgin, open passage
waiting to be scooped. They had come to the surface to
get the instruments, to rest up before the survey, and
to try to get Andy's goat.
The surveyors in the canyon passage suffered the
common fate of many follow-up expeditions: the dreaded
fizzle-out. The upper portion of the passage was no
longer roomy, but became a narrow meander constantly
changing shape and direction. They only got a few
survey shots before the canyon got too tight, and
extremely muddy. Survey tapes could no longer be read,
or reeled up. The only way out of the muddy glop
seemed to be to drop down to the bottom of the canyon,
but they had no vertical gear or inclination to try.
The canyon survey teams returned to the surface with
their instruments and their clothes thoroughly covered
with mud, desperately needing a ride down to the
river.
Meanwhile a number of teams set out to locate other
entrances, including some that Joel King had found on
the first visit to the ranch some 16 years previous.
Peter, Rob, Nancy, Matt, Leah, Monica, and Bradley
piled into Joel's truck and they tried to find Joel's
leads, but time had blurred the locations, so they
went and collected Mando the ranchhand, who had been
the guide on the February trip.
Mando first took the group to Cueva la Manga that had
a spectacular entrance that took the drainage of an
arroyo, dumping down a climbdown into a large passage.
A traverse along the narrow edge of the right wall got
them in without rope, although a disgruntled owl
collided with Monica, almost knocking her off the
ledge. From there a slope led down into a borehole
passage, with a few mazy tubes off to each side.
Unfortunately the borehole soon ended, leaving the
occasional floodwaters slowly sinking into silt and
leaves. We spent some time here, introducing some of
the newer cavers to surveying techniques and guiding
Monica through her first survey sketch. We also
surveyed the second cave we visited, Cueva Pasto del
Chivo, that was a low room that soon pinched. Another
small cave (Cueva de Nancy) was visited and sketched
by Joel, Matt, and Nancy. Joel was not convinced that
any of his three previous cave leads had yet been
discovered, so more work remains.
A grand party took place that night around a roaring
campfire, celebrating the first true joint expedition
of Texas and Coahuila cavers. Songs were sung and
caguamas emptied. The next day Nathan convinced a few
hardy souls to accompany him back into Cueva de Casa
Blanca to collect data on the sulfur water. Matt and
Nancy went to look for Mando, who was going to inquire
with friends about more cave locations, but he wasn't
to be found. Peter, Philip, and Javier went to map two
small caves seen on the previous trip. Cueva Calavera
del Chivo looked like a typical Hill Country cave, and
ended after about 15 meters. Cueva de las Arañas was
about the same length. It had a small skylight and
looked like someone had dug in the floor.
By the time Sunday afternoon came around it was time
to pack up the buses for the trip home. Before leaving
the ranch, we were all more than willing to make a
side trip down to the Río Bravo for a dip in the
spring, named Manantial Maris. None of us expected
that Andy would dive head first into a submerged rock
at the spring. But that is exactly what he did. He
sliced his forehead open right between his eyes
forcing the trip’s paramedic to go into full medical
emergency mode. John Fogarty pulled out his monster
wilderness first aid kit, stopped the bleeding with
compression, cleaned the wound with betadine then
butterflied and bandaged the slice shut. Needless to
say Andy was initially chastised, but then was coddled
and comforted and ended up happy as a pig in slop
since he got to snuggle in the bed deck all the way
back to Austin.
After photos and farewells, the Saltillo cavers headed
south, and the rest drove a few kilometers west to
cross into Texas on Amistad Dam.
Participants: Andy Gluesenkamp, Bev Shade, Bradley
Lingold, Charley Savvas, Francisco Farias, Javier
Bandas, Joel King, John Fogarty, Leah Adams, Matt
Oliphant, Mauricio Perez-Gomez; Monica Ponce, Nancy
Pistole, Nathan Parker, Peter Sprouse, Philip
Rykwalder, Rob Myers, Saul Rodríguez, Shannon Summers,
Terri Sprouse, Vickie Siegel, and Vivian Loftin.
Peter and Charley both have 1950's vintage Dodge Power Wagon 4x4 school buses. Short bus', if you will. Peters is battleship gray and Charley's is an audacious "International Orange" The buses are rigged with various sleeping platforms and other fun accoutrement's that make their Mexico caving forays very luxuriousl . Charley is a master welder and fabbed up a big 'ol BBQ pit out of an oilfield elbow, he attached a 2" square pipe and it slides into his custom rear bumpers receiver.
Good folks, some of the hardest caver's in the world.
Like any story it is made better if you know the personalities involved, I do and it reads pretty funny. I hope you find it entertaining as well.
Rancho San Judas Tadeo
April 2005
Every now and then Peter Sprouse and Charley Savvas
start thinking about waking up the Power Wagon buses
and taking them out for a spin. Waking up cranky
50-year-old buses usually means at least a day or two
of mechanic work - replacing carburetors, charging
batteries and grinding out frozen lug nuts - then a
drive or two around the neighborhood to round out the
tires. Then they go at least a half-days' drive
somewhere south and west towards a hole in the ground
surrounded by dried-out cow pies on some dusty ranch
in the desert. This time they aimed the buses for the
caves created by the sulfur water that flows toward
the Río Bravo through the Rancho San Judas Tadeo,
that is located just outside of Cuidad Acuña and
within sight of Lake Amistad reservoir and dam.
We arrived at the ranch well after dark, met the
cavers from Saltillo, and soon headed off-road
following GPS coordinates. With night vision shadowed
by wind-blown dust and the occasional agave and sage,
we closed in on the waypoint. Obscured by the brush,
the pit entrance remained elusive as the buses circled
eerily through the desert. There is something surreal
about riding off-road through the desert in a lurching
and lumbering four-wheel-drive bus. Stranger yet is
riding in such a bus at night towards a pit. Sensing
that the entrance drop was near, those who could
bailed out of the buses, offering to work as
"spotters." Some of us who remained braced ourselves,
anticipating that one or both of the buses might
locate the pit first and go barreling over the lip.
But soon the cave was spotted, and the buses inched
close to the edge so that the bumpers could be used as
rigging points.
Next morning we saw that one of the buses was in primo
position for rigging the entrance drop, so a rope was
dropped from the front bumper. This was the second
trip in as many months to Cueva de Casa Blanca, that
was named for an old abandoned ranch house nearby. The
entrance drop appeared to have been caused by a
collapse that plugged the dry stream passage on one
side, creating a dig lead, but which was open and
going on the other side. On the previous trip, two
survey teams had pushed the going passage that warmed
considerably as the cave developed into a multi-level
canyon with a hydrogen sulfide stream flowing at the
lower levels. The stream was hot and smarmy,
containing gooey biomats, aquatic isopods and a small
mystery organism. Dry passage continued large above
it, where the teams collected some small, pale,
interesting-looking scorpions. The two teams had
eventually tied their surveys together, with the front
team calling it quits with a 15-meter shot waiting
ahead.
The plan for this trip was to continue the survey in
the going passage, and then have a dig team work
through the breakdown on the other side and try to
open the plugged passage. During the first exploration
of the cave, a colony of owls was found perched in the
entrance drop. This time, the first cavers to rappel
noticed a nest of owlets located off to one side of
the entrance drop. The call went out for our trip’s
ornithologist, Rob Myers, to scurry down the drop to
assess the impact our presence would make on the owls
and to ensure their safety. He determined that the
nest was well away from the rope and the drop zone,
but we were advised to minimize our intrusion to
ensure that our presence would not cause the nest to
be abandoned.
Bev Shade and John Fogarty each led a survey team down
the going passage while Charley, Andy and Philip
worked on the dig. After several hours of digging, the
dig team appeared to be pooping out when Andy emerged
from the hole all dusty and sweaty. Several hours
after that, the remaining diggers climbed out with
long faces and immediately started complaining about
how hot it was down there and how hard the dig was and
how tough it was going. Charley and Philip insisted
that Andy needed to go back down and finish the dig.
After an hour or so of whining and complaining, and
just as Andy was heading down the hole to finish the
dig, Charley and Philip sprung back into action,
jostling to get back down into the pit to claim their
going lead. They had not let on that they had broken
through the breakdown and all the while they were
goading Andy they actually had virgin, open passage
waiting to be scooped. They had come to the surface to
get the instruments, to rest up before the survey, and
to try to get Andy's goat.
The surveyors in the canyon passage suffered the
common fate of many follow-up expeditions: the dreaded
fizzle-out. The upper portion of the passage was no
longer roomy, but became a narrow meander constantly
changing shape and direction. They only got a few
survey shots before the canyon got too tight, and
extremely muddy. Survey tapes could no longer be read,
or reeled up. The only way out of the muddy glop
seemed to be to drop down to the bottom of the canyon,
but they had no vertical gear or inclination to try.
The canyon survey teams returned to the surface with
their instruments and their clothes thoroughly covered
with mud, desperately needing a ride down to the
river.
Meanwhile a number of teams set out to locate other
entrances, including some that Joel King had found on
the first visit to the ranch some 16 years previous.
Peter, Rob, Nancy, Matt, Leah, Monica, and Bradley
piled into Joel's truck and they tried to find Joel's
leads, but time had blurred the locations, so they
went and collected Mando the ranchhand, who had been
the guide on the February trip.
Mando first took the group to Cueva la Manga that had
a spectacular entrance that took the drainage of an
arroyo, dumping down a climbdown into a large passage.
A traverse along the narrow edge of the right wall got
them in without rope, although a disgruntled owl
collided with Monica, almost knocking her off the
ledge. From there a slope led down into a borehole
passage, with a few mazy tubes off to each side.
Unfortunately the borehole soon ended, leaving the
occasional floodwaters slowly sinking into silt and
leaves. We spent some time here, introducing some of
the newer cavers to surveying techniques and guiding
Monica through her first survey sketch. We also
surveyed the second cave we visited, Cueva Pasto del
Chivo, that was a low room that soon pinched. Another
small cave (Cueva de Nancy) was visited and sketched
by Joel, Matt, and Nancy. Joel was not convinced that
any of his three previous cave leads had yet been
discovered, so more work remains.
A grand party took place that night around a roaring
campfire, celebrating the first true joint expedition
of Texas and Coahuila cavers. Songs were sung and
caguamas emptied. The next day Nathan convinced a few
hardy souls to accompany him back into Cueva de Casa
Blanca to collect data on the sulfur water. Matt and
Nancy went to look for Mando, who was going to inquire
with friends about more cave locations, but he wasn't
to be found. Peter, Philip, and Javier went to map two
small caves seen on the previous trip. Cueva Calavera
del Chivo looked like a typical Hill Country cave, and
ended after about 15 meters. Cueva de las Arañas was
about the same length. It had a small skylight and
looked like someone had dug in the floor.
By the time Sunday afternoon came around it was time
to pack up the buses for the trip home. Before leaving
the ranch, we were all more than willing to make a
side trip down to the Río Bravo for a dip in the
spring, named Manantial Maris. None of us expected
that Andy would dive head first into a submerged rock
at the spring. But that is exactly what he did. He
sliced his forehead open right between his eyes
forcing the trip’s paramedic to go into full medical
emergency mode. John Fogarty pulled out his monster
wilderness first aid kit, stopped the bleeding with
compression, cleaned the wound with betadine then
butterflied and bandaged the slice shut. Needless to
say Andy was initially chastised, but then was coddled
and comforted and ended up happy as a pig in slop
since he got to snuggle in the bed deck all the way
back to Austin.
After photos and farewells, the Saltillo cavers headed
south, and the rest drove a few kilometers west to
cross into Texas on Amistad Dam.
Participants: Andy Gluesenkamp, Bev Shade, Bradley
Lingold, Charley Savvas, Francisco Farias, Javier
Bandas, Joel King, John Fogarty, Leah Adams, Matt
Oliphant, Mauricio Perez-Gomez; Monica Ponce, Nancy
Pistole, Nathan Parker, Peter Sprouse, Philip
Rykwalder, Rob Myers, Saul Rodríguez, Shannon Summers,
Terri Sprouse, Vickie Siegel, and Vivian Loftin.
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