A Snowy Adventure

We sometimes like to go on little drives on Sundays to go out exploring. Last weekend I wanted to check out a spot nearby to verify some information I have written in a non-fiction book of the area. I'm not going to say too much about it now (even though I am SO excited about it), except to say that I'm reviewing proofs and if all goes well, the book will be published in April 2012.

Anyway, we went up a canyon that my husband and I hadn't been up to since before the kids were born. It was funny comparing our memories--or memory lapses--of the canyon. On the way back down, I was amazed at the huge cave entrance that I had forgotten about.

I remarked to my husband, "I must have said we'll come back someday to take a look at it."


He agreed that I had said that. Apparently I say that often enough that I forget I say it. And I forget some of the holes I've said it about.

This time we decided we weren't just going to say that we'd come back. We were going to hike up to the cave that day, even though it looked like a really steep hike. And we had two little kids. And it was about to snow.

Desert Girl managed just fine on Daddy's back, but Desert Boy had a few rock climbing adventures.

The scree was especially difficult, as his short legs didn't let him get much farther up the hillside, and then he just slid back down to where he had started.

Nevertheless we kept getting closer and closer to the gaping cave mouth.

The storm clouds were swooping down the canyon as we made it to the cave entrance. We dug out our lunch and were glad to have a little bit of cover.

After lunch, I took a quick look around the cave. I'm not sure what its name is, but it wasn't too large. The big entrance room extended back about 70 to 80 feet, but I didn't locate any passages that went off from it.

I did find some nice frostwork. I also saw a few stalactites and stalagmites. There was one giant stalagmite, over ten feet tall and about three feet wide. It, along with all the breakdown, made us think that this once might have been a much bigger cave.

We did our best to get a family portrait (I wanted to be in at least one photo!). It turned out okay if you just ignore the Doritos bag.

While my husband was trying to find an easier way down, I had the kids stand and look at each other. Oh, they can be so sweet. I really like how this photo turned out.

Then it was time to head down. That part wasn't all that fun with two complaining kids. I don't think I'd go back with little ones, but I would go back to see what kind of birds are nesting in the cave in the summer. We saw the guano and ledges, but couldn't really see much more.

It was good to have finally checked out another hole in the ground (even if it was a hole I had forgotten about!). And we did spot a few more nearby that will warrant another visit.

Ricks Spring

After visiting Logan Cave on our NCKMS field trip, he headed farther up Logan Canyon and stopped at Ricks Spring. The spring emerges from a large overhang and has a handicapped-accessible trail that goes up close to the springhead. Except that this isn't any regular springhead. As we watched, we saw a light in the spring, followed by a body. There were divers in the spring!

Even though I won't do cave diving as it's one of the most dangerous sports around, I'm fascinated by it. And it was interesting seeing these divers emerge with all their specialized gear in the 46 degree water. They said it was warm. They dive there all winter, and some of the water comes from the Logan River, so it can be really cold.

I wasn't the only one fascinated--our group watched in awe as the divers surfaced.

It was hard to believe that the passage continues, but in fact it goes back at least 2300 feet in the main passage, and they haven't even started exploring the side passages.

These cave divers have begun mapping the cave.

The cave twists and turns like most caves, and also goes up and down, making it a sporting challenge. These divers have done over 200 dives at Ricks Spring, so they know the tricky spots, like especially tight spots that require side mount tanks. They also know at what water levels they can dive the spring--during snow melt, the water velocity is too high to safely go in. This year all their guidelines were washed out by the super high velocities. They also have to dig out the cave entrance every year.

We listened to a USGS presentation about the geology of the area and what dye traces had shown.

 

Then we listened to the divers, Wendell Nope and Richard Lamb. They made it clear that they are very safety conscious and love what they do a lot. Then they showed a video they shot, which was awesome. If you'd like to see the video and some additional photos of this underwater cave, check out Wendell's website.

Logan Cave

 This last week I went to the National Cave and Karst Management Symposium in Midway, Utah. It was an excellent symposium, with lots of great information shared, old relationships revitalized, new cave people met, and to top it off, it also included an informative field trip.

We headed up Logan Canyon and after stopping at a couple springs and learning how dye tracing had revealed the water sources to them, we met with a state wildlife biologist and learned about the bats in Logan Cave. This is a fairly large cave with a huge cave opening right by the highway. It has both a maternity and hibernating colony of Townsend's big eared bats, so visits in the summer or winter can impact the bats. About 15 years ago, the gate was put on, and since then the population of bats has increased from about 5 to 250.

 Since we were visiting in the fall and the group was made up of cave managers and researchers, we had been able to obtain permission to visit part of the cave. Several members of our group remembered visiting the cave decades ago and were grateful to have a chance to see it again.

 Large walking passages predominated in the part of the cave we visited.

 Of course I couldn't help but look for cave life. I saw several heleomyzid flies.

 We were a little bit of a parade going through the cave, our group, strung out into a single file. It was interesting hearing the little tidbits of geologic, hydrologic, biologic, and historical knowledge people were sharing.

 A bat with white nose syndrome. No! Just kidding. This was a dead bat with lots of white fungus growing on it, but it had been dead a long time. White nose syndrome is a disease caused by the fungus Geomyces destructans, and it causes a white fungus to grow on bats and then those bats usually die. It was first discovered in the U.S. in New York state about five years ago and now has spread to many more states, primarily in the East and Midwest, killing thousands of bats. No one knows how to stop it, and cavers are taking precautions of not wearing gear from infected areas in uninfected areas. In addition, many caves have been closed, which has been controversial, but I won't go into that discussion here right now.

 Logan cave had lots of interesting sand riffles, mud cracks, and other sediment deposits showing how water had recently moved through the cave.

 We continued in the passage until it eventually got too wet. The stream flowed a few inches deep, with pools sometimes a few feet deep.

 With the advance of point-and-shoot cameras, we had plenty of photographers documenting the cave!

 On the way out, I noticed the water lines in the cave. When I saw this photo, I realized that folks had also lined up rocks to avoid getting as wet when water was flowing in the cave.

 We saw lots of chert nodules in the walls.

 More passage with water lines evident.

 A snout-nosed moth (take a good look at that nose!).

 Someone called this a monarch moth, and I'm going with that right now because I forget the Latin genus name.

 Returning to the entrance, we saw that the skies had opened up and that it was raining hard.

 Shawn had found some items to clean up in the cave--a beer can and a super soaker.

 A large packrat midden was right next to the gate, looking like oil oozing out of the wall (and one participant shared a story of a visitor describing a midden just like that and wanting to know why the cave was leaky).

 Right inside the gate was a box with a sign that said "Warning, this area under video surveillance."

I was about to leave when I was notified of a millipede just a short ways back.

 I couldn't resist checking it out. Even though it wasn't a white cave-adapted millipede, it was still really cool and I was glad to see it. Somehow invertebrates are so much more interesting to me when they're found inside a cave!

 Then it really was time to leave, out past the thick chain and padlock. I don't know if I'll ever have a chance to go back in, but hopefully these photos give a glimpse of what's back behind the bars. I hope the bats are able to keep living peacefully in their home. They've lived there a lot longer than us humans have been around, and it's quite sad that humans nearly destroyed them there. (The cave was ultimately closed after some stupid, irresponsible people (yes, I wanted to use much stronger language here, but resisted due to the family nature of this blog) set off firecrackers under the bats. How could they be so stupid?).

We hiked back down to the highway, next to the spring cascading down the leaf-covered rocks.

Next stop: an even larger spring, with a surprise right in the middle of it. Stay tuned...

Bat Flight from Rose Guano Cave

One evening this past week I had the opportunity to go to Rose Guano Cave in eastern Nevada to watch the bat flight. This cave is an important migratory stop for Brazilian free-tailed bats (also called Mexican free-tailed bats; Tadarida brasiliensis), with over a million using it each year. They usually stay for one to four nights, heading out to feed on insects that are especially prevalent over the nearby agricultural fields.

From the highway, the cave can be seen, near the base of the cliffs (left-center of photo above).

The road towards the cave is rough and definitely requires high clearance and four wheel drive. We parked next to a trailer that is being used by graduate students to study the bats (more on that later), and then hiked the old road towards the cave.

The late afternoon sunlight was superb against the limestone. The first attraction we noticed was a huge limestone arch. Then we could see the gaping mouth of the cave. The old road ended at the base of a tailings pile. This was from an adit built in the 1920s to mine guano out of the cave. The guano is rich in phosphates and nitrates and was used to make gunpowder. Because the adit upset the natural airflow in the cave, it was sealed in the 1990s.

Inside the cave mouth it says "Positively No Trespassing. Rose Guano Mining Claim."

It's steep to get up to the cave, and a rope was installed as a handline to make it a bit easier. We could smell that guano as we got closer to the cave.

On the way we passed a thermal-imaging camera. This was installed earlier this year to record the bat flights so more accurate counts can be done. The bats in the cave have received a lot of attention in recent years due to nearby wind farm proposals.

A sign outside the cave entrance provides more information about the bats (click on the photo to enlarge it).

Below the cave entrance, sitting in a chair with a camera by his side was Peter, one of two field technicians helping two graduate students learn more about the bats. The two graduate students had spent the previous summer counting the bats every night, and they liked it so much that they decided to do further studies and return again. They work closely with the Nevada Department of Wildlife and the Bureau of Land Management to not only count the bats, but also find out where they go. One hundred transmitters were attached to bats over the past couple of years to track where they go and how long they stay in the area.

Even though there is a camera that records the entire bat flight now, they are continuing to count the bats nightly to compare the past method counts to the new counts.

We climbed up to a rock next to the cave entrance. From there we could see that the cave entrance had some special lights in it (that we couldn't see when they were on) to help the camera images.

Jason, an NDOW wildlife biologist, came out to explain to our group more about bat biology and their use of the cave. As he was talking, we saw the first bat come out of the cave--and then turn around and head back in, presumably to tell the rest that it was time to start heading out.

Then more bats started coming out. They looked a little like a stream, flowing by quickly. Then the number of bats increased, and instead of flying straight out, some swirled a bit--the stream was bigger and had some whitewater.

As it got darker, we found that our vantage point was a bit high because the bats blended in with the rock behind them. So we moved down next to Peter and saw the bats silhouetted against the sky.

Jason pulled out a camera and showed us a video of the bats from inside the cave. They come from a deeper chamber in the cave and swirled around twice to gain elevation before they flew out of the cave. It looked really neat.

He also had a thermal-imaging camera with him. Using that, I thought the bats looked like fish swimming in a fast current in the ocean. Jason estimated that about 2,000 bats per minute were flying out of the cave.

By 8:20 p.m., it was too dark to see the bats with the naked eye. Jason said they would continue until about 11:00 p.m. The bats primarily use the cave from July into October.

I couldn't get a photo of the bats flying out, but you might be able to see them in the video below. They are really amazing animals, and with such strange life histories. I can't wait to learn more about them.

Things in Caves

 I've been lucky to go on some caving trips lately, often with a biological focus, so I couldn't resist testing the limits of my cave point-and-shoot. Above and below are a pseudoscorpion, Microcreagris grandis Muchmore. They're the top of the food chain in many of the area caves.

 And they're only about a half-inch to an inch long. Such an ecosystem, where the top predator is smaller than the size of a quarter!

 Deb and Gerry helped me download data loggers along with place bait. They hadn't done much caving but were amazingly agile and moved without any problems.

 This tiny spider was really, really tiny, like about 2 mm long.

 My caving group after the cave trip. Notice how clean they all look. We visited a clean cave. (Spoiler: muddy cave to come.)

 This is a dipluran, and we may never know the species unless someone decides to become a dipluran expert and take on some work describing new diplurans! (Young readers, please take note of this. If you're the only dipluran expert in the world, you could get a lot of work heading your way.)

Notice what the dipluran is on--wet, gooey mud.

If you're wondering if this is a different cave, you're right!

 The above photo really isn't of nothing. In fact, there are five cave critters captured--a mama and four little babies. The babies are less than 1 mm long (very sorry for mixing English and metric systems, I end up using both for work). They are Arrhopalites springtails, and I watched them jumping on the surface of the water.

 Those Arrhopalites springtails were on the top of the water, but at the bottom of the little puddle was a white planaria. Maybe we can find someone to identify it.

Anyone know any planaria experts?

It would take a special kind of person to be a planaria expert.

Just saying.

 Phew, on to something almost warm and cuddly. At least it's bigger than two inches long and easily seen. This is a harvestman, this species only found in caves, and a relative of Daddy-long legs. It belongs to the Opilionid family, which means it is a cousin to the spiders (Arachnid family).

 So long, harvestman!

 No cave life in the above photo, but something surprising--running water in this cave! I had never seen that in this part of the cave, and I was terribly excited. The cave wasn't sumped, so we could follow the water and see a cave forming process in action!

 Nicole and Jennie negotiating the mud slope down to the water. See, I'm not the only crazy one who enjoys getting covered with gooey mud in a cave!

 We headed downstream, towards the canyon passage. The water was moving swiftly. We had rubber boots on, but we managed to find a pool deep enough that we all flooded our boots.

Then the water sounded louder, and we rounded a corner and found:

 a waterfall! Sweet! A two-foot waterfall in the cave. We saw the water continuing down into the narrow canyon passage and chimneyed above it for a bit, but it was apparent that the rest of the cave was sumped and the walls were extra slippery, so we turned around and headed back.

 On the way I spotted this little cave-adapted millipede, Idagona lehmanensis Shear.

 There was also this little rose-colored creature, perhaps a mite.

 Here's a photo of David after the cave trip. Originally his entire cave suit was yellow.

 Jonathan exiting with a smile.

 And we all gasped when Jennie pulled down her cave suit to reveal a pristine National Park Service uniform shirt. She takes her uniform seriously!

The next day we went into another cave. (Okay, I know this post is getting long, but if I stop now, I won't get started again till next week! If you need a break, just stop here and come back in the next few days and read the rest.)

 I saw a couple ants at the bottom of the squeezy vertical entrance. It's so tight, though, that you don't use vertical gear, you just wedge yourself through it. Going down wasn't too bad.

 Numerous cave crickets hung out at the bottom of the drop along the walls and ceiling.

 We also saw several of these fungal beetles.

 This is David taking serious photographs. You can see some of his work by clicking here.

 We found lots of small bones in the cave, scattered in various locations.

 Nicole holding up a pelvis.

After we finished our trip in the walking portion of the cave, it was time to head out. That was easier said than done as we tried to shimmy up the tight vertical section. A piece of webbing helped a bit. Finally we all made it to the surface, although with a few new scrapes and bruises. I think most everyone sighed in relief to be back on top.

Sometimes I appreciate the sun a lot more after a caving trip!