Colorado Bend State Park, Texas
All photos are © The Maverick Grotto and the respective photographer
All Rights reserved!
A new format for the CBSP pictures is being developed. We're dividing up
the photographs into subjects. Please pardon our redundancy while we're changing things up.
Photos from Colorado Bend State Park where Texas Cavers have maintained a
volunteer cave research
project since the early 1980's. The current version of the project
sponsored by the Texas Speleology Association (TSA) was begun, November 1987
after TPWD purchased the Lemons Ranch and combined it with the Gorman Falls
property. Shortly after the project began, the park was opened to the
public but the project continued as it does to this day.
There is no public caving on the park. To enter caves, one must be an
attendee of the volunteer project or go on a fee based guided wild cave tour
offered by TPWD. For more information, visit the link below.
www.tpwd.state.tx.us/park/colorado/
Map
Pictures taken by Butch Fralia using both film and digital cameras.
Photo credits for other photographers will be given for the individual photo.
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Gorman Creek Crevice, the longest cave in San Saba County. In fact it may be the longest cave in Texas - going up to Fitton Cave in Arkansas, over to Carlsbad in New Mexico then down to Bustamante in Mexico. It's all bedding plane crawl so who cares!
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Gorman Creek Crevice was discovered in August 1987, within weeks of TPWD purchasing the Lemons Ranch. Since that time it's been surveyed but the end has never been reached due to high CO2.
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Gorman Creek Crevice was connected to Horseshoe Chimney through a heroic effort of some Texas Cavers! It may well be as long as mentioned earlier but will be bedding plane crawl with 1 foot ceiling heights, high CO2 and no one will care how long it is.
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Dennis Welch enters Railroad Crowbar Cave to write a description. You can see the crowbar stuck just to his right which earned the cave it's name.
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Cavers seem to have a never ending supply of new names for caves. Moose Twit Cave was discovered and named by cavers from the Aggie Speleological Society (ASS).
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At least a name like Porcupine Cave suggest an origin for the name.
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The Texas Speleological Association (TSA) has held several Winter meetings at CBSP. In this picture, the business meeting begins.
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A number of well known Texas cavers appear in this and the previous picture. They will be readily recognized by cavers.
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The TSA Winter meeting is always a work project in addition to a business meeting. These cavers are out doing cave related projects.
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Peter Strickland (Mr Hot Tub) waits for an unnamed caver to come out of a cave.
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By now you're probably wondering if there are any in-cave pictures. Yep, Dave Castello and son Eric in Lemon's Ranch Cave. One of the caves on the wild cave tour. This was their first cave trip. Photo by Mark Gee.
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Mark Gee, Marshall Gee, and Eric Castello in Lemon's Ranch Cave. It's necessary to go through a very tight crawl space to reach the part of the cave where there are formation. Photo by Dave Castello.
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There probably should be a restriction on showing pictures of people standing in a cave. In Texas, if you're not crawling, your not caving. Photo by Dave Castello.
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Mark Gee (L), Eric Castello (C) and Marshall Gee (R). This is a little more like Texas Caving, the passage isn't as tall as before. Photo by Dave Castello.
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This is the small passage the Lemons Ranch Cave visitor must traverse to reach the formation area of the cave. At the point this picture was taken, the passage has actually gotten bigger. Photo by Dave Castello.
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