The purpose of the Cave Next Door project is to promote the conservation, preservation, study and exploration of the cave.
At all times possible a connection will be maintained via telephone or Internet. Pictures and progress will be immediately posted. By sharing the discovery with as large an audience as possible, we hope to increase appreciation of caves and their unique features. By holding the cave in a larger public embrace, we also hope to increase the awareness of the importance of cave conservation.
It is intended that the Cave Next Door (CND) serve as a model for the entry into, progress through, and subsequent management of any newly discovered cave. This will require a disciplined, planned and observant progress, recording and caring for all features. The plan for this is given below.
Previously it was always felt that the first step in the eventual management of a cave was the exploration of the cave by mapping crews. This was usually done in a state of high excitement, with the main thought being one of pushing through as much virgin passage as possible, as fast as possible. Unfortunately this often is to the cave's detriment as delicate contents are damaged, and other contents defaced and spoiled, by the rush of exploring new passage. Witness the damage and defacement committed by the early explorers in Lechuguilla Cave. Only ten years after its discovery, it required much restoration work. Cavers went swimming in cave lakes that later were found to each have a unique micro biota.
Furthermore, it has been found that some features will not be discovered until careful inventory is done. For example, Oregon Caves was visited from 1874 on, and until recently was constantly explored and re-explored. Yet it was not until a careful inventory in the 1990's, that the ancient animal marks and imprints in sediment deposits were found. It has to be presumed that more such marks were originally present, but were destroyed by explorers.
Another factor is that cave biota is a subtle presence, and not necessarily visible to the passing explorer. Bats will crawl into cracks to sleep, and invertebrates will feel the coming vibrations, and scurry out of sight. I have observed this. Cave biologists tell me that repeated visitation will cause biota to move to less disturbed parts of the cave, and thus a lot of activity can have a very adverse effect.
For these reasons, it is planned to move into the cave slowly, mapping as we go, and doing a basic inventory as we go. Hopefully, in this way the cave can be known, but no delicate features lost in the process. Travel will be restricted from the start, to a path that is defined as the investigators progress. It is planned also to set up photo monitoring as we go, and to video everything as a record of the original nature of the cave.
Geology and Description
The Cave Next Door (CND) is a newly discovered cave at about 4,000 feet elevation in southern Oregon. The discovery entrance is a resurgence that had been covered with a heavy layer of detritus, either from a landslide or glacial outwash, presumably at some time in the Pleistocene. To get into the cave, the discoverers had to dig some 80 feet through this debris.
The cave is in marble, similar in age to the Oregon Caves marble, and the elevations of the two caves are about the same. CND was pushed for about 1000 feet before the entrance dig collapsed and closed the cave. It is heading on a bearing due magnetic south. The marble at the resurgence is a thin layer, steeply dipping to the northeast, and the cave is following the strike of the marble. The marble containing the known portion of CND is not exposed at elevations much higher than the cave itself, and not visible on the surface from just above the entrance for half a mile south. Since this marble outcrops for a mile in a southerly direction there is a possibility of a very large cave. Since both Oregon Caves and CND have a gradient that increases in a southerly direction, it is unlikely they are connected, but stranger things have happened in caves.
CND as it is Currently Known
Once accessible, the cave was followed for a straight-line distance of about 800 feet, already nearly as much as the 900-foot straight line extent of Oregon Caves. At that point the base level, a streambed, ended in a sump. Discernable airflow a short distance back from this end indicates the cave continues on a higher level, and there is a short climb-up to a visible lead that was not done before the collapse of the entrance dig.
The stream in the cave appears to be significantly larger than the volume flow of the S Fork of XOXOXO Creek. Volume flow at the resurgence is about half of the flow of the River Styx as it exits Oregon Caves at the same time of year.
The cave's contents as initially observed, includes some very nice quartz dikes, protruding from the wall for several inches. There are no massive flowstone deposits. Normal speleothems are present, and one area had an abundance of small wall crystals. The main passage is of various cross-sections, varying from a tall, narrow canyon (2x15 feet), a mushroom
shape where the canyon has a broad, low top, to a tube (8 foot diameter). Near the entrance are some thick sequences of layered sediments, presumably deposited starting at the time the cave entrance was blocked.
Near the sump were some small animal tracks in the mud.
Entry
A security gate will be in place before actual entry is made. Provisions are being made for this as the tunnel is being built. An airlock door will also be installed if and when air is found. The next step in the dig will be to shore up the roof at the end of the tunnel and augur holes in the soft clay, probing ahead for air and to map the limits of the sinkhole. If and when air is found, a camera will be used to determine the safest way to proceed, and cave monitoring will begin. The actual re-entry into the cave will serve as a model for subsequent exploration and entry into each new portion of the cave. Monitoring comes first. Temperature, humidity, airflow, moisture, CO2--all will be monitored. Permanent photo monitoring stations will be set up before each section is entered.
Mapping
The cave will be mapped with standard cave mapping procedure, using a compass and clinometer, and a fiberglass tape, taking distance, bearing and inclination, and making a sketch of the traverse as it proceeds. Each page will be devoted to one traverse leg, however, and side shots will be done if necessary, to define the size and shape of the passage or chamber, and prominent features therein. Traverse legs will be done in distances of no more than ten meters, so that the area of inventory around each station will not be too large. All measurements will be in metric units.
Each station will be marked with a permanent tag, either nailed into a crack, or suspended from same, and this tag will be marked with letters and numbers, the letter prefix indicating the area of the cave, the suffix if necessary, to make each station unique. Numbers are to go in sequence along a passage, and side passages to sequence from the main passage station number plus a letter to make them unique. Each station will be intervisible, of course.
Survey books will be the standard Rite in the Rain type.
Inventory
Inventory will be done as the mapping is done, each leg at a time. Thus the mapers will take a shot, get the data recorded, and then spread out in the defined area (boundary is half the distance to the next and previous survey station) and go through the inventory, one item at a time, looking carefully around to see if and where, and how much an item is present. One person
will record the presence of the items. If possible, the item will be videoed. The data will be entered into a data base program on a small computer.
Items:
Speleothems
1. Stalactites
2. Stalagmites
3. Columns
4. Flowstone
5. Soda Straws
6. Moonmilk
7. Draperies
8. Cave Pearls
9. Coralloid
10. Wall crystals
11. Helictites
12. Anthodites
13. Rimstone
14. Xtal clubs
Speleogens
15. Arches/Pillars
16. Scallops
17. Corrosion
18. Incised channels
19. Stream canyon
20. Wall bevels
21. Clay Worms
22. Cross section
Bedrock Structure
23. Dip___ Strike____
24. Fault Dip____ Strike____
25. Apparent joint strike____
25. Quartz Dikes
27. Other dikes/sills
28. Banding
29. Interbeds
Sediment Deposits
30. Perched
31. Layered
32. Floor
33. Surface flow marks
Paleontology
34. Bones loose
35. Bones buried
36. Paleo tracks
Environment
37. Temperature, Humidity, CO2 levels
38. Air movement, 1, 2, 3 (1-see movement of smoke from a match, 2-feel movement on skin 3-flow disturbs match flame)
39. Drips, 1,2,3 (1-none apparent, 2- several in a minute 3-numerous in a minute)
40. Flowing water (if film on surface, swipe across, if it fills in again, water is flowing)
41. Moist surfaces
Floor
42. Breakdown
43. Sediment
44. Bedrock
45. Flowstone
Biota
46. Invertebrates White
47. Invertebrates Colored
48. Bats
49. Cave Slime
50. Animal tracks
51. Organic material
52. Roots
The Route of Travel
A path will be defined with flagging tape as we go. This will be flagging that does not deteriorate, and is not toxic to cave life. At areas where there is any sort of floor feature, and there is no way to define a route through this where the act of walking or crawling will destroy no feature, we intend to have a roll of material available that can be rolled out as a protecting layer, to create a path of no degradation. If the floor features would be degraded by any application to the surface, we will attempt to engineer a causeway over the feature, to provide a way on that doesn't even touch the surface. It is believed by the cave discoverers, that a good cave trail is a major component of cave conservation. Wet caves can be muddy. Not tracking mud around is important in cave management. The sooner a permanent trail can be constructed in any section of the cave, especially over any wet sediments, the more pristine the cave will remain. The Task Force has plans to raise money for trail construction using the Internet.
Invertebrates and Carrying Capacity
The fauna of a cave, once one is well inside the twilight zone, is generally an ecosystem of invertebrates, where the food chain involves plant and fungus eaters, who are in turn eaten by predators. The populations of these are surely affected by the travel of large animals through the cave, and if that travel becomes too great, the animals will move further and further from the route of travel and their habitat will effectively decrease. If the areas to the side of such a route are limited, the visitation might severely limit the habitat. There may be a critical point, where the species was too restricted a habitat, and extinction occurs. Given the usual small size of cave invertebrates, this extinction could easily go unnoticed.
The ability of a cave to accept a level of visitation with no long term or irreversible degradation is referred to as Carrying Capacity. This is a term often used in cave management, but one that so far is only determined empirically. That is, given a map and some basic knowledge of a cave, there is no formula for calculating the carrying capacity. Whenever this parameter is invoked, it is done by guesswork, and a cave is assigned a CC as a best guess. If monitoring has been set up, the managers can then look for degradation over time, and adjust the CC downward until degradation is acceptable.
It is felt that the level of invertebrate populations near the route of travel will be a yardstick for the CC of CND, so it will b e necessary to set up sampling sites along the progress. If the populations show a decrease, the visitation level needs to be decreased.
Equipment, Clothing and Human Effluent
Whatever is taken into the cave needs to be of material that will not degrade and introduce toxins into the cave environment. Clothing is especially susceptible to this. Lint is a product of most fabrics, so clothing must be shielded from shedding into the cave. A well washed PVC or Nylon over suit is a must, to keep the lint from other fabrics inside. Gloves should be PVC also, or at least of the non-fabric type. All such material should be washed beforehand, to allow the chemicals and solvents left over from manufacturing to be removed.
The human body also produces material potentially toxic to the cave environment. Dead skin and hair falls from the body constantly. This is a food source foreign to the cave except in minute quantities from the occasional lost animal. The over suits and gloves should keep this to a minimum, but cavers should shower before each trip and use no chemicals like
deodorant or cologne.
It may be that the wearing of surgical masks is necessary to limit the introduction of foreign bacteria to the cave.
The Mapping and GIS
Land is managed using GIS, which stands for geographical information system. Thus information of a particular sort is plotted on a map, which becomes a layer in computer GIS software, and the distribution of that feature can be analyzed versus other features similarly computerized, and management decisions thus affected. The management of cave clearly should be done
this same way, but the gathering of information is more difficult. On the surface, the information can be obtained from aerial photography or satellite imaging. In the cave, it must all be gathered by hand, by local observation and recording. This is the reason for the inventory as we go, since that information is vital to any proper management decision. The desire is to obtain a reasonable database as early in the cave's human history as possible.
GIS software already exists (SMAPS 5.2, Compass/ArcView) that can analyze inventory data that is associated with a particular survey station, but only general information can be gained from such. The reason is that the data is all attached to a single point with a large (for the cave) radius. No analysis of distribution within that radius is possible. Thus it is felt that it is necessary to produce a digital plan view of the cave with inventory items placed properly. This will be done on Autocad, and such a DWG file is immediately usable by MAP, the Autodesk GIS package, or by ArcView, the ESRI GIS package that is the NPS and Forest Service standard GIS software.
With such a detailed GIS available early in the cave's human history, proper management has a chance to occur, also early in that history.
Above Ground
There are currently no structures or improvements above the ground. It is proposed that a small lean-to, 8'x12', be constructed next to the sinkhole and a composting outhouse be built in the vicinity. All this can be constructed from available natural materials.
Public Involvement
Education is the key to conservation. we want to increase public awareness of cave conservation while we share the discovery of a new cave. The telephone line is the key to this involvement. We also feel that public awareness can keep cavers accountable. Public support could also help finance the building of a trail into the cave, even as the cave is being explored and mapped. By good communication we intend to make the discovery and exploration of the CND, a little more of a giving, and a little less of a taking.
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