CALIFORNIACAVER · Talus Caves in Pinnacles National Monument, California Dan Snyder 22 DRAFT...

CALIFORNIACAVERA publication of the Western Region of the National Speleological Society

Issue 234, Fall 2005

The California Caver is a publication of the Western Region of the National Speleological So-ciety. All exchange publications and analog material for publication, including maps, prints, slides, should be sent to the editors at the address listed below. Text can be transmitted elec-tronically in a variety of formats, including Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format (RTF), and ASCII text. The editors can accommodate a variety of other formats, but please check in advance of submission. Digital illustrative materials can also be transmitted in a variety of formats, but the editors would prefer files in the richest quality original and unaltered format. Please check with the editors to see what is preferable.

The California Caver is published quarterly, in February, May, August, and November. Submis-sion deadline is by the 10th of the month prior to publication.

The California Caver is published for members of the Western Region of the NSS. Membership up-dates and address changes should be sent to the secretary-treasurer of the region (please see the inside back cover for this and other regional information). The annual membership rate is $10.

Opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the editors, the Western Region, or the National Speleological Society. Except for items specifically copyrighted, any material may be reproduced by other internal organizations of the NSS without prior permis-sion, provided proper credit is given to the California Caver and to the author.

California Caver Editors: Merrilee Proffitt & Keith Johnson

California Caver staffCirculation manager: Jim LaknerCirculation Assistants: Gale Beach, Ray Beach, Claire LaknerProofreading for Issue 234:

The editors can be reached at:6503 Valley View Road, Oakland, CA, 94611-1230(510) [email protected]

CALIFORNIACAVERFall 2005 | Issue Number 234

Bill Papke 2 WESTERN REGIONAL MEETING 2005

Kelley Prebil 4 WILDERNESS FIRST AID COURSE

Bruce Rogers 6 CAVING ON THE SAN ANDREAS FAULT Talus Caves in Pinnacles National Monument, California

Dan Snyder 22 DRAFT MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE WESTERN REGION

Dan Snyder 25 WESTERN REGION OF THE NSS ANNUAL FINANCIAL STATEMENT

28 WESTERN REGION NEWS & ACTIVITIES

29 REGIONAL CALENDAR

FRONT COVER: XXXXXXXX

BACK COVER: XXXXXXXXXX Photograph by XXXXXXX

2 California Caver Issue 234 ✌ Fall 2005

Western Regional Meeting 2005

Bill Papke, Mother Lode Grotto Host Chair

The weekend of September 16–18 2005 saw approximately 95 caver folk attend the an-

nual Western Regional at Berkeley Tuolumne Family Camp. This facility, run by the city of Berkley, has been a gathering place for previ-ous regionals. So it was with fond memories that many old timers gathered there. But of course, each year that the regional is held here, new participants are treated to this fam-ily-friendly environment for the first time. Tent cabins and plentiful good food make this a great place where food preparation and the setting up of tents do not distracted from the focus of the regional.

Members of the Mother Lode Grotto, which acted as host for the event, arrived on Thurs-day evening and spent most of the day Friday getting things ready for those arriving on Friday evening. The first real gathering was at dinner that Friday evening. Upon arriving attendees were encouraged to find an empty tent cabin and carry or roll their gear there. That evening a small “howdy party” was held in the dining hall to welcome these early arrivals.

The next morning activities began in ear-nest. There was a full day of project presen-tations in Rhodes Hall while outside three challenge events were held. The challenges

were in rope work, a survey, and geocaching. If you wanted to find

out what projects in caving were available in the state and elsewhere you would have found yourself in Rhodes Hall listening to the likes of Paul Lukshin of the Stanislaus Grotto talk about how to dig more cave. Later John Tinsley and Roger Mortimer told of the Cave Research Foundation (CRF) work in the Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks with an empha-sis on Redwood Canyon and Mineral King. Before breaking for lunch, David and Eleanor Larson presented information on the ongoing project of exploring and surveying caves in the Central American country of Belize.

After lunch, Janet Sowers of CRF gave us an update on the research center that caver money helped create in Lava Beds National Monument. The center is now complete and is being used by all types of research groups, not just by project cavers. Steve Deveny of the Southern Nevada Grotto came all the way from Las Vegas to give us a detailed report on the high-precision survey of Lehman Caves. This project is still ongoing and needs surveying help. Bill Frantz then gave a short history and pres-ent exploration and survey activity of an area near Jamestown, California known as Table Mountain. Fissure like caves have formed in latite lava flows that formed millions of years ago from lava flowing down the western slope stream channels of the ancient Sierra Nevada. The after-noon was capped by a humorous presentation (what else?) by Bruce Rogers on the history of project caving in the west. The basic message of this presentation was “just do it.”

That afternoon the annual meeting of the Western Region took place in the outdoor amphitheater with Matt Bowers presiding. You can read of the agenda and results of this meeting elsewhere in this issue of the Cal Caver. Saturday evening, after dinner, we once again gathered in Rhodes Hall for the annual auction. Team auctioneering was presented by Rolf Aalbu of the Mother Lode Grotto and Bill Frantz of the San Francisco Bay Chapter. A spirited hour, or so, ensued, and $XXXX were raised for the Western Region. After this, we returned to the cozy environs of the Beckley Hall where a crackling fire in the fireplace warmed the room

and the Hodags and Marianne Russo’s Schnapps Tasting raised the spirits of those participating.

We should not forget outdoor ac-tivities on Saturday. Don Dunn and his helpers had ropes dangling everywhere from the trees and at each station a particular challenge was created. One creative one was to simulate having all your lights go out and you have to put on your equipment in the dark to ascend the rope out of the cave. A blindfold on the participant created the requisite darkness. But most of the ver-tical activity seemed to be just practice, with not many people taking on the challenges.

Elsewhere, Eileen Belan, Morley Har-daker, and John Hargreaves (when he wasn’t taking pictures) instructed folks in the sport of geocaching and how to

Bill Papke looks on while Tom Rohrer checks out the survey course.

John Hargreaves

Fall 2005 ✌ California Caver Issue 234 3

use a GPS device to guide them to a group of hidden “caches” leading to a prize. A beginner teenager, Greg Wilson-Hartwig teamed with another teen, Dustin Cowan (Dave Cowan’s grandson) worked hard and won the prize.

The survey course created by Tom Grundy, Matt Leissring, and Heather McDonald also had its tak-ers. (Here Heather reports)

The combination of natural and man-made fea-tures made for a challenging survey course where people could survey their way around a “cave” with a wide variety of features. They could drop their tape down the vertical entrance (the 28-inch sonotube) and then sketch the giant “igloo” sta-lagmite (the sauna), survey their way through the optional “phreatic tubes” (16-inch diameter sono-tubes), which lead to a “room” with helictites.

Borehole passage (the porch hallway for the lower level of Beckley Hall) led to a place to cross a stream, and there the surveyors could use trian-gulation to determine the ceiling height using the giant column (a big leaning tree). Finally, they could survey their way around the lake room (the swimming hole).

MLG planners had scheduled quite a lot for Saturday: programs, a vertical challenge course, vertical practice, geocaching, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the Western Regional Meeting. And if this was not enough, there was always ping-pong, swimming, and hiking to distract from the planned activities.

As a result, attendance at many of the “side” activities like the survey course was small. There was just too much to do and almost not enough time to do it! Fortunately, several people came to visit me to learn about survey and how to read instruments. One four-person team went through a portion of the course (They went through the optional crawls!)

Another two-person team used a theodolite to do some survey, but they didn’t follow our course.

I think this was a fun idea, and we’ll try doing the same sort of thing in another venue in the future.

Bright and early Sunday morning the bell rang, letting the campers know that another day had begun and that they had approximately 30 minutes to get ready for breakfast. After breakfast a few more announce-ment were made and then at 11 AM a con-tingent took off for the region of Table Mountain to see and explore the

now famous Toppled Table Talus Cave as well as others that had only recently been discov-ered.

So it was with great fondness that we left this wonderful site of yet another Western Regional Meeting. Next year the San Diego Grotto is hosting over the Labor Day Week-end. See you there!

Relaxing at Berkeley Tuolumne Camp: Bill Frantz, Doug Bradford, and Janet Sowers.

Roger Mortimer watches the Regional

Business Meeting, while John Mortimer looks at the camera.

John Hargreaves

John Hargreaves


Mark and I took off for the NOLS Wilder-ness First Aid course mid-morning on Friday, 30 September. Soon after we left, we got a call from “Pat” saying that Bruce Rogers had fallen ill and wouldn’t be able to make it. Whether or not that was really Pat or Bruce trying to imitate Pat still has to be proven; after all, there may have been a bake sale that Bruce wanted to attend to instead! Pat offered their spots to be given up as last-min-ute scholarships for Cavers In Need. Luckily, Dan Snyder was going to be down there any-way helping out and immediately snatched up a newly created scholarship.

We cruised into Ash Mountain at Sequoia National Park several hours later (as the VW bus had oil temperature problems and we were restricted to a mighty 55 – 60 mph) to meet up with Joel Despain for the key for the Ash Mountain Recreation Hall and Buckeye Flat Campground. After unloading the food for the weekend in the recreation hall, we made our way to Temporary Chez Despain. There we met up with the Despains, George Prest, Jay Snow, and Jay’s friend, Andy. The lot of us then took off to meet up with the Frantzs at the Main Fork Bistro for dinner.

After a scrumptious dinner, those of us who were staying in Buckeye Flat made our way back to the campground for some after-dinner socializing, drinks, and welcoming the rest of the attendees who were making their way in after dark. I chose to go to bed at 11:30 PM knowing that Mark and I were going to have to get up at 6:30 AM to start prepping the recre-ation hall for breakfast, etc.

At the crack of dawn on that Saturday, our alarm clock went off indi-cating that it was unfortunately time to drag our sorry butts out of bed. We meandered off to the recreation hall and once there, started chuck-ing bagels, muffins, etc. onto the table in the kitchen for people to start making their own breakfast combination. Mark had a personal supply of salmon bits for his bagel; as soon as he made a mere mention of it, Peri Frantz seemingly popped out of nowhere saying “Did someone say ‘salmon?’” Successfully mooching salmon from Mark for her bagel, she joined the rest of the students. Surprisingly, almost all of the students were able to be at the recreation hall by 8:00 AM. A couple of minutes after the stroke of 8:00, the instructors (Pete Ryan and Jessica DeMartin) gave their first cry for us to join them in the classroom.

We started off by introducing ourselves. I had taken a WFA via the Red Cross about eight or nine years ago and didn’t remember much about it, but it would be interesting to compare what I could remember with what I was going to experience that weekend with NOLS. On the first day we covered the basics starting with stabilizing the spine (AKA one person holds the patient’s head), then running through the Patient Assessment System (ABC’s, vital signs, patient exam). Jessica and Pete whored their portable Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS bookstore (online at http://wmi.nols.edu) right before the call for lunch. Mark’s infamous “do it yourself” lunch was then served which included a variety of fillings for sandwiches, potato salad, and chips. After lunch we covered spine/head injuries, shock, and wilderness wound manage-ment. We did several mock treatments, which I personally enjoyed. For myself, if I’m physically working something out, I’ll remember it longer than if just told about how to do it. We ended the day with dinner at Ser-rano’s where we were joined by the Family Despain, George Prest, Cindy Walck, and Cindy’s boyfriend Shane Fryer. More socializing continued afterwards at the campground, which was made more comfortable by Mark snagging some wood from the local Chevron.

Sunday morning was another potential sleep-in morning lost to a WFA class. Mark and I yet again were the first to leave the campground to start setting up breakfast items in the recreation hall. Two days in a row, most of the students were able to get there by 8:00 AM. I wonder if they had alarm clocks with them also or just naturally woke up before then (Bill Frantz stated that he is a natural early bird).

Anyway, class resumed at 8:00 AM diving right into musculoskeletal injuries, including fractures, traction splints, and dislocations. We got to do a couple of more mock treatments. In my group to practice splint-ing, Dan Snyder requested that the trekking pole be “spike down” when fixed to the inside of his leg for his “unusable knee” that accompanied his “broken collarbone.” We then learned how to do a traction splint, also known as “the mother of all splints.” Lunchtime crept up again with more of Mark’s “do it yourself” lunch with the same items from the

day before (how convenient). We spent the afternoon dealing with im-Setting up to carry an injured

patient without a strecther

Wilderness First Aid Course October 1–2, 2005

Kelley Prebil

Peri Frantz


portant issues of hypothermia, heat stroke, altitude sickness (which I’m familiar with), un-conscious patient, focused spinal assessment,

lightning issues, anaphylaxis (a.k.a. allergies), and acute abdomen cases. We worked out an exercise for hypothermia, where one of the instructors threw in an unexpected wild card where one member of each team was secretly told to start developing hypothermia while taking care of the original victim. Jay Snow and I were selected as the moles; luckily my group noticed after a couple of minutes that I had dropped back, curled into a ball, and was shivering. Poor Jay would have died if this was a real scenario as his group didn’t notice his condition at all! I was already snug in two sleeping bags and wrapped in plastic when the rest of my team members were shouting at the other group that they had a team member dying!

At the end of the course, food was available for those who wanted to take extra food with them, with the rest of it being donated (via Shane Fryer) to the seasonal park workers. Some of us wandered down to the in-prog-ress Chez Despain. On our way home, we joined the Frantzs at Chez Mortimer for dinner with 2.25 Mortimers (John Mortimer was already asleep) and by about 1:30AM, Mark and I finally made it back in front of our house.

The major difference I noticed between what I could remember of my Red Cross WFA and the NOLS WFA is that in the Red Cross course, we ended our train-ing with a mock exam, which we got full feedback on, along with a

written exam. With NOLS, even though mocks are performed throughout, I could see how it would be easy to have a lame duck skate through the class not having learned much, and still get a WFA card afterwards. I felt more confident after the Red Cross course as I got feedback at the end during my small team’s mock treatment along with the exam which made me realize what I remembered and didn’t remember going through the questions. I did enjoy the instruction given by NOLS, but along with some of my class-mates, agreed that some topics were rushed through too quickly. It was a good introduction class, but in my opinion would be made better by devoting time to more thorough instruction and perhaps having a better way to get feedback from the instruc-

tors. During the mocks, the instructors wan-dered around giving points here and there, but never fully watched what a team was do-ing the entire time. Perhaps next year the vice chair can set up a first responder course.

Many thanks to Joel Despain and Shane Fryer for allowing the Western Region to use the Ash Mountain Recreation Hall and Buck-eye Flat Campground!

Instructor Pete Ryan demon-strates jury rigging a splint from available materials

A small group practices moving an injured patient without a stretcher

Peri Frantz

Bill Frantz


BACKGROUND

Moderately long talus caves have formed in Pinnacles National Monument, located 180 kilometers south of San Francisco, California. The Pinnacles is a series of 800 to 1,000-meter-high peaks eroded out of the western half of a rhyolitic volcano. Over 80 percent of the Mon-ument is covered with chaparral community plants consisting mostly of chamise (Adenos-toma fasciculatum) and buckbrush (Ceano-thus cuneatus). These shrubs thrive in the hot Mediterranean climate where temperatures range from freezing to over 43°C. The deeper canyons are forested with riparian woodlands with sycamore (Platanus racemosa) and Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia) the predomi-nant species. Much of the volcanic rock near the caves is covered with a variety of lichen (292 species to be exact including the famous Map Lichen Rhizocarpon geographicum) and moss, most of which are barely studied.

The area has been used for at least 2,000, and possibly 5,000 years, by small bands of Chalone and Matsun Costanoan Native Americans who lived just east of the present-day city of Soledad. Despite their intimate

knowledge of the area, the Costanoans apparently mini-mally used the caves, possibly because of resident bears. The first white explorers were the Spanish who visited the area in the late 1700s. By 1769, the Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola, then the newly appointed Governor of California, reached the area. When they asked a local Chalone Indian what his name was, he replied “Soledad” or so the Spanish heard his words. We now know this phrase roughly means “I don’t understand you” in his language. Exactly what this fellow’s name

Caving on the San Andreas FaultTalus Caves in Pinnacles National Monument, California

Bruce W. rogers, regular fellow

SAN JOSE

OAKLAND

STOCKTON

SANFRANCISCO

SANTACRUZ

GILROY

WATSONVILLEHOLLISTER

MONTEREY

SALINAS Paicines

Gonzales

King City

San Lucas

SoledadBig Sur

PINNACLESNATIONALMONUMENT

25

198

101

1

156

152

25

156

152

146

5

580

680

880

17

1

80

101

280

5

PA

CIF

IC O

CE

AN

N

10 Miles

10 kms

To Soledad19 km / 12 Mi

PinnaclesCampground

(Private)

BalconiesCave

Chaparral R.S. - 427m

Bear GulchVisitor Center

Litt

le

Pinnacles

Bear Gulch Cave

High Peaks

PINNACLESNATIONAL

MONUMENT

146

1 Mile

1 km

Unmaintained trail

Physical accessibility

Picnic area

Campground

Ranger station

Road

Maintained trail

Cave trail

To Hollister45 km / 28 Mi

North ChalonePeak - 1007 m

SouthChalone

Peak

Frog

Canyon

Bal

coni

es

Cliffs

N

146

25

Chalone CreekPicnic Area

314m (1030 ft.)

Location map: Pinnacles National Monument is located about 180 kilometers (108 miles) south of San Francisco. Pinnacles is about two hours drive south of San Jose and an hour east of Monterey. State Highway 146 extends to each side of the Monument, but is not a through road. .

The Monument is, at about 24,000 acres in size, one of the smaller Park units in California, but

is constantly expanding to incorporate adjacent ranch lands to protect the Monument’s core area.


was, we shall never know for the early Spanish explorers were notoriously bad about translating the native languages into Spanish. Thus the little

settlement of Soledad on the west side of Pinnacles was named. After Padre Lasue’n founded the Soledad Mission on October, 1791, the Indian name become further tangled in the Catholic church nomenclature and the mission bore the name “La Mision de Nuestra Senora’ de la Soledad” or Our Lady of Solitude.[Fig C]

Wild tales of a petrified city reached Captain George Vancouver on his 1794 cruise up along the Pacific coast. He was so intrigued that he took nearly a week away from his nautical duties and journeyed to the Pinnacles on horseback. While he ascertained that the Pinnacles were of natural origin, he was still duly impressed. The Pinnacles themselves were known at the time as Chalone Peaks or “The Palisades,” their name showing up on the first map of the region made in 1816. By the late 1850s the area was sequentially settled by the Spanish, Mexican, and, finally, gringo ranchers. One of the earliest white settlers was Mr. W.H.H. Metz. An Ohioan, he emigrated west in 1871 and started up a successful cattle ranching operation near “Chalone Peak.” The notorious local bandit Tuburico Vasquez terrorized the area and often retired to the Pinnacles after his nefarious deeds in the early 1870s. The Santa Fe Railroad reached the neighborhood in 1886 and named the settle-ment Chalone after the then-current name of the Pinnacles themselves. Metz’s own minor claim to fame as first Postmaster of the little community of Chalone was ensured, however, when the US Post Office changed the community’s name of Chalone to Metz in 1891.

As part of their curiosity about the surrounding natural world, the inhabitants of Metz, Soledad, Tres Pinos, and other small communities took picnicking trips to the Pinnacles and explored

the caves. In 1908, the irrepressible President Teddy Roosevelt visited the site at the invita-tion of local rancher and former Michiganite Schuyler Hain, Stanford University President David Starr Jordan, and other local citizens and politicos. Impressed with the Pinnacles themselves and the outstanding intact chaparral community, Teddy made the place a National Monument. During the 1930s hey-day of the Civilian Conservation Corps (the C.C.C.), many roads, stone bridges, and even a pair of cave trails were constructed in the small park. The trail through Bear Gulch Cave is an engineer’s tour de force and includes underground cliff-hugging walkways and a concrete bridge over a 15-meter-deep water-fall plunge pool.[Figure D]

Bear Gulch Cave was closed due to exten-sive trail damage from the 1997-1998 El Niño flooding. Discharge of nearly 17 cubic meters per second was observed at the park head-quarters in Bear Gulch for three days and nearly over-topped the Beach Gulch Visitor Center windows. The floodwaters initially swept through the caves, moving massive amounts of debris, uprooting concrete slabs, and distorting steel gates. As a result the caves remained closed for several years pend-ing funds to repair the damages.

This closure had an unexpected bonus, however. A small, struggling colony of En-dangered Species Candidate Townsend’s Big-eared Bats (Corynorhinus townsendii palens-

es) took advantage of essentially no human disturbance and has nearly doubled its size each year since the El Niño flood closure. Now numbering well over 400, this is one of the largest “Cory” colonies in central California.

The National Park Service has studied long and hard the quandary of open-

Local Chalone and Matsun Costanoan Native Americans left these grapefruit-sized grinding holes in a large block of Gabilan Limestone along Highway 25 just outside the Monument. A Swiss Army knife provides scale.

Even the entry signs, con-structed by the Civilian con-servation Corps in 1934-35, are made of local volcanic rock. The green color of this rock apparently comes from the phosphate mineral celadonite (uncommon in volcanic rocks) or pos-sibly glauconite (a mineral usually found in coastal sediments and very rare in volcanic rocks).


Geologic map of Pinnacles National Monument

Canyon

Chalone

Park Boundary

Hig

h

Peaks

VisitorCenter

Bear

Gulch

Res.

ChaparralRanger St.

Condor

Gulch

Chalone

Creek

Frog

Canyon

NorthChalonePeak

SouthChalonePeak

Little

Pinnacles (The Yaks)

146

& Hwy 101

To

Soledad

PinnaclesCampground

(Private)

Chalone CreekPicnic Area

WillowSpring

Chalone

Fault

The

Mac

hete

Th

e Balcon

ies

1 km

North

Fork

Creek

Cherry

N

Geology slightly modified fromC. Anderson,1936; mapcourtesy of Univ. Calif. Berkeley

BALCONIESCAVE

BEAR GULCHCAVE


ing the caves to visitation and also protecting the Corys. Based on these studies as well as input from bat biologists, local residents, and cavers, the lower part of Bear Gulch Cave is now open year ‘round. The upper part of the cave is now open for very short pe-riods in spring and fall in between maternity and hibernation use by the bats. Balconies Cave remains open year ‘round for explora-tion. Other, smaller caves in the monument are presently closed to visitation.

GEOLOGYCrystalline rocks

The Sur Series rocks are the oldest rocks at Pinnacles and are exposed in small areas along the east, south, and west edges of the Monument. Younger rocks mantle these rocks in eastern and cen-tral areas of Pinnacles. The basement rocks are part of the Salinian terrane, a slab of metamorphosed Late Paleozoic and Early Meso-zoic rocks and intruding granitic Mesozoic rocks. The metamor-phic rocks underlying the Pinnacles closely resemble those of the adjacent Sur Series mapped just to the west in the Salinas Valley in the early 1920s. Upper Cretaceous granitic rocks intrude these metamorphosed clastic and carbonate sedimentary rocks. Appar-ently the entire Salinian terrane was faulted off the southern tip of the Sierra Nevada sometime in the middle Tertiary. These rocks were first rifted west along the western extension of the Rand and Garlock Faults, then north along the San Andreas Fault. [fig E,F,G]

The oldest rocks still left at the Pinnacles are the scraps of latest Paleozoic (Late Permian Period) to earliest Mesozoic (Early Jurassic Period) age limestone, sandstone, and shale of the Sur Series. The Sur Series rocks have been metamorphosed into marble, quartzite, and schist, respectively. Because of their contorted history, few fos-sils have been found in these rocks, but crinoid (sea lily) stems and solitary corals dating from about 190 to 240 million years ago have been found in similar Sur Series rocks at nearby Fremont Peak State Park. Swallowed up by the granitic rocks and deeply eroded, they now form small roof pendants in the surrounding granitic rocks under and adjacent to the Monument.

The marble of the “Gabilan Limestone” originally was limey mud deposited on the shallow Paleozoic sea floor. When one peers through a magnifying glass, it becomes apparent that 90 percent of the light gray limestone is comprised of clear crystals of calcite ranging from a few millimeters to nearly a centimeter in diameter. Thin layers and patches of tiny, millimeter-diameter crystals of glassy green olivine (a magnesium-iron silicate mineral), cubes of pyrite (“fool’s gold”) altered to rusty goethite (iron oxide), goose-berry-green grossularite garnet, and flakes of silvery gray graphite are scattered throughout the marble. Because of the metamorphism and bone-jarring travels of these rocks, no trace of their original bedding remains. Some compositional and/or color banding may represent relic bedding, but it is often indistinct and wildly con-torted.

ROCK UNITS(Location in column indicates approximate age

with lowest units being the oldest. Photograph is of field exposure.)

Stream sand and gravel in active wash that is cut into an older unit of soil (alluvium). Near the Chockstone Dome Entrance to Balconies Cave.

Pinnacles FormationRhyolite volcanic breccia and tuff. Breccia is composed of angular fragments of volcanic rocks. Tuff is light-colored volcanic ash. Miocene in age (about 23 million years old). Both large caves and many small caves in the Park have formed in this unit.

RhyoliteMassive, flow-banded, and laminated masses of pinkish volcanic rock with some obsidian. Minor amounts of andesite and basalt flows. Miocene in age (about 23 million years old).

Massive, cream-colored rhyolite with many small-scale faults and weathered joints. Near the Bear Gulch-Chalone Creek juncture.

Dikes and sillsFine-grained rhyolite dikes and sills with large feldspar crystals and quartz crystals. Miocene in age (about 23 million years old).

Terrace GravelSlope wash gravel composed of rhyolite and granitic rock debris. Pleistocene (?) in age (younger than 2 million years old).

LandslidesArrows show approximate direction of flow. Holocene in age (younger than 10,000 years)

Stream and slope deposits. Largely made of sand, gravel, and alluvium (soil). Holocene in age (younger than 10,000 years old).

Temblor FormationAlluvial fan deposits changing upwards into feldspar-rich gravel and diatomaceous shale. Miocene in age (younger than about 16 million years old).

Layered Temblor Fm. sandstone with gravel beds; penknife for scale. Near east entrance to Park.

Vent tuffRhyolite tuff (volcanic ash) and breccia marking the position of ancient volcanic vents. Miocene age (about 21 million years old).

AndesiteLight yellowish to pinkish intrusive volcanic rocks of Miocene age (circa 23 million years old)

Granitic rocksSanta Lucia diorite and granite -- gneissic (banded) in part,Cretaceous in age (about 85 - 95 million years old).

Gavilan LimestoneLight gray marble with smaller amounts of pinkish quartzite and quartz and black biotite mica schist. Part of the Sur Series of Permian to Jurassic in age (circa 240 to 190 million years old).

Light gray calcite marble showing faint color traces of original layering or bedding as horizontal bands across photograph. Penknife for scale. Just NE of eastern Park entrance.

"Salt & pepper" texture is from light-colored feldspar and quartz and black bioltite mica. Lighter irregular areas are quartz and feldspar masses at center. Wrist watch for scale. Along the North Fork of Chalone Creek.

This rhyolite breccia is made of fragments of pinkish orange volcanic rock cemented together with hot volcanic ash while still molten. Fragment in center is 4 cm across. From Bear Gulch.

The largest cobble in this exposure of terrace gravel is canteloupe-sized (note black wrist watch at lower center). Gravel exposure is along North Primitve Trail.

These small landslides in Temblor Fm. sandstone have coalesced to form a large compound landslide on the ridge along the eastern side of the Park.

This brownish-yellow andesite exposure has thin laths of black iron-magnesium minerals scattered throughout it. Black wrist watch for scale. Southern border of Park.

This cream-colored, fine-grained tuff marks one of the old volcanic vents along Frog Canyon. It is largely made of volcanic glass.

This rhyolite dike is about 0.3 m wide. The brighter yellowish-white areas are irregularly-shaped masses of feldspar crystals. Frog Canyon-Chalone Creek juncture.

Geology slightly modified after C. Andrews, 1936

Geologic Cross Section(same scale as geologic map; no vertical exaggeration)

South ChalonePeak

State Hwy.

146Chalone

FaultSouth Fork ofChalone Creek

MinersFault

Cross section of Pinnacles National Monument looking north from about mid-Park.


mica crystals are diagnostic. Rich in soda feldspar and biotite, it was erupted through and out onto the eroded granitic rocks along cracks caused by earth movements somewhat prior to 24 million years ago. Ad-ditional andesite bodies intruded the older Salinian rocks as thin sheets and plugs of volcanic rock. Yet other plugs of andesite in the surround-ing area were erupted along the edge of the then ocean shoreline, eroded by fast moving streams, then slumped into the ocean waters as a sub-merged debris flow. These rocks interfinger with the sedimentary rocks to the east of the Pinnacles.

Dacite is a grayish to black colored volcanic rock similar to andesite. While Generals George Mead and Robert E. Lee were duking it out at Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, Dr. Guido Stache of the Geologische Reichsanstalt (Geological Institute) in Vienna described the original dacite from the Roman Province of Dacia (now part of Romania). This volcanic rock is somewhat richer than andesite in quartz and iron-bear-ing minerals, biotite mica being the most common “ferro-mag” (iron and magnesium) mineral. The dacite also differs from the andesite by having white soda feldspar crystals floating in a fine-grained mass. The dacites found scattered along Condor Gulch are found in sheets and bosses in-termixed with other reddish volcanic rocks. The few dikes and sheets of dacite found along the western edge of the Pinnacles have been hydro-thermally altered to serpentine (California’s State Rock), white and green micas, and iron oxide minerals.

Arkosic Gravels Also smack on top of the eroded and weathered granitic rocks is a

package of arkosic gravel (impure, coarse-grained sandstone having feldspar fragments in addition to quartz sand grains and pebbles). Laid down in an old, north-south oriented valley eroded into the granitic rocks, these rocks are approximately 23 meters thick and poorly consoli-dated. Angular gravel and pebbles of white quartz, glassy feldspar, and black biotite mica flakes point to a granitic origin and little weathering or transportation of these sedimentary rocks. Sprinkled throughout the ar-kose are rounded pebbles of quartz and granitic rocks ranging from two to four cetermeters in diameter. Originally laid down flat, the gravel beds now dip 30 degrees down to the northwest. This tilting is probably the result of movements along the adjacent San Andreas Fault. To date, the lack of any fossils makes it nearly impossible to pinpoint the age of the arkose gravel, but it appears to be close to the age of the overlying rocks of the Older to Middle Miocene Temblor Formation (see below).

Vent TuffAt least five places on the southern slopes of the Pinnacles are more

or less round, nearly vertical plugs of volcanic ash or tuff. Tuff often forms when the eruption is so violent that it shatters the molten erupting rock, already rich in dissolved gas under great pressure, into shards of glass. Parts of the tuff plugs are composed of somewhat coarser, angular fragments called breccia. In some locations, blocks of granite nearly two meters in diameter were torn out of the surrounding terrain during the eruption and incorporated in the tuff, mute proof of a very violent epi-sode of volcanism. The tuff itself is rhyolitic in composition with a great deal of altered sodic feldspar, volcanic glass, biotite, and other minor minerals (see the following paragraphs for a better description of rhyo-lite). In these plugs, erosion has weathered the tuff into fanciful conical spires. It appears that these five tuff plugs mark the vents that formed the Pinnacles Volcano itself.

RhyoliteThe Pinnacles themselves are the western half of the Pinnacles-Neen-

ach Volcano. This half volcano is composed of a pinkish-orange rock that

Santa Lucia GraniteThe Santa Lucia “Granite” at Pinnacles is

actually a pair of bodies of slightly differ-ent igneous rocks. On the western side of the monument, these rocks are composed of quartz diorite and granodiorite, both rocks somewhat richer in darker-colored iron and magnesium minerals than granite. These rocks are the older of the two igneous rocks exposed in the Pinnacles area. Radiometric age dating has shown that these rocks in-truded the older Sur Series rocks and cooled nearly 85 million years ago.

The eastern side of the Pinnacles is also underlain with the Santa Lucia Granite. This granite has the classic “salt and pepper” color of true granites and is rich in light gray-col-ored soda feldspar, glassy quartz, and black biotite mica. It appears that this igneous rock was derived from the same igneous magma as the quartz diorite and granodiorite, but cooled slightly later; thus its composition is slightly different. Based on radiometric dating, we know that this rock is about 80 million years old.

These older rocks underlying Pinnacles National Monument had their origins far offshore of the western North American coast some third of a billion years ago in the Perm-ian Period. In Paleozoic time, the western coast of North America lay far to the east along the western edge of the older Appala-chian Mountains. A wide, shallow sea cov-ered the mid-continent, extending west to the site of the future Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada. This shallow sea was filled with abundant marine life and dotted with muddy basins and coral reefs that stretched west-ward hundreds to thousands of kilometers. In the original depositional area, the rain of soft sediments onto the seabed continued for millions of years. Continental drift eventually moved this package of rocks far to the west and north during the intervening quarter billion years. Subsequent earth movements altered these rocks and positioned them along the southern end of what was to become the Sierra Nevada, then moved them west and north to the conveyor belt of the San Andreas Fault system where they skated north to Hol-lister.

Volcanic rocksAlong the Monument’s boundaries are

small patches of andesite, a fine-grained, dark-colored, volcanic rock first described from the Andes Mountains. Nowhere is andesite abundant, but it is fairly widespread. Its fine-grained texture, moderately dark, reddish-brown color, and sparse black biotite


looks like fiery chocolate chip cookie dough. The fine-grained matrix is composed of rhyolite and glass. Rhyolite is a light reddish-colored volcanic rock with a chemical composition equivalent to that of granite, but is much finer grained, having been rudely blasted out on the earth’s surface before having a chance to slowly cool and form large crystals. When viewed through a microscope, the rhyolite consists primarily of tiny lathe-shaped crystals of sodic feldspar, granular blebs of quartz, and sparse, black biotite and white muscovite mica flakes. A liberal quan-tity of silica made the rock thick and pasty, not fluid like the fast-flow-ing black basalt lavas of Hawaii. Here at the Pinnacles, massively thick sheets of this rock slowly oozed down the flanks of the volcano, burying everything in their paths.

Parts of the rhyolite cooled very quickly, forming sharp-edged masses of dark volcanic glass or obsidian. Apparently part of this happened underwater because in places, very tiny marine animal fossils are found scattered in some of these rocks. Water was absorbed into the rock struc-ture, altering the obsidian to perlite, a highly fractured, greenish black rock with a waxy luster. Part of the perlite also appears to have formed due to weathering, probably from hot water springs in the waning stages of the volcano’s development. Other parts of the rhyolite partly cooled, then stretched down slope like taffy, forming a laminated rock called flow-banded rhyolite.

Pinnacles FormationThe western half of the volcano is a large mass of volcanic breccia

and tuff largely made of rhyolite. Volcanic breccia is an agglomeration of angular fragments of volcanic rock, mixed and plastered together with volcanic ash in a “plum pudding” textured rock while still molten. Most of the thickly layered breccia slopes to the west, indicating that the Pinnacles are the center and western sides of the volcano and that the eastern half is still down in Lancaster in southern California.

Rhyolite Dikes and SillsThin sheets and layers of rhyolite have intruded both the older Sur

Series rocks and the somewhat younger volcanic rocks. Where these rocks are near vertical they are called dikes as in a river edge dike; where essentially horizontal, sills as in windowsills. The dikes and sills roughly follow the axis of the Coastal Ranges and were intruded along roughly north-south fractures caused by the building of the Coast Ranges them-selves.

Temblor Formation

Mantling the eastern margins of the Pinnacles is a thick series of sedi-mentary rocks called the Temblor Formation. Just over 300 meters thick, the rock grades from arkosic gravel similar to those mentioned above to fine-grained sandstones and shale. During the Older to Middle Miocene Epoch some 24 to 17 million years ago, a shallow sea covered part of the Pinnacles area. Over this time period, great sheets of sand and silt were deposited in the shallow waters just offshore. Eventually this package of sediment was compressed to rock and gently uplifted. As first the Chal-one Fault and then the San Andreas Fault moved the rocks on its western side to the north, most of the Temblor Formation was torn apart, down-dropped, and moved northward.

Terrace GravelsDuring the Pleistocene Ice Ages, greater rainfall accelerated erosion

of the Pinnacles and surrounding area. The sediments torn from these slopes were carried down into the drainages and settled in thick layers. As the Ice Ages waned, the streams, no longer burdened with heavy loads of sediment, began slowly eroding these deposits, leaving low ter-

races along the modern stream margins.

AlluviumSince the cessation of the Ice Ages, gradual

erosion of the slopes has carried some rela-tively fine-grained sediment down into the stream bottoms. Soil creep and debris flows have added their load to these deposits, resulting in alluvium from about a meter to over 12 meters deep in the stream valleys. Two distinct soils have developed on the allu-vium; both are colored grayish brown (Mun-sell 10YR 5/2). The granitic and metamorphic rocks on the western half of the Pinnacles weather to a well drained to “excessively drained” sandy loam called the Sheridan series soils. The eastern half of the Monument is largely underlain with Temblor Formation sandstone and this rock weathers to form the Laniger series soils that are gravel-rich sandy loams that tend to landslide in wet weather. Both of these soils are moderately to poorly fertile. While the surface soils range from 0.5 to nearly a meter thick, the soils deposited into the caves are much thinner because of their coarse grain size allows them to be eas-ily washed away.

Ground WaterMost of the water used in the Monument

comes from wells driven into the alluvium. An older well driven into the alluvium near the former Chalone Campground (now a picnic ground) was replaced by another well driven into the alluvium near the east en-trance of the Monument. In 1959, water with a total dissolved solids of 258-290 ppm and a pH of 6.7 was recorded in the older well with a temperature of 16 to 20°C. In 1967, Split Rock and Oak Tree Springs just down-stream from Bear Gulch Cave had water with a temperature of 15°C and total dissolved mineral load of 242 and 276 ppm and pH of 6.9 and 7.1, respectively. A “deep” well driven into alluvium at the west side former Chapar-ral Campground (now a picnic ground) had natural artesian flow, but no other data was reported. Thus it appears that the amount of dissolved minerals in the cave seepage is fairly low. While it makes for good drinking water, a great deal of concentration is needed for the deposition of calcite, gypsum, or cris-tobalite as speleothems.

GEOLOGIC HISTORY

As the Paleozoic Era ended and North America slowly skated west via continental drift, it over rode the huge rocky plates com-prising the floor of the proto-Pacific Ocean,


adding some parts of them to the coast and forcing others back down into the crust to melt and be recycled. Scraps of the deep sea floors, shallow-water soft sedimentary rocks, underwater seamounts, and scattered islands were compressed together and stitched, sliver-by-sliver, onto the west coast of North America. For nearly 100 million years this colossal conveyor belt fed rocks and sedi-ments up against the coast, slowly building the western edge of North America. In the Pinnacles area, the older sedimentary and volcanic rocks plastered to the continental edge were crushed and heated, becoming metamorphosed into marble, quartzite, and schist of the Sur Series. These metamorphic rocks, the somewhat younger granitic rocks, and a mantle of even younger sedimentary rocks became part of a block called the Salin-ian terrane, first mapped in the late 1920s in the adjacent Salinas Valley. Salinia extends from near Cape Mendocino on the northern California coast south to the Transverse Rang-es just north of the Santa Monica area. Bound-ed by the San Andreas Fault on the east, the Salinian block also underlies the continental shelf outward some 50 to 80 kilometers to the edge of the continental slope.

Under the edge of the continent, some of

the older rocks were driven deep into the upper crust and melted, form-ing an enormous mass of molten magma. Because it was lighter than the enclosing rocks, it slowly and inexorably rose through the crust, wedg-ing and melting its way to within 10 km of the surface. Here, over time, it cooled and solidified some 80 to 85 million years ago to form a slab or “batholith” of granitic rocks underlying the Pinnacles. At the very end of this cooling episode, small pockets of hot, alkali fluids, held under great pressure, shot up along cracks in both the older metamorphosed sedimentary rocks and the granitic rocks. These fluids deposited soluble minerals and metals (like lead, silver, and gold) in small quantities in the older metamorphic and granitic rocks.

Eons passed as the surface rocks overlying this batholith eroded away and the batholith itself was slowly elevated along faults. By approxi-mately 55 million years ago, most of California was above sea level and slowly eroding. Long ranges of low mountains ran parallel to the sea-coast and a sub-tropical climate allowed savanna and forests to grow over the region. Huge grazing mammals browsed the low, rolling hills and plains; equally large predators thinned their ranks. By the early Miocene Epoch, some 24 million years ago, small masses of magma had again welled their way towards the surface throughout the western United States and Mexico as the Great Basin had begun to form. The crust was stretched thin and weakened there and the rising magma took full advantage of the cracks and fissures in the rocks.

With a resounding roar some 23 and a half million years ago, a ris-ing plume of magma burst through the thin crust just northeast of Los Angeles in what was to become the town of Lancaster. This volcanic rock, rhyolite, was light-colored and nearly identical to granite in chemi-cal composition. Dissolved gasses in the magma boiled out of the rock, exploding and shattering the rhyolite. Great avalanches of molten but

pasty rock cascaded down the slopes of a volcano, the Neen-ach-Pinnacles Volcano, which quickly built itself to a height of nearly 2450 meters. The volcano was a composite cone, built of alternating ashy deposits, stiff and slow moving lava flows, and volcanic breccia, a rock composed of great masses of shattered rock cemented by glowing ash. After a relatively short time, the volcano blew itself out, peace and quiet returned to the region, and the bunnies returned to the meadows with their shade um-brellas and picnic lunches. [Figure H]

The San Andreas Fault lies just east of the Pinnacles. Active for perhaps 20 million years, it has slowly rifted parts of the ancient seafloor and adjacent rocks from the area of southern California to the northern part of the state. The Neenach-Pin-nacles Volcano was close to the San Andreas Fault and, indeed, some of the near-vertical fractures generated by it may have guided the magma towards the surface. As soon as the volcano quieted and cooled, the slow tearing motion of the San Andreas began to rip the volcano in half. Over immense quantities of

geologic time, the western half of the volcano was slowly transported north. In addition, the small block containing the volcano was partly down-dropped, thus escaping extensive erosion.

A thick pile of silica-rich sedi-mentary rocks of the Temblor Formation were also laid over the landscape the Pinnacles rode through, partly covering and pro-tecting it from erosion. Eventually, after perhaps 7 or 8 million years of

In the middle of Bear Gulch, large magnitude earthquakes have shaken cyclopean-sized boulders from the adjoining cliffs. They have fallen into the canyon to form Bear Gulch Cave. This north-looking photograph, taken just downstream from The Monolith, shows truck and house-sized boulders filling Bear Gulch to a depth of nearly 50 meters. Note the two cavers at left center near trees on Moses Spring Trail that crosses over Bear Gulch Cave.


travel, it arrived in San Benito County. It is thought the fault bordering the eastern edge of Pinnacles, the Chalone Creek Fault, may have been an older pathway of the San Andreas Fault and the San Andreas Fault itself later jumped east to its current location in adjacent Bear Valley. During its wild ride, the half volcano had again been uplifted and the gentle forces of raindrops began to quietly but relentlessly tear down the volcano.

Over time, the volcanic dome was gradually freed from its sedimen-tary cover and water slowly began to exploit the nearly vertical cracks and joints in the rock. The rhyolite and rhyolite breccia rock comprising the volcano, however, was hard and fine-grained and resisted the agents of weathering with fair success. Eventually though, moderately deep canyons were worn both along the edges and through the old volcano. In the far reaches of Chalone Creek, Frog Canyon, and Bear Gulch, the rock was deeply eroded into very narrow canyons. [Figure J ]

During the last few hundreds of thousands or perhaps even a million years, the cliffs bordering these clefts became unstable. Great earth-quakes of greater than magnitude 7 rattled the regions and enormous blocks of unstable rhyolite were loosened from the west face of Machete Ridge and the east face of the High Peaks areas. With resounding cracks, they split from the canyon walls and slid down into the canyons them-selves. As the dust settled after each earthquake, the landscape was transformed: enormous blocks had roofed over the gullies and formed the Balconies and Bear Gulch Caves. Surface streams quickly found their way back down these chaoses and continued deepening their courses. The ever-present agents of erosion also slowly rounded the edges of the blocks. Great amounts of debris moved by these streams abrading the bedrock and forming canyons and waterfalls. During winter, seep-ing ground water froze in the cracks, spalling off flakes of rhyolite, and further rounding the boulders.

These earthquakes also profoundly changed other parts of the Pinnacles. In wet years, now called El Niños, the water-soaked soils and soft sedimentary rocks were shaken like Jell-O. Saturated soils and brittle sedi-mentary rocks, already pervasively fractured by other earthquakes, were jiggled by the extreme ground motion and quickly lost all cohesion, slipping down the steepened gullies as landslides and debris flows. Debris flows thick as concrete and traveling as fast as a freight train scoured the gullies of anything in their path, then “set” at the base of the gully, partly blocking both them and any streams they fed into.

As the Ice Ages waned some 10,000 years ago, the climate slowly warmed at Pinnacles, causing a shift in vegetation. The fir and juni-per woodlands gave way to a more drought-tolerant gray pine and chaparral community of plants. Streams became seasonal and started slowly washing out the heavy load of sediment accumulated in the stream channels over the Ice Ages. The gentle but persistent action of the rains continued to etch away at the old volcano, slowly sculpting a “lost city” in the Pinnacles.

Chalone Creek drains the Pinnacles. Start-ing in the central western part of the Monu-ment, its course runs first north, then east,

Pinnacles half of volcanoNeenach half of volcano

San Andreas Fault

Granitic rocks

A large north-south fissure opened in the granitic and metamorphic rocks. Lava bubbled up, blocking off most, but not all, fissures. Volcanic cones formedalong these fissures

Over several million years, both rhyolite lava and explosions of ash built up a complex volcano that was nearly 2450 m high.

At the end of the volcanic activity, a pair of north-south faults formed. The volcanic block between the faults subsided and was protected from further erosion.

Shortly thereafter, the San Andreas Fault was activated and began moving the westernhalf of the volcano about 325 km north to its present location.

The Pinnacles ended up just west of a block of sandy sedimentary rocks. Erosion quickly began sculpting the Pinnacles themselves. The San Andreas Fault then jumped eastward from the Chalone Fault to its present location.

Erosion formed the turrets and spires while large blocks of resistant rock were under cut by streams and slid & tumbled down into the canyons by gravity and earthquakes to form talus caves.

1 2 3

54 6

Block Diagrams Showing the Evolution of The Pinnacles

Upper Gate

Joint Passage

SeasonalSeep

Triple SlotWaterfall

LakeHall

Seep

Upper TrailEntrances

Back Entrance

Lower Gate

Partialpothole

Single Rock Arch

ApronEntrance

SkyhookEntrance

C.C.C. Seep

SandEntrance

PaintedEntrance

Opal Hall

Composite map from surveys by Bruce Rogers (1967 & 1997) and Joel Despain & John Portillo (1992).

BALCONIES CAVEPinnacles National Monument

Paicines, California2000

Nm

0 50 ft.

010 m

Chockstone DomeEntrance

PlecotusFalls

Ohoa BalconyEntrance

Lake HallOverlookEntrance

PhantomBalcony

SandLake

OpalLake

409.9

406.8

408.7

391.8

391.9

393.7

406.8

398.3

396

408.5

405.2

Length: 176 m (576 ft.)

Depth: 29 m (95 ft.)

Elevation: 410 m (1345 ft.)

4.7

3.7

7.6

3.2

15

5.22

1.8

4.3

2.1

4.4

1.5

Note: Many of the names assigned to features in this cave by the author have not been approved by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names and thus should be considered informal.

Ceiling height (m)

Elevation of cave passages (m)

9

396

Break in slope - hachures on down side

Breakdown (Collapse rubble)

Seasonal stream & waterfall

Trail

MAP SYMBOLS

BCRG Grade 5Cartography by B. Rogers (1998)

410

10.73.26.2

415.1

Skylights

UpperGate

GiantChockstone

Joint Passage

SandEntrance

Opal Hall

Lake Hall

C.C.C. Seep

Plecotus Falls

Disappearing Balconies

Gate

1.5 m-high waterfalls over boulders and tree trunks tightly packed with sand and silt

RefugeDomes

EXTENDED PROFILE ALONG BALCONIES CAVE TRAIL

Waterfall overboulder jam

Ohoa Balcony

Lake HallOverlook

ApronEntrance

ChockstoneDome

Entrance

Approximate outline of cavepassages behind plane of profile

?

TheApron

Boulder Hall

The Rotunda

(a.k.a. "The Bandit Room")

38+

Stream meanderniche

Roof limit

Low, concrete foot bridge

LowerGate

Sand Gallery

Cave coralloids

Back ChuteFalls

The Plunge

Birnessiteceiling crust

Drop-inSkylight Walk-in

Skylight

Stonestairway

Black Falls

Stream chutecut in bedrock

Abandonedwaterfall

chutes

Landing

Staircase

Bear Gulchstream

Landing

up

up

up

C.C.C. Bridge

Seasonalwaterfall Seasonal

waterfall

20 m

Inner C.C.C.Bridge

Bedrockmeander

Breachedpotholes

HeartPool

El Sombrero

Former extentof Mirror Lake

The 1960's Mirror Lakecovered nearly the entire floor of The Rotunda.

Mirror Lake

Gravel bar

HiddenHeartPools

TheNarrows

StepFallsLago

Morpheus

WaterCrawl

Upper Gate

1930s-vintage C.C.C. rock drillbits hold trail blocks in place

Dry waterfallchute 2 m above floor

Roof limit

Roof limit

Blasted stairs

Inner Sanctum Step FallsBypass

Rubblechoke

Return

to V

istor C

ente

r via

the M

oses S

pring T

rail

BEAR GULCH CAVEPinnacles National Monument,

Paicines, California1999

Composite map from surveys by B. Rogers (1965, 1997-99) and J. Despain & W. Frantz (1992).

BCRG Grade mostly 5.0 with minor amounts of Grade 3 & 4.

Cartography by B. Rogers, 1999.

Length: 1754 m (5,754 ft.)

Depth: 47.7 m (156 ft.)

Elevation: 470 m (1542 ft.)

PhantomRoom

The Monolith

470

Elevationof floorin meters

471

472 477

477483

486

489

495

496

500

501

499

500

500

500

501

504

504 506

507

504

505

510

511

5134.3

3.7

7

0.7

2

6.5

2.5

1.5

1.5

2.3

0.4

2

4

3

BearGulch Entrance

Moses Spring Trail Entrance

Reservoir Entrance

A slot-like canyon, 5 m wide and 16 m deep continues about 55 m to the C.C.C.-built dam and Bear Gulch Reservoir.

A series of stream meandershave been cut into the bedrock in this room. The lowest is is along the west margin indicating the stream is cuttingdownward to the west.

Undercut pillar

2

MoulinFalls

6.5

7

17

16

1419

11

3

8.5

2.5

2.53

5.5

Mirror Lake Arch

Sand and cobble fillof unknown depth

Low stream terrace

Skylights opening into BearGulchallow twilight conditionsand some plant growth such as algae, mosses, and ferns.

Ceiling height in meters

1

500

Cantaloupe Death Entrance

506500

498

503487

6

20

481

Partially undercut or hidden stream passage walls shown with dashed lines

Approximate outline of

Corkscrew Room

484

10

473472

Sand and cobble fillof unknown depth

476

3

501

3

Flat Room

Dust Room

MoonmilkGrottos

503

504503

Upper level roomsoffset for clarity

The open spaces between roofboulders are called skylights. In some locations in the cave there is enough light filtering down to allow limited plant growth such as algae, mosses, and lichens on the cave passage floor and walls.

Dark brown soil fill of unknown depth

Seasonalstreamchannel

518

501

4 4

Ceiling height (m)

Elevation of cave passages (m)

9

396

Break in slope - hachures on down side

Breakdown (Collapse rubble)

Seasonal stream

MAP SYMBOLS

Skylight

E

E

E

E

E

E

E

E

E

E

EE

E

E

EE

EEE

E

EE

E

E E

E

E

E

E

E

E

EE

E

E

E

E

E

E E

E

E

Stream-cutterraces

Bedrock slopeTrail

Phantom Room

Nm

0

E Approximately horizontal entrance

Waterfall

Bear Gulch stream

Bedrock

Talus roof

Bedrock


closely following the northern limit of the volcanic mass. The stream then heads south to the Monument’s eastern midpoint. There, Chalone Creek turns east into Bear Valley, a wide, roughly north-south aligned valley formed by erosion of crushed rocks in the San Andreas Fault Zone. Bear Valley itself was named after a close encounter of an area pioneer with a grizzly bear and is one of over 30 “bear” place names in California. The south-flowing part of Chalone Creek follows the Chalone Fault and closely parallels the San Andreas Fault. As mentioned above, the eastern part of the Chalone Creek valley ap-pears determined by the westward erosion of crushed rocks located along the Chalone Fault. A north-south trending fault, it ap-pears that this was the active trace of the San Andreas Fault before the fault motion jumped a few km east to Bear Valley. [Figure K]

At the abrupt turn of Chalone Creek along the eastern middle side of the old volcano is Bear Gulch, a major tributary. A 20-meter high waterfall and several jumbles of cyclo-pean-sized boulders interrupt the course of Bear Gulch. It appears these are boulder chokes of cyclopean-sized rock fall, most probably caused by major magnitude earthquakes. A small talus cave is present underneath the 20-meter high falls near the mouth of Bear Gulch and is enterable only in dry weather. Near this talus jumble is

an old, debris-filled channel lead-ing north from the roadside. Bear Gulch is a modestly wide tribu-tary for most of its length except along its middle reach. There it has cut a narrow defile through the volcanic rocks. Atop this narrow gorge is a thick mantle of huge boulders that forms Bear

Gulch Cave. [Fig. L]On the west side of the park, the slopes are much

gentler and reflect the original slope of the volcano. Here the upper reaches of Chalone Creek have eroded a narrow canyon at the base of The Machete, a vertical wall of rhyolite nearly 230 meters high. It is likely that this escarpment has formed along a fault, Miners Fault, but thick sedimentary depos-its mask the bedrock floor of the creek here, thus

making confirmational observations impossible. In common with Bear Gulch, however, large magnitude earthquakes have tumbled large blocks into the canyon from just north of The Machete to form Balconies Cave. Shorter than Bear Gulch Cave, it also shows a great variety of forms along its limited extent.

CAVES

There are three relatively large talus caves in Pinnacles National Monu-ment. Bear Gulch Cave on the east side of the Pinnacles is about 1,754 meters long. Adjacent Middle Pinnacles Cave is still being surveyed, but it may be 230 meters long. On the west side of the Park is Balconies Cave with approximately 176 meters of passage. Scores of smaller tafoni caves, arches, and grottos are also present throughout the Monument.

The three largest caves have developed by both stream erosion and cyclopean boulders toppled by large earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault. The initial erosion in the Pinnacles was weathering of the feldspars of the volcanic rocks along vertical joints sub-parallel and at approxi-mately right angles to the adjacent San Andreas Fault. Alteration of the feldspar to clay has allowed both ground water sapping and simple stream erosion to deeply etch the joints in the rhyolite. Bear Gulch (part of it now submerged under Bear Gulch Reservoir) and parts of Chalone Creek adjacent to The Machete area have been eroded down into the volcanic breccia to form narrow, winding, overhung canyon passages

that, in places, are nearly 40 meters deep.

Subsequent settling of the larger blocks along these weathered, vertical joints has formed talus caves of impressive size. Indeed, the largest room in Bear Gulch Cave, The Rotunda, is roofed with a single cubical block about 30 meters on a side. This block, named The

The upper reaches of Chalone Creek flow along the west base of the Machete, a 250-meter high cliff, then swings east around it and the High Peaks. Balconies Cave is just below the north (left) end of the Machete.

This sturdy Blue Oak (Quercus douglasii) frames the west face of the high Peaks in Pinnacles. Note the erosion along the vertical joints in the rhyolite.


Monolith, apparently slowly settled down on top of the entrenched Bear Gulch stream canyon. A multitude of blocks upwards of 15 meters in di-ameter have covered over the intervening area of both Bear Gulch and Balconies Caves. In addition, “smaller” blocks up to car and locomotive size have fallen from adjacent cliffs and packed the intervening area between the canyon walls in all three caves. Recent work (ca. 2000) at the University of Nevada, Reno, has suggested that large pinnacles and blocks of rock are remarkably stable over time. It appears that great earthquakes of magnitude 7 or larger are needed to topple these obelisks from their settings. Since the Chalone Creek Fault appears to be an older trace of the San Andreas Fault, there would be plenty of large magnitude earthquakes of sufficient size to topple such blocks into place over Bear Gulch.

Bear Gulch CaveEntering Bear Gulch Cave from its lower entrance, one traverses

a deep canyon passage for nearly 156 meters to the nick point of the stream (a change in stream slope marking the head ward limit of the current cycle of stream erosion). The initial complex and subsequent Sand Gallery is floored with granitic sand eroded from exposures of granitic rocks in the headwaters of Bear Gulch. During the summer, gypsum forms delicate traceries along joints in the rhyolite, only to be washed away the following winter. In the vicinity of the lower gate are ceiling deposits of velvety, bluish-black-colored birnessite several mil-

limeters thick. Birnessite, a hydrated, sodium-man-ganese oxide mineral, was first described from bogs of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1956. It is rare, but it is also the most common manga-nese mineral to form in caves. Apparently these coatings are relics of a more extensive coating of birnessite that covered the ceilings (and prob-ably floors) of the pas-sage in the past. Truck- to cabin-sized boulders roof the passages here. Smaller passages and rooms overlie the main canyon passage and are utilized by Corys for maternity sites. Sev-eral skylights allowed upwards of 25-meter rappels down into the cave in the past. Since the rappel routes pass smack-dab adjacent to the Cory roosts, the NPS now appropriately

forbids such daredevil actions. [Fig M,N]The next part of the cave is Boulder Hall; it

is essentially bedrock floored. In 1934-1935, the C.C.C. built a narrow staircase along the stream, hanging it on the southwest wall on iron drill anchors as well as from bedrock flakes and nubbins. The trail climbs steeply upwards through this lofty hall past several waterfalls and small jumbles of car-sized boulders. Much of the active stream course is lined with blue-black coatings of birnessite. The trail clings to the stream canyon wall up to its nick point where the upper end of the stream’s current incision is marked by a large waterfall. This “slight obstacle” is passed via a nine-meter long concrete bridge that intercepts the passage just above The Plunge, a silo-sized plunge pool. The Plunge is part of an 11-meter high complex of wa-terfalls, breached potholes, spans, arches, chutes, and windows eroded in the

Bear Gulch Cave starts under a jumble of bus-sized blocks. The stream runs down the trail and across the floor. In wet years, the trial may be under nearly 0.3 meters of water. Delicate filigrees of gypsum form along cracks in the rock during the summer months, only to be washed away by the next winter’s rain.

The size of boulders above The Plunge and C.C.C. Bridge is evident in this photograph. Sharp eyes will see Drs. Dixie Pierson and Don Curry as well as Fatty NPS and another caver. Also note the Walk In Entrance, nearly 20 meters above the group.

In 1934-35 the C.C.C. built an extraordinary set of stairs and trails through Bear Gulch Cave. These steep rock steps start at the lower end of Boulder Hall. During winter storms Bear Gulch stream floods over the stairs and makes them into cascading waterfalls. Lisa Smith (NPS Trails foreman), another caver, and Paul Johnson (NPS biologist) chat on one of the switchback landing on this trail. Above them is the Drop-in Entrance, a vertical pit nearly 30 meters deep.


rhyolite. Cream-colored cristobalite coralloids and sulfur-yellow gypsum moonmilk that dehydrates to a loose white powder are also found in this part of the cave. [Figs. O,P]

Just above this waterfall complex, the cave has a flatter, maze-like character that has formed under smaller blocks. Several small, walkout and pit passages mark this segment of the cave. The new Moses Spring Trail Exit from the cave utilizes one of these short passages and a new gate now controls access to the remainder of the up-stream cave.

The next upstream part of the cave is essentially one large room: The Rotunda, also known as the Bandit Room. The Monolith, a roughly 30-meter square boulder, covers this cave room. Beneath this most impressive rock is Mirror Lake, a seasonal feature. Over the past 40 years, I have seen the lake alternate-ly enlarge, shrink, change shape, change location, disappear, and reappear. At present (2005), a narrow, shallow stream meanders across a thick sequence of sandy sediment. The lake’s size and shape are dependent on the amount of debris washed into the cave and where this pile settles. At the upstream end of The Rotunda is a pile of thin, table-sized slabs that have spalled off the bottom of The Monolith to form Mirror Lake Arch.[Fig Q.]

The 1997-1998 El Niño floods excavated a

great deal of debris from upstream in the cave and trans-ported it though The Rotunda. At one point the stream was forced through a 0.5 meter-in-diameter rock aperture evidently under some pressure. A meter-long gravel bar of transported pebbles and small cobbles lies just outside its lower end, evidently propelled through the constric-tion by the tremendous water pressure engendered by several days of torrential downpours. Near this feature is a 2.5-m-long, buried incense cedar(?) tree trunk that was exposed by down cutting the Rotunda’s sediment floor some 0.5 meters. In summer, delicate seams and patches of white gypsum can be found on the drier walls of this chamber. [Fig R]

Further upstream from Mirror Lake is the Inner Sanc-tum, a complex maze of smaller passages. Over 300 me-

ters of complex, intersecting passage is present along this part of the cave ranging from two- to three-meter high canyons, tight squeezes in the stream channel, “Groucho” stoopways, and ragged chimneys leading up or down to other stacked rooms of varying size. Until the El Niño floods of 1997-1998, these passages were floored with a jumble of silt, sand, peb-bles, and up to melon-sized boulders. After the flood, all the clay-, silt-, and sand-sized sediments, plus anything smaller than a watermelon, were sluiced away to leave a smooth bedrock floor. Several chair-sized boulders also “went missing.” The dry and dusty Flat and Dust Rooms lie above the main passageway and above the El Niño flood level and thus escaped this wholesale cleaning. Seasonal delicate gypsum traceries and small patches of gypsum moonmilk are present in these two rooms. Several meter-diameter amberat middens constructed by Dusky-footed wood rats (Neotoma fuscipes) are still present in this part of the cave.

One feature of this complex is The Heart Pool. This erosional feature is a meter-deep, double entry chute pothole shaped like a heart. After the El Niño floods removed nearly 0.75 meter of sediments from in front of the Heart Pool, yet another set of “heart pools” was exposed just below the Heart Pool. The back slope of these features is almost always wet with seepage. In extremely wet and cold years a sheet of ice flowstone with stubby stalagmites and columns often forms here. Other bedrock features near the Heart Pools include stream meanders incised into the bedrock, low waterfalls, and aprons cut in the bedrock. The rock floor now exposed formerly had white arrows indicating the

The Rotunda is a large room with a single boulder for a ceiling. A seasonal lake usually covers the floor, but in 1998 the floor sediments were washed away, leaving only a shallow streambed. Note the bedrock floor at right and car-sized boulders in background forming the downstream walls of the room.

As part of their life processes, some bacteria precipitate the manganese mineral birnessite along some water-courses. At several places in Bear Gulch Cave, lustrous black coatings of birnessite coat active and now dry waterways. This coating at the top of Moulin Falls marks a former stream level now left high and dry.


route for visitors to follow. Covered by debris since the late-1960s, these arrows are again exposed (Chad Moore, pers. comm., 1998). [Fig T]

Because of the chimney-like layout of the cave’s passages, energetic breezes flow though this part of the cave making marked seasonal climate changes. In winter, the chill breezes cascade down through the cave passages, resulting in freezing tempera-tures. In the summer, the warmer surface air flows up the Gulch making the upper parts of the cave much warmer than it otherwise might be. Thus in winter it presents a highly desirable hibernacularium for the Co-rys. Conversely, in summer the lighter warm air collects in pockets and domes to provide just the temperature needed for raising bat pups.

Unfortunately, these sought-after spots are mostly at shoulder level adjacent to or directly over the trails, resulting in a potential problem between bats and visiting humans. The current NPS

management plan for the cave has, hopefully, struck a balance for both bats and humans. For most of the year, this upper part of the cave is

closed to visitors to allow the bats an undisturbed time for maternity and hibernating periods. In spring and fall when the bats all leave the caves for points still unknown, opening the entire cave for short time periods (dependent on the absence of the bats) has allowed the adoring public to scramble around the caves to their hearts content.

At the upper gate at the top end of the maze section, the cave passage “Ts.” One roomy passage trends towards the northern Moses Spring Trail Entrance, changing in size to upwards of nine meters wide and four to seven meters high.

Many skylights are present along this part of the cave, requiring no lights for exploration and making it a veritable sunken garden dur-ing the wet season.[Fig U]

The southern bar of the “T” extends to the

Twin waterfalls emptied into the Heart Pool,

carving its unique shape out of massive

rhyolite. Just below this photograph is the Heart Pool Two, a similar pool uncovered by gravel that was washed away by the 1998 El Nino. Note dark-

colored pencil on the right margin of the Heart

Pool for scale.

Reservoir Entrance. Just above the Reservoir Entrance to the cave, the canyon changes again to a very narrow, overhanging and deep canyon. This part of Bear Gulch apparently was a talus cave some time in the past. Rounding by weathering and subsequent collapse of the “smaller” sized (ca. two to four meters in diameter) boulders, however, has converted the former cave back into a canyon. Indeed, in 1976 a large boulder slid down into this area, making a temporary arch for a short time before it continued on to the floor, thus allowing a very real example of how the cave formed.

The next several hundred meters of canyon, now submerged under the reservoir, are also deeply cut into the volcanic bedrock. Resembling some of the slot canyons of the Colorado Plateau, it apparently was never part of the cave system. The area surrounding the C.C.C.-built reservoir has very closely spaced joints and has weathered laterally along them to form a wide valley. Because of the lack of closely adjacent cliffs, there

The route from the Reservoir into Bear Gulch Cave leads down a nar-row defile partly filled with car-sized boulders. The stream noisily cascades down from numerous leaks in the dam itself on its way into the cave.

The Bear Gulch stream has carved stream meanders into the hard

rhyolite bedrock near the Water Crawl. Just above them are a

series of shallow basins and low waterfalls. Note the melon-sized and smaller sediments at lower

right, all “tools” used by the cave stream to erode features into the

bedrock. The notebook at right


has been no large quantity of large boulders to fall and roof over the now-sub-merged narrow slot can-yon. [Fig V]

Grottos and alcovesAlcoves above the main

Bear Gulch Cave have formed where seeps have sufficiently weakened the rock to allow both the feldspars and the volcanic ash “cement” to weather to clay. Subsequent rain and wind have removed this matrix to form ta-foni grottos and alcoves. In these perpetually damp grottos powdery white dust is sometimes found on the slender stems of Santa Bar-bara sedges (Carex barbara) growing there. These white coatings are actually remains of microscopic plants called diatoms, probably of the genus Melosira. These plants secrete silica “opal” skeletons that, when highly mag-nified, appear as tube-like structures. This is the second occurrence of diatoms in Califor-nia’s spelean environment. [Fig W-BAD]

Scores of adjacent smaller caves and shelters have formed by tafoni development above Bear Gulch Cave. Few extend into the rock more than a few meters, such as the obvious grotto in the unnamed pinnacle be-

tween “The Hatchet” and “Crud And Mud” just south of mid-reservoir, but a few are large enough to hold platoon-sized groups of cavers.

Balconies CaveAt the base of the western slope of the High Peaks is Chalone Creek

Canyon. Chalone Creek has apparently followed yet another roughly north-south fault, Miners Fault, forming a deep canyon. The Machete, a 230-meter high cliff, forms the eastern wall of the canyon along the northwest margin of the volcano. A smaller talus cave, Balconies Cave, has formed under the debris spalled off this edifice and another set of

cliffs to the west called The Balconies. [Fig X] Balconies Cave starts as a narrow slot roofed by truck- to house-

sized boulders. Parts of the walls of this slot passage have been highly polished to a nearly mirror bright finish by floods bearing large amounts of sediment. After about 40 meters, the slot opens up into an amphitheater at the Sand Entrance. Several large entrance arches allow exit of the cave here. Most are quite climbable, if very exposed, but several lead to vertical drops of nearly 25 meters. To the southeast is a large amphitheater in the ridgeline – apparently where most(?) of the blocks forming the cave slid from. Directly ahead are four slots like entrances that lead into the balance of the cave. [Fig Y]

On the southeastern margin of this small amphitheater is a low, sand-floored crawlway that leads to Plecotus Falls, a “normally” dry waterfall that drops 15 meters over a severely overhung lip into the lower Lake Hall. A small pool is directly below this waterfall. Over-flow from this pool is channeled into shallow chutes modestly deco-rated with tan-colored, centimeter-long cristobalite coralloids along their edges.

Directly ahead, three slots open into Opal Hall; the main trail fol-lows the middle of these slots. A set of C.C.C.-built stone stairs drops

a few meters into the upper reaches of Opal Hall. Un-derneath these steps is an ever-enlarging pit complex. Stream action has gradu-

Small tafoni shelters and boulder arches are common in the bold rhyolite outcrops through-

out the Pinnacles. The obvious grotto in the unnamed pinnacle between The Hatchet (left) and Crud and Mud (middle right) adjacent to

Bear Gulch Reservoir is large enough for a cav-

Three cavers walk under the imposing Chockstone dome at left that towers above the entrance to Balconies Cave. Scattered canyon live oak (Quer-cus boencus), gray pine (Pinus sabiniana), and California laurel (Umbellularia californiacus) make the approach hike cool and shady in summer.


ally removed nearly 10 me-ters of sandy fill, exposing an unstable rocky chimney complex that leads down to-wards the permanent C.C.C. spring in Lake Hall. To the south of the trail is perched Opal Lake, a seasonal pool.

Opal Hall is about three to four meters wide and varies from two meters to over 10 meters in height. The south side of the hall branches up into Plecotus Falls and down into Lake Hall. A small colony of Corys find the up-per, inaccessible reaches of this hall perfect for a roost. A series of small seeps that are rich in dissolved volcanic ash-derived silica have de-posited banks of translucent, wax-white (Munsell N8) cristobalite (a rare, high-temperature form of quartz) coralloids up to a centimeter long on the overhanging wall of the hall. Also incor-porated into these coralloids are layers of both pale tan-colored (Munsell 10YR8/3) calcite and quartz. A centimeters thick accumulation of natu-rally broken and fallen coralloids floors this part of the hall, indicating long-time deposition and natural breakage. Apparently the unstable volcanic ash is mildly soluble in the groundwater, and when breezes in this passage rapidly evaporate the seepage water with its dissolved silica, cristobalite crystallizes out. Thin layers of calcite and quartz cover some of the coralloids and evidently are a newer set of layers. When the cristobalite coralloids are bathed in short-wave ultraviolet light they fluo-resce pale sea green (Munsell 10G 8/2).[Fig Z]

At the bottom of Opal Hall, a low archway between house-sized boul-ders opens into Lake Hall. This large hall has a shallow lake cov-ering its floor in the wetter winter months. C.C.C.-built steps allow easy passage into and out of this hall. The roof of this hall is also

largely made of truck- to house-sized boulders. In 1967, it was pos-sible to traverse along narrow, sloping ledges from the Sand Entrance area to soil-floored gal-leries above Lake Hall. Several small, manhole-sized windows allowed the visitor to look down

into the bottom of Lake Hall. When looking down these manholes it was best not to dwell on just how robust these relatively thin soil floors were. By 1997, however, these soil-floored galleries had disappeared. The intervening years had seen the soil floors wash out, leaving drops of about 18 meters in their place. It is thought that the extreme floods of the El Niño years of 1969 and 1982-1983 may have been responsible for the disappear-ance of these sediment floors. [Fig AA]

At the upper end of Lake Hall is a small seep that flows from a tightly debris-packed fissure. In 1934-1935, the C.C.C. “developed” the spring by driving a one-inch-diameter pipe into

the orifice and installing a stone-and-mortar water-collecting basin to the wall below it. Subsequent stream erosion has removed some of the rubble fill blocking the fissure and un-dermined the old cement basin.

Along the west wall of the hall are several incised waterfall slots. The lips of these slots are just below the level of the sandy floor of the Sand Entrance and amphitheater. These mark former nick points where the Chalone Creek cascaded down into Lake Hall, appar-

The Joint Passage follows a nearly straight joint in the rhyolite. Large and small blocks of rock spaced well apart make lights nearly unneces-sary. The gravel fill in the passage may be upwards of 15 meters thick.

Ground water slowly seeping along joints in the volcanic rock dissolves tiny

amounts of silica from unstable vol-canic ash. When the water, with its 40 to 80 ppm of silica enters the caves, it

sometimes deposits clear to white-col-ored coralloids. High evaporation rates and mild breezes assist in this process.

These coralloids in Opal Hall are made of cristobalite. While gem opals are often

composed of cristobalite, the speleothems in Balconies Cave are not gem quality.

When the cave coralloids are bathed in short wave ultraviolet light, they fluoresce pale robins egg green white the surround-

ing rhyolite itself only reflects the deep blue of the UV light.


ently along what was then the floor of the canyon. The now-gone-missing soil floors in the upper reaches of the hall may have been relics of the down stream reaches of the stream channel at that time.

Below and to the north of the site of the main lake, a cemented rubble trail follows the stream canyon for several scores of meters. The trail drops several meters over low wa-terfalls held up by sediment-blocked logjams and under a single rock arch on its way to the lower entrance of the cave. The ceiling height gradually rises until it is nearly 20 meters above the floor at the lower entrance. Huge breached potholes and ledges indicate higher stream levels and erosion capabilities in ages past.

The lower Apron Entrance of the cave opens into a wooded stretch of Chalone Creek. From this point it’s a hike of several kilometers downstream to reach the juncture of Bear Gulch.

To sum up the information Mother Nature has so generously given us, the long talus caves at Pinnacles National Monument are most likely relics from the Pleistocene Ice Ages when rainfall and thus stream discharge was greater. Following zones of localized alteration of the minerals within the rhyo-lite itself, deep incision of the volcano along joints and faults was pronounced. Coupled with major earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault and its predecessors, the caves formed by both in-place erosion of enormous blocks of rhyolite and toppling of cyclopean-sized boulders into the deepened canyons. As streams found their way into the caves, fur-ther erosion sculpted both the bedrock and boulders. Lastly, deposition of uncommon minerals put the frosting on the cake, so to speak. A multitude of micro-climatic biomes has provided a home to varied, crypitic fau-nas and floras in the caves and canyons.[Fig BB]

While none of the caves of Pinnacles Na-tional Monument are of exceptional size, they are among some of the largest talus caves in the US. Outstanding stream erosional fea-tures, unusual and rare minerals, and spec-tacular Coast Range scenery along with the endangered bat species and, recently, release of California Condors in the Park all combine to make it a most worthwhile place to visit . . . even if one still has to obtain a permit from the Superintendent for the removal of downed aircraft.

GAZETEER FOR THE PINNACLES CAVESUnless otherwise notes, these names were applied by myself over my nearly forty years of exploring and studying the caves at Pinnacles Nat. Mon. starting in 1965. The references to where these names first appeared (where known) are listed in parentheses at the end of the explanation.

BALCONIES CAVEApron Entrance – Named for the large stream eroded apron along the northeast wall of this downstream entrance to Balconies Cave (Rogers, 1999a).Back Entrance – The entrance to Balconies Cave that is behind the Trail Entrances (Rogers, 1999a).C.C.C. Seep – Named for the Civilian Conservation Corps who developed the seep for use in 1934-35 (Rogers, 1999a).Chockstone Dome Entrance – Derived from the name given to the house-sized boulder forming the roof of this entrance to Balconies Cave (Rogers, 1999a).Disappearing Balconies – In reference to the now eroded-away soil balconies present in Balconies Cave in the mid-1960s (Rogers, 1999a).Giant Chockstone – The name for this large chockstone that forms the roof of the upstream entrance to Balconies Cave (Rubine, 1995, p. 130, 142).Gothic Hall – An older name for Lake Hall (Rogers, 1965a). Joint Passage – From the linear joint this passage in Balconies Cave has been cut along (Rogers, 1999a).Lake Hall – For the seasonal lake occupying the floor of the chamber (Rogers, 1999a).Lake Hall Overlook Entrance – The vertical entrance that over looks Lake Hall (Rogers, 1999a).OHOA Entrance – Named “One Hell Of An” Entrance after the impressive drop just inside the portal (Rogers, 1999a).Opal Hall – Named for the cristobalite (“opal”) coralloids present (Rogers, 1999a).Opal Lake – From the cristobalite (“opal”) coralloids present along the margins of the waterfall chutes leading down into this small seasonal pool (Rogers, 1999a).Painted Entrance – Named for the multicolored lichens and also the extensive paint tagging by vandals present in this entrance to Balconies Cave (Rogers, 1999a).Partial Pothole – A very large, breached, stream-eroded pothole along the north-east wall of Balconies Cave just inside the Apron Entrance (Rogers, 1999a). Phantom Balcony – The now mostly missing balconies remaining in the upper part of Lake Hall (Rogers, 1999a).Plecotus Falls – Named after the former genus name for Corynorhinus townsen-dii palenses bats that have a roost above this falls (Rogers, 1999a)Pool Hall – An older name for Lake Hall (Rogers, 1965a).Pyrite Hall – A little used, older name for Opal Hall (Rogers, 1965a).Refuge domes – Named for the refuge these small domes provide for a small group of Townsends Big-eared Bats (Rogers, 1999a).Sand Entrance – Named for the sandy floor of this entrance mid-way through Balconies Cave (Rogers, 1999a).Sand Lake – From the granitic sand flooring this seasonal lake in Balconies Cave (Rogers, 1999a).Single Rock Arch – Named because a single, couch-size block forms the small arch in Balconies Cave (Rogers, 1999a).Skyhook entrance – Named because one would need a “skyhook” to enter this entrance to Balconies Cave (Rogers, 1999a).Trail Entrances – For the adjacent passages along the cave trail leading into the northern part of Balconies Cave (Rogers, 1965a, 1999a).Triple Slot Falls – For the three incised waterfall slots making up the waterfall (Rogers, 1999a). Upper Gate – The upper National Park Service gates installed in Balconies Cave to restrict visitation under marginal stream flow conditions (Rogers, 1999a).

BEAR GULCH CAVEBack Chute Falls – Named because the actual waterfall is behind and hidden in a narrow chute eroded in the floor of Bear Gulch Cave (Rogers, 1965b, c; 1999b).The Bandit Room – A former name for The Rotunda in Bear Gulch Cave that was used until the 1960s; in reference to the bandit Tuburico Vasquez’s supposed use of the caves in August of 1873 after a robbery and murder in nearby Tres Pinos (NPS, ca. 1954(?)).Bear Gulch Entrance – The name for the lower entrance to Bear Gulch Cave; used since the 1880s(?).


Boulder Hall – Named for the large breakdown boulders partly flooring this large gallery in the lower part of Bear Gulch Cave (Rogers, 1965b).Cantaloupe Death Entrance – Named after the climbing route starting just above this entrance (Rubine, 1995, p. 57, 59). Corkscrew Room – Named for the corkscrew route taken to enter this small room from the surface (Paul Johnson, pers. comm., 1998).Drop-In Skylight – One of the skylight entrances into Sand Gallery in Bear Gulch Cave. Formerly used as a vertical entrance into the cave (Rogers, 1999b). Dust Room – Named for the usually dusty floor in this low room over the Inner Sanctum (Rogers, 1965b, c).El Sombrero – A large, sombrero-shaped block of breakdown located along the northern wall of The Rotunda of Bear Gulch Cave (Rogers, 1999b).Fat Man’s Misery – Another name for The Narrows in Bear Gulch Cave used by the NPS, ca. 1954(?).Flat Room – Named for the low ceiling height in this room adjacent to the flat Room in Bear Gulch Cave (Rogers, 1965b, c).Heart Pool – This name goes back to the late 1800s and was applied to the twin waterfall chute pools that are joined into a heart-shaped pool. Hidden Heart Pools – Named after the 1997-98 El Niño exposed them, these are smaller examples of the Heart Pools in Bear Gulch Cave (Rogers, 1999b). Inner Sanctum – The low, mazy area in the upstream part of Bear Gulch Cave that the Townsend’s Big-eared Bats prefer (Rogers, 1999b). Lago Morpheus – A seasonal pool that forms along the upper reach of the Bear Gulch cave stream within the upper end of the cave itself. The name refers to the “Lake of Dreams” of literature (Rogers, 1999b).Lower Gate – The lower, downstream National Park Service gate to Bear Gulch Cave (NPS ca. 1972[?]).Mirror Lake – The small seasonal lake in The Rotunda in Bear Gulch Cave; named in the late 1880s in allusion to its reflecting the under surface of The Monolith; used prior to the creation of the National Monument.Mirror Lake Arch – Named for the rock arch formed by spalled slabs from the under side of The Monolith (Rogers, 1999b).The Monolith – This name was attached to the 30 meter-square boulder roofing The Rotunda sometime in the early 1950s(?). Moonmilk Grottos – Named for the gypsum moonmilk found in these damp grottos (Rogers, 1965b). Moses Spring Trail Entrance -The eastern entrance to Bear Gulch Cave from the upper end of the Moses Spring Trail (Rogers, 1999b).Moulin Falls – Named after the French word for mill because several melon-sized boulders that have assisted hollowing this feature out now reside in its bottom (Rogers, 1999b)).The Narrows – a constricted part of the Inner Sanctum just downstream from the seasonal pool called Lago Morpheus; also called The Fat Man’s Misery (Rogers, 1999b).Phantom Room – This low room above the Sand Gallery was named because its location was “lost” for some time in the 1970s and 1980s (Rogers, 1965b). The Plunge – Named for the seasonal pool flooring this very large pothole in Bear Gulch Cave that is bridged by a 1934-35 C.C.C. concrete bridge (Rogers, 1999b).Reservoir Entrance – The Bear Gulch Cave entrance that is just below the C.C.C.-built Bear Gulch Reservoir (NPS, ca. 1950(?)).Robbers Room – an alternative name for The Rotunda in use by the NPS in the 1970s.Sand Gallery – The large gallery near the lower entrance to Bear Gulch Cave was named for its granitic sand floor (Rogers, 1999b).Skylights Entrance – an older name for the Moses Spring Trail Entrance to Bear Gulch Cave; named for the abundant skylight entrances in this part of the cave (Rogers, 1999b). Step Falls – During times of high stream discharge, the cave stream in Bear Gulch Cave cascades over the short set of steps near the Upper Gate of the cave (Rogers, 1965b). Step Falls Bypass – A narrow passage in breakdown that allows Step Falls to be bypassed if it is submerged by high stream discharge (Rogers, 1965b).Walk-in Skylight – Named for the walk-in approach to this vertical entrance to the Sand Gallery (Rogers, 1999b). Water Crawl – This is the low passage under breakdown that the Bear Gulch Cave stream uses during low discharge; the name has been in use since at least the early 1960s (Rogers, 1965b).

USEFUL REFERENCESAkers, J.P., 1967, Geohydrology of Pinnacles National Monument, California: Menlo Park, CA, USGS Open-File Report Ak37gs, 14 p.

Andrews, P., 1933, Geology of Pinnacles National Monument: Berkeley, CA, Univ. of California, unpublished MS thesis, 84 p.

______, 1936, Geology of the Pinnacles National Monument: Berkeley, CA, Univ. of California, Publication, Bull. Of the Dept. of Geologic Sciences, 24:1, 38 p.

Anonymous, 1975, Munsell soil color charts: Baltimore, MD, Macbeth Div., Kollmorgen Corp., 34 p.

Anonymous, 2002, Pinnacles National Monu-ment Resources: Paicines, CA, unpublished website material, un-paginated (32 p).

Anonymous, 2001, General information about Pinnacles (Nat. Mon.): Paicines, CA, unpub-lished ms, unpaginated (29 p.).

Goddard, E.N., 1948, Rock color chart: Wash-ington, D.C., National Research Council, 17 p.

Johnson, E.R., and Cordone, R.P., 1994, Pin-nacles guide, 2nd ed.: Stanwood, WA., Til-licom Press, 64 p.

Rogers, B.W., 1965a, Map of Balconies (“Old Pinnacles”) Cave, Pinnacles National Monu-ment, CA: Cave Notebook #1, p. 17, scale 1:660, unpublished.

______, 1965b, Map of Bear Gulch Cave, Pin-nacles National Monument, CA: Cave Note-book #1, p. 24, 26-31, approximate scale 1:660, unpublished.

______, 1965c, Map of Bear Gulch Cave, Pin-nacles National Monument, CA, scale 1:400, 1 sheet, unpublished.

______, 1999a, Map of Balconies Cave, Pin-nacle National Monument, Paicines, CA: 2000 USGS Open House poster, approximate scale: 1:1495, 1 sheet

______, 1999b, Map of Bear Gulch Cave, Pin-nacles National Monument, Paicines, CA: 2000 USGS Open House poster, approximate scale: 1:7824, 1 sheet.

Rubine, D., 1995, Climbers guide Pinnacles National Monument, 2nd ed.: Evergreen, CO, Chockstone Press, 248 p.)


Draft Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Western Regionheld September 17, 2005 at Berkeley Tuolumne Camp, California

Dan Snyder, Secretary-Treasurer

Chairman Matt Bowers called the 2005 annual meeting to order at 4:03 p.m.

IntroductionsMatt noted that Jonah Schachner of the San Francisco Bay Chapter would proxy for Mark Scott at this meeting.

Southern Nevada Grotto has formally re-quested membership in the Western Region. Southern Nevada president Steve Deveny spoke briefly about the grotto, noting that it was founded in 1974 and presently has about 70 members, some of whom are as far-flung as Elko, Nevada. A current project is the resurvey of Lehman Cave. The grotto’s website is at www.guanopage.com. Meetings are organized by email but are usually held on 1st Wednesdays at 7 p.m. at the Deveny residence. Southern Nevada was welcomed into the region with a round of applause.

Roll CallPresent: Columbia (3), Diablo (3), Mother Lode (3), San Francisco Bay (3), San Joaquin Valley (2), Shascade (2), Shasta Area (3), Southern California (3), Southern Nevada (3), Stanislaus (3), Matt Bowers, Chair (1), Jonah Schachner for Mark Scott, Vice Chair (1), Dan Snyder, Secretary-Treasurer (1), Merrilee Proffitt, California Caver Editor (1). Absent: Desert Dog Troglodytes (3), San Diego (3) and Willamette Valley (3). 32 of 41 votes present; quorum met.

Approval of MinutesOn motion of the Secretary-Treasurer, the council waived the reading of the minutes of April 16, 2005 and approved them as pub-lished in California Caver 232.

Fiscal 2004-2005 Financial ReportDan Snyder summarized the financial state-ment handed out at the beginning of the meeting [printed herein].

Ernie Coffman, representing Shasta Area Grotto, stated that we should inform the IRS of the change in fiscal year. [Dan has since researched this question and learned that the IRS does not require that we inform them of our fiscal year except on Form 990 (annual return), which we are not obligated to file un-

less our annual income exceeds $25,000. Furthermore, when it was neces-sary to reactivate the region’s 501(c)(3) status in 2001, Peri Frantz alerted the IRS to her use of the September-August reporting period, which so far as they are concerned has since been our fiscal year.]

OLD BUSINESS

Constitution and Bylaws RevisionMatt reported that this project has been delayed.

Western Region Library CommitteeCommittee chair Merrilee Proffitt noted that this committee has two charges: first to inventory and catalog the library; then to study the possi-bility of transferring some material to a research library for safekeeping. Region Librarian Lynn Fielding has begun the inventory.

NSS Board of Governors Meeting CommitteeCommittee chair Eileen Belan is seeking volunteers. The preferred date to host a BOG meeting is next fall. Peri Frantz noted that the most recent NSS News contained a plea for BOG hosts and contact info. Steve Deveny of Southern Nevada Grotto reported that they hosted a BOG meeting last year.

NEW BUSINESS

Membership RecruitmentMatt reports that the officers sent a mass mailing to all NSS members in California, Nevada and Oregon, as well as non-NSS members of the region’s grottos, to tell them of recent and coming activities and invite them to join the Western Region. The mailing included the registration packet for the regional meeting. Of the 840+ households contacted, about 1% of have since joined, and new members continue to trickle in.

An audience member asked how many people attended the regional. Marianne Russo of the Mother Lode Grotto estimated the number to be in the mid-80s. [Final registration figures show 94 attendees, including 6 children.]

Barb Ruble of the San Francisco Bay Chapter suggested that grottos fol-low SFBC’s suit and mandate region membership. Dan Snyder urged dues-collecting grottos to at least give their members the option of pay-ing region dues at the same time grotto dues are collected, arguing that the region needs to achieve the critical mass of members that will result in a fresh flow of research and articles for the California Caver.

Jonah Schachner asked those who had never been to a regional before this to raise their hands; none (except rascally Yogi Beach) did; Jonah’s point being that we need to attract new blood to our community.

Grotto LiaisonsMerrilee passed out grotto liaison forms to grotto reps for update. She uses the liaison list to solicit articles for the California Caver.


Management of Conservation & Research Grant FundDan asks whether the council would support (no need to vote) placing $3,000 of the C&R Grant into a 2 or 3-year CD to obtain the best possible interest rates. Grant Fund chair Barb Ruble supports, given the histori-cally low activity in this fund. This leaves over $1,300 liquid, which with tonight’s auction proceeds (50% of which goes to the fund) will be sufficient to supply three $500 grants. Peri Frantz points out that in the unlikely event that more than this amount is needed, the General Fund contains ample funds to loan until the CD matures. No objections were raised.

Spring 2006 Speleo-Educational SeminarMatt contemplates holding this event in April in central or northern Cali-fornia. He has a social science theme in mind: history, legend, archaeol-ogy, and so forth.

Duplicate Newsletters in Library Lynn has pulled third copies of California Caver back issues from the library, mostly from the 1990s and later, and asked what should be done with them. She suggested auctioning them tonight, whereupon the audi-ence muttered that everyone likely has most of the issues in question. Much to Jim Lakner’s dismay at the thought of dedicating even more of his home to the storage of caving papers, Jonah suggested that the copies be added to Jim’s back-issue stock, for sale on demand. Merrilee pro-posed offering them on consignment at next year’s convention. Another proposal to advertise them on the web met with stiff opposition. Others suggested advertising their availability in the Cal Caver. Dave Cowan suggested they be donated to the NSS auction, where such materials tend to sell well. Having belabored the point ad nauseum, the council’s con-sensus was to let the officers decide. [The issues have been added to the back-issue stock for the present time.]

Proposed Western Region Gate SystemMatt has obtained a verbal ok from the owner of the Grapevine Gulch Caves trailhead (not the caves, which are on public land) for cavers to park along his property’s frontage. Parking along the rest of the road remains at your own risk.

This property owner has also committed to allowing the Western Region to install a lock on the new inside gate the owner plans to install. This would allow grotto-affiliated cavers to park inside the old turnout closed by the owner several years ago. Matt’s preliminary research suggests that for this and other such arrangements, we should use restricted-core locks ($50 each, $6.50 per key), for which only authorized persons can obtain duplicate keys. Each region grotto would be given one key, as would certain individuals such as the Western Region NCRC Coordinator. If a key were lost, the lock and all keys would be replaced and the respon-sible party billed for the cost.

Matt sees landowner and access issues becoming more important to the region. Just this year, we’ve dealt in some way with several cases.

John Tinsley for SFBC moved:That the Western Region engage in a policy of acquiring dedicated locks in order to secure caver access at Camp Nine Road and elsewhere across the region as appropriate.

The floor was opened for discussion. Ernie Coffman strongly recom-mended round keys, not straight.

Jonah Schachner moved to amend the mo-tion to limit keys to Western Region grottos or members as an incentive, but withdrew the motion after a brief discussion.

The motion passed. (Resolution 05-05)

Steve Hobson suggested gifts for cooperative landowners. Marianne Russo, Mark Bowers and Mike White took the Grapevine Gulch trailhead owner and his family caving, which they seemed to appreciate as they’d never been to the caves below their property. John Tinsley suggested work trips; unfortunately, as Matt Bowers related, a work-for-access arrangement would void the immunity from liability that a landowner has under Cali-fornia’s recreational use statute (Civil Code Section 846).

REPORTS

International Congress of SpeleologyPeri and Bill Frantz, Cindy Heazlit, Steve and Linda Fairchild and other western cavers attended the 14th International Congress of Speleology in Greece this summer. The NSS’s bid to host the next congress in Texas was ac-cepted unanimously, despite the fears of some that it may be difficult to enter the U.S. due to heightened security.

The next congress will take place July 2009, in Kerrville, Texas. Organizers hope for atten-dance of 1500-2000. Various cave-related tours will be offered to attendees, including two camps led by Joel Despain in California and a possible vulcanospeleology camp led by Bruce Rogers. Many volunteers are needed, particularly multilingual translators. The NSS BOG is expected to combine the 2009 NSS Convention with the International Congress. More information about the congress and how to get involved will appear in the NSS News and California Caver.

Lava Beds Research Center Donor DinnerJanet Sowers reported that Lava Beds Na-tional Monument is hosting a dinner October 8th in honor of donors of $500 or more to the construction of the Lava Beds Research Center, now completed. Peri Frantz will be cooking dinner. Janet passed out invitations to the grotto representatives. Janet noted that donations are still needed to pay off the last debts from the project.

NSS Congress of GrottosGale Beach reported on three motions passed by the COG this summer. The first would


establish a new award for innovation in cav-ing, such as diving technologies. The second proposes a new Cave and Karst Conservation and Restoration Committee. Related to this, the third resolution establishes a grant fund to be administered by this committee; $5000 would be available each year, in $500 match-ing grants. The Board of Governors will take up the COG’s recommendations this fall.

Western Region NCRCRoger Mortimer reported that Mark Bowers has completed two terms as WR NCRC co-ordinator. Roger will be the new coordinator. Activities during the past years have included a Level 1 and 2 seminar in fall 2004, providing cave rescue training to 30+ students includ-ing cavers and agency personnel from as far away as Arizona. More recently, Bill Frantz taught an orientation seminar for Santa Cruz County SAR.

Roger is considering offering a modular Level 1 in the Central Valley. Also, grottos desiring a weekend Orientation to Cave Rescue should speak to Roger to set it up and arrange for instructors.

WR-NCRC needs a trailer for the equipment cache and will probably organize a fund-raiser for this purpose. Don Dunn of MLG suggested that the region give WR-NCRC a grant. Because WR-NCRC’s accounts run through national NCRC, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, it is believed that the region can do this. The discussion was tabled until the next meeting of the council.

Cave Research Foundation (CRF) WestJohn Tinsley briefly spoke about CRF’s ac-tivities in the west. Three “cells” operate in California: Redwood Canyon, Mineral King and Lava Beds. All three projects offer the op-portunity to get into some great caves while contributing to their study.

In response to an audience member who asked why the parks don’t run these projects themselves, John noted that CRF is not the only way to get involved with National Parks cave projects. CRF has an MOU with the National Park Service, is well-organized and has an excellent track record going back many decades; but this does not prevent other in-dividuals or groups or groups from persuing their own projects and MOUs.

Western Cave Conservancy (WCC)Martin Haye spoke on behalf of the WCC. The name of the game, he says, is patience.

The acquisition of Rippled Cave is still pending the landowner’s comple-tion of his own preparation, and we have no alternative but to wait. As announced on the WCC list serve, M2 Cave negotiations fell through; we are seeking a conservation buyer capable of buying this property. Mike White and Tom Gilleland have been beating the bushes for cave proper-ties in the Mother Lode and Arizona. Mike in particular has had promis-ing discussions with two Calaveras County cave owners.

Conservation & Research Grant FundBarbara Maeso-Ruble enthusiastically described the C&R Grant Fund and the rules governing grants. Barb reports that the last research grant made was in 1995, for a Mineral King dye-tracing project. More recently, a conservation grant was made to a grotto to reprint cave protection law cards for cave registers. Fuel costs cannot be covered, as the funds must be used on the project itself. Martin Haye asked whether a cave gate would be eligible for a grant; Barb thought so, but the decision would be the committee’s. Contact her for more information.

Regional 2006San Diego Grotto is already making plans to host the 2006 regional at Dos Picos Park in San Diego County. At Matt’s request, the convention will take place over Labor Day weekend (9/1-4), in order to address the fact that meetings held at the extreme ends of the region on short weekends are often poorly attended, owing to the great distance most members must travel. Matt asked for the council’s opinion about this. Most speakers were ambivalent or opposed holding regionals on the long weekend, citing conflicts with family commitments, heavy/danger-ous traffic, and conflicts with currently active projects such as the Marble Mountains Speleocamp and Lehman Cave survey.

ANNOUNCEMENTSGale Beach, who sits on the NSS Awards Committee, noted that dead-lines are approaching for nominating candidates for 2006 awards. Several awards exist to enable us to recognize the accomplishments and contributions of our fellow cavers. For more information, please contact Gale at [email protected].

Matt Bowers announced that spaces are still available for the October 2nd Wilderness First Aid class, to be held at Sequoia National Park.

Merrilee Proffitt requested articles for the California Caver. She knows that many projects have been underway that she would like to see rep-resented in the publication. Reports need not be lengthy. Bruce Rogers pointed out that if you have special knowledge of a project or interesting subject but are intimidated by writing, there are several people in the region who would be happy to assist. Drop Merrilee a line.

Merrilee thanked co-editor and husband Keith Johnson for the new look and feel of the California Caver.

Matt Bowers announced that due to poor attendance, we have scaled back the First Thursday online chats. Some of the discussions have been excellent, and we will continue to hold them from time to time as speak-ers are available, but not on a monthly basis. If you have ideas for a topic, or wish to lead a discussion, please contact program coordinator Pat Helton at [email protected].

Marianne Russo announced that the auction would be held in Rhodes Hall.


Western Region of the National Speleological SocietyAnnual Financial Statement

September 1, 2004–August 31, 2005; given at the annual meeting September 17, 2005

IntroductionLast spring we published an annual financial statement covering April 1, 2004 through March 31, 2005, in accordance with the fiscal year estab-lished by the regional council in 1990. At my urging, the council in April changed the fiscal year to September–August to more accurately reflect our business cycle, since our annual meeting has always been held in the fall. This report supplants that published in California Caver 232.

The new period corresponds to that used by Peri Frantz for her financial statements from 1992–2002 and will thus facilitate comparison of figures from those years with the present, with one caveat: where previous Sec-retary-Treasurers’ accounts were cash-based, the accounts from Septem-ber 1, 2003 through the present have been entered into Quickbooks on an accrual basis, in order to more accurately reflect the dates of expen-ditures. (Historically some officers and volunteers have delayed billing us with their expenses for months or in some cases years after they were incurred.)

Accrual basis accounting will also make it somewhat easier in future to obtain GAAP certification and apply for grants, should the region ever wish to do so. I cannot, however, claim a professional knowledge of ei-ther accounting or bookkeeping, and it may be that the manner in which I have set up the region’s accounts will require some revision if we ever do “hit the big time.” Nevertheless, I am confident of their accuracy and utility.

Attachment: Balance Sheet with Previous Year ComparisonThe balance sheet shows that the Western Region has significantly in-creased its net assets in the last fiscal year and has ample funds to carry out its mission. Most of the increase was due to the very successful auc-tion held at last year’s well-attended regional, a phenomenally success-ful Speleo-Ed Seminar in the spring, and a sharp reduction in the cost of producing the California Caver, as the following attachment shows.

Attachment: Income and Expenses with Previous Year ComparisonFrom this it may be seen that the region has gone from running a deficit to producing a respectable surplus. More than half the surplus may be attributed to the 2004 auction, which in turn owed its success to record attendance at the regional.

Following the notes accompanying this attachment the reader will find a table of California Caver Costs by calendar year for 2004 and 2005 (the cost of the last issue being projected), together with the membership dues received [for] those years. The editors have been able to publish the Cal Caver well within budget, thanks to unbelievably low rates they’ve obtained from Office Depot.

Membership [updated to October 11, 2005]The Western Region presently has 229 members, including 192 regular and 37 family members. As promised at the spring meeting, member-ship recruitment has been given the highest priority in order to restore the vitality of the region. As can be seen from the income and expense statement, a considerable sum has been spent on a mass mailing to over

840 caver households in California, Oregon and Nevada, including non-NSS members of grottos. The response to date has been surprisingly low (less than 1%) and will not pay the cost of the mailing, but the officers are exploring other avenues.

The region’s members are distributed by grotto as follows:

Columbia Grotto: 4Desert Dog Troglodytes: 6Diablo Grotto: 24Mother Lode Grotto: 26Oregon Grotto: 1 (grotto not a region member)Oregon High Desert Grotto: 1 (grotto not a region member)San Diego Grotto: 1San Francisco Bay Chapter: 53San Joaquin Valley Grotto: 10Shascade Caving Society: 1Shasta Area Grotto: 9Southern California Grotto: 54Southern Nevada Grotto: 6Stanislaus Speleological Association: 9Willamette Valley Grotto: 1Unaffiliated: 23

Respectfully submitted,

Daniel S. SnyderSecretary-Treasurer


Given 09/17/05Accounts Payablecorrected 10/13/05

Accrual Basis

Western Region of the N.S.S. Balance Sheet Prev Year Comparison

As of August 31, 2005

Aug 31, 05 Aug 31, 04 $ Change % ChangeASSETS

Current AssetsChecking/Savings

California Caver Endowment FundCitibank CCE Fund 3-mo CD 0.00 1,670.00 -1,670.00 -100.0%

Total California Caver Endowment Fund 0.00 1,670.00 -1,670.00 -100.0%

Conservation & Research GrantCitibank C&R Grant Fund 3-mo CD 0.00 2,409.53 -2,409.53 -100.0%

Nexity MMA 612 4,306.84 0.00 4,306.84 100.0%

Total Conservation & Research Grant 4,306.84 2,409.53 1,897.31 78.74%

General FundCitibank GF Checking 0.00 2,625.12 -2,625.12 -100.0%

Citibank GF Savings 0.00 1,579.39 -1,579.39 -100.0%

Washington Mutual Checking 0212 1,095.72 0.00 1,095.72 100.0%

Nexity MMA 612 6,117.80 0.00 6,117.80 100.0%

Total General Fund 7,213.52 4,204.51 3,009.01 71.57%

Rescue Training ReserveCitibank RTR Checking 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.0%

Total Rescue Training Reserve 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.0%

Total Checking/Savings 11,520.36 8,284.04 3,236.32 39.07%

Total Current Assets 11,520.36 8,284.04 3,236.32 39.07%

TOTAL ASSETS 11,520.36 8,284.04 3,236.32 39.07%

LIABILITIES & NET ASSETSLiabilities

Current LiabilitiesAccounts Payable

Accounts Payable 829.98 * 89.52 740.46 827.15%

Unbilled Expenses (estimated) 360.00 215.00

Total Accounts Payable 1,189.98 304.52 885.46 290.77%

Total Current Liabilities 1,189.98 304.52 885.46 290.77%

Total Liabilities 1,189.98 304.52 885.46 290.77%

Net AssetsUnrestricted 6,023.54 3,899.99 2,123.55 54.45%

Restricted by Regional Council 4,306.84 4,079.53 227.31 5.57%

Total Net Assets 10,330.38 7,979.52 2,350.86 29.46%

TOTAL LIABILITIES & NET ASSETS 11,520.36 8,284.04 3,236.32 39.07%

* Corrected from report distributed 9/17/05 to include $612 payable to Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS for students registered in Wilderness First Aid class as of 8/31.

Explanatory notes provided with report distributed at annual meeting are available upon request. Contact Dan at (831) 421-0485 or [email protected].

Page 1 of 1


Given 9/17/05;Cal. Caver coststable rev. 10/11/05

Accrual Basis

Western Region of the N.S.S. Income & Expense Prev Yr Comparison

September 2004 - August 2005

Sep '04 - Aug 05 Sep '03 - Aug 04 $ Change % ChangeOrdinary Income/Expense

IncomeAuction Proceeds 1,790.50 101.00 1,689.50 1,672.77%

Contributions IncomeUnrestricted 129.00 10.00 119.00 1,190.0%

Total Contributions Income 129.00 10.00 119.00 1,190.0%

Membership Dues 2,200.00 2,420.00 -220.00 -9.09%

Miscellaneous Income 221.00 0.00 221.00 100.0%

Program FeesSpeleo-Ed Seminar 3,718.00 0.00 3,718.00 100.0%

Wilderness First Aid 852.00 0.00 852.00 100.0%

Total Program Fees 4,570.00 0.00 4,570.00 100.0%

Uncategorized Income 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.0%

Total Income 8,910.50 2,531.00 6,379.50 252.06%

ExpenseMarketing

Speleo-Ed Seminar 738.35 0.00 738.35 100.0%

Mass Mailing 547.24 0.00 547.24 100.0%

Misc. Postage & Shipping 12.55 0.00 12.55 100.0%

Misc. Printing & Reproduction 23.93 0.00 23.93 100.0%

Total Marketing 1,322.07 0.00 1,322.07 100.0%

Bank Service Charges 121.00 430.48 -309.48 -71.89%

Contributions 0.00 1,796.41 -1,796.41 -100.0%

Miscellaneous 193.00 5.00 188.00 3,760.0%

Office Supplies 14.54 0.00 14.54 100.0%

Postage and Delivery 24.82 68.38 -43.56 -63.7%

Professional Fees 30.00 0.00 30.00 100.0%

Program ExpensesPublications

Cal Caver 227 0.00 743.18 -743.18 -100.0%

Cal Caver 228 468.25 42.87 425.38 992.26%

Cal Caver 229 460.24 42.87 417.37 973.57%

Cal Caver 230 564.14 42.87 521.27 1,215.93%

Cal Caver 231 574.14 30.00 544.14 1,813.8%

Cal Caver 232 393.21 0.00 393.21 100.0%

Cal Caver 233 217.73 0.00 217.73 100.0%

Cal Caver 234 37.50 0.00 37.50 100.0%

Cal Caver 235 37.50 0.00 37.50 100.0%

Web Hosting 12.00 12.00 0.00 0.0%

Total Publications 2,764.71 913.79 1,850.92 202.55%

Speleo-Ed Seminar 1,033.50 0.00

Wilderness First Aid 500.00 0.00

Misc. Postage & Shipping 1.29 18.80 -17.51 -93.14%

Misc. Printing & Reproduction 38.40 61.49 -23.09 -37.55%

Total Program Expenses 4,337.90 994.08 3,343.82 336.37%

Total Expense 6,043.33 3,294.35 2,748.98 83.45%

Page 1 of 2


Western Region News & Activities

Position Open at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks

In November, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks will begin the process of hiring a cave technician or assistant cave specialist. This is an entry level position. The position will be a GS 7, subject to furlough with the furlough varying from one to three month—dependent on annual funding. Critical skills for this position will include good caving skills (including verti-cal), basic computer skills, and an ability to manage volunteer groups. Important additional skills include GIS skills, experience working in Access, advanced vertical caving experience, and experience in karst field and laboratory research in varying disciplines. People in this posi-tion need to be in top physical condition and this position does require working on weekends. The position will be based at park headquarters at Ash Mountain in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada at 1,500 feet and on the edge of the small town of Three Rivers, California. Anyone interested should feel free to contact me for more information. For more information, contact Joel Despain: [email protected]

New Cave Specialist at Lava Beds

Shane Fryer, formerly assistant cave specialist at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks has recently been appointed Cave Specialist at Lava Beds National Monument. Congratula-tions to Shane! Shane can be reached at shane_freyer @nps.gov

Upcoming Regional Meeting Information.

The next Western Region meeting will take place over Labor Day weekend 2006, and will be hosted by the San Deigo Grotto. (contact info? powerpoint presentation available?)

Region turns 50

2006 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Western Region. (add more salient information here--blahblahblah)


Regional Calendar

NSS ConventionBellingham, Washington August 7-11, 2006http://www.nss2006.com/

Western Region annual business meetingHosted by the San Deigo GrottoSeptember 1-4, 2006

About the Western Region

Regional Officers:

Matt Bowers, ChairPO Box 1692Modesto, CA 95353-1692(209) [email protected]

Mark Scott, Vice Chair109 Cayuga AveSan Francisco, CA 94112-1415(415) [email protected]

Dan Snyder, Secretary-Treasurer213 Elm StreetSanta Cruz, CA 95060-4314(831) [email protected]

The Western Region is an association of NSS grottos in California, Ne-vada, and Oregon. It promotes cave conservation, the scientific study of caves, exploration, and speleoeducation. The Western Region of the NSS is a 501(c)(3) organization—all donations to the region are tax deductible.

The Western Region of the NSS includes: the Columbia Grotto, the Desert Dog Troglodytes, the Diablo Grotto, the Mother Lode Grotto, the San Diego Grotto, the San Francisco Bay Chapter, the San Joaquin Valley Grotto, the Shascade Grotto, the Shasta Area Grotto, the Southern Cali-fornia Grotto, the Stanislaus Grotto, and the Willamette Valley Grotto.

For more information about the Western Region, please see the region’s web page:http://www.caves.org/region/western

CALIFORNIACAVER · Talus Caves in Pinnacles National Monument, California Dan Snyder 22 DRAFT...

Documents

Transcript of CALIFORNIACAVER · Talus Caves in Pinnacles National Monument, California Dan Snyder 22 DRAFT...