Jamaican Caving Notes

Bonafide Cave

May 6, 2005 - 12:30-13:30 EST

District: Sawmill

Parish: Trelawny

WGS84 L/L: 18 18 33.0; 77 43 21.8

JAD69: 173483 E, 184079 N

JAD2001: 673594 E, 684368 N

Altitude: 355m WGS84

Accuracy: +/- 15m horizontal; +/- 15m vertical

Type: Breakdown maze

Accessibility: Scramble

Depth: 12m

Length: 47m

Explorers: NSS - 1986

Survey: NSS - 1986

JU Ref: Text - pg 100; Map - pg 99

Entrance size: 10m W x 5m H

Entrance aspect: 90 deg true

Vegetation in general locale: Forest

Vegetation at entrance: Forest

Rock type: White limestone

Bedding: Massive

Jointing: Moderate

Speleothems: Stals, flowstone, sponge, helictites

Palaeo resources: Quaternary bone matrix.

Archaeo resources: None

Hydrology: Dry

Siltation: N/A

Sink: N/A

Rising: N/A

Stream passage with surface activity: N/A

Stream passage without surface activity: N/A

Dark zone: 75%. Below entrance breakdown boulders.

Climate: Warm, semi-humid.

Bats: <100

Bat guano: Little

Guano mining: None

Guano condition: No accumulation.

Eleutherodactylus cundalli: Some

Neoditomyia farri: None

Amblypygids: None

Periplaneta americana: None

Cave crickets: None

Sesarma: None

Other species: None. [No nutrient input to speak of because bat numbers are very low, so no fungus, or fungal gnats and associated predaceous trog inverts. No trog scavengers because of lack of guano. Cave is dry so no rafted detritus. Also too dry for most terrestrial opportunistic species, other than E. cundalli at entrance.]

Visitation: None

Speleothem damage: None

Graffiti: None

Garbage: None

Ownership: Forestry Reserve

Protection: None

Vulnerability: Low. The cave has virtually no visitation. The bat roost is very small, with numbers in the dozens at most, so no guano deposits to attract attention. The bone matrix is vulnerable, but because of the remote location casual visitation and inadvertent damage is currently unlikely.

Bonafide Cave

May 6, 2005

Team: Stewart, Conolley.

Notes: RS Stewart

This would be the first of many days spent based in Quick Step. It is conveniently located relatively close to a number of the targets listed for the Cockpit Country Parks in Peril Project, these being the northern districts of Sawmill, with Marta Tick Cave and many others, and the caves of Aberdeen, Thornton, and Appleton. We know Quick Step well, and many of its people, and it is friendly territory for us. There would be no need for guides. We know the bush north of Quick Step as well as most of the locals. In the south, the people of Aberdeen and Thornton are helpful by nature, and expect nothing more than a please and thank-you. Once again, we would stay at Joanne and Hortense's, the third to last house on the Quick Step road, with beautiful views to the east, and coffee in the morning.

We'd arrived the night before, and at 8:00 AM, Ivor and I were heading north in the Rover, creeping slowly up the rough road, to reach the start of the Marta Tick trail, in Sawmill. This vague old track does not actually extend all the way to Marta Tick, ending in the bush before it gets there, but gets one close. In the next cockpit to the north, beyond Marta Tick, are found Bonafide and Stephenson Cave, the last of the listed caves and sinkholes of the western fault. This series begins five kilometres to the south-southeast with Belmore Castle Pit 1, and includes about 18 sites. All but six are simple shafts, and of the rest, only Marta Tick resembles what most think of as a cave.

With the load so light in the car for a change, we were soon at the start of the hike, and we then began the trek to Marta Tick Cave, Stephenson Cave, and Bonafide Cave. This time, even though we had been on the trail several times before, it was very, very rough. It appears that no one had been there since Hurricane Ivan, and in short, it was brutal. In the past it has taken us less than an hour to Marta Tick. This time, it was closer to three hours. The trail had vanished under large fallen trees, and shrubbery encouraged by the openings in the canopy. We had to bushwhack with a machete to make our own trail for much of the way (although we did find parts of the old trail occasionally). It was much faster coming out, having the track to use that we'd made on the way in.

By noon, we had reached the cockpit that holds Marta Tick, and after taking a five-minute break, we moved up into the saddle that would take us to the cockpit that held Bonafide and Stephenson. We intended to start with our furthest targets, and then work our way back to Marta Tick. I have been through that saddle before, and remembered it as very easy. This time, because of hurricane deadfall, and the subsequent holes in the canopy that allowed an explosion in the undergrowth, it took 30 minutes with a machete. We might have also been slowing down because of the energy expended just getting to this point, but nevertheless, it was insanely tough.

Once through the saddle (at last), we now needed to contour high on the side of the steep-walled cockpit to reach our targets. These are located on the west side, high and dry, tens of metres above the cockpit bottom. Until this point it had been possible for us to work our way over, under, and around, the many large dead trees that had come down in the hurricane, and had blocked our way on the trek in. Now, there was no choice - we had to work along the side of the hill, over fallen trees that lay across large jagged boulders perched below the cliff that rises above, to reach very specific spots. Sightlines were so restricted, and progress so difficult, that our only option was to contour directly to where we knew the caves to be. With nothing sure to step on, just a twisted, splintered, jumble of broken trees, with rocky voids below, we covered the final 150 metres in 30 minutes, to finally reach our first target, Bonafide Cave.

This was my second visit to Bonafide (the first having been August 23, 2003), so once we were there, things went quickly. I already had some of the data needed (bat-roost parameters, climate, position), and as soon as I was down into the boulder maze that sits at the top, memories of the previous visit kicked in enough to eliminate the need for flagging.

Bonafide Cave, rather than being an independent site, is more correctly described as part of a larger system that also includes Marta Tick to the south, and Stephenson to the north. In the lower sections of all three, fossil phreatic sponge extends, at similar elevations, in a line that appears to connect them into one larger system. In August 2003, airflow was noted in the lowest sections of Bonafide, deep in complex sponge, on the Marta Tick side of the cave. The sponge continued on that bearing, but became very small and tight. It appeared to be identical to the sponge found in Marta Tick, that extends towards Bonafide (see JU map for Marta Tick). In Marta Tick, Nov 22, 2002, JCO members observed small numbers of bats far into this section, past crawls that did not appear to supply suitable access for bats, and it was speculated that there was a separate entry point (apart from the main entrance). To the north of Bonafide, only 40 metres away along the same cliff, is Stephenson Cave. Both Bonafide and Stephenson have their development primarily parallel to the strike of the hill (18 deg true), with the bearing of this strike in the southward direction extending behind the saddle towards Marta Tick. At first sight, it can be seen that Bonafide and Stephenson are essentially connected, although it might not be possible for a human to squeeze through from one to the other. If Bonafide does indeed connect to Marta Tick, then these three caves comprise one system. It is unknown if the route is large enough to allow a caver to pass through, but it is the current belief of the JCO that further exploration is warranted.

A thorough examination of the known areas of the cave was now conducted, with previous observations confirmed. Although there are a few bats in the cave, it really isn't a suitable roost compared to the nearby Marta Tick, and seems to be mostly ignored. Much of this small cave is made up of voids between breakdown boulders, until sponge is reached, and there are no actual chambers. The upper section is all twilight zone, and the lower sections do not appear to offer enough room for successful launches to flight by bats. The few bats observed appear to be Artibeus fruit-bats, in the upper twilight zone, and in such small numbers that guano was limited to individual feces appearing as spots on rock surfaces. Because of the wide breakdown entrance, stretching along the hillside, the cave is very airy, and humidity is close to outside ambient. These factors seem to have combined to supply very poor habitat for trog species. There is very little nutrient input, because there is little guano, and no rafting of detritus by streams, and accordingly little of biological interest. In two sessions of looking carefully, we have essentially seen no trog species in this cave. If it is indeed a part of a larger Marta Tick system, then trogs can be expected somewhere deep through the sponge in that direction, but when regarded as a separate cave, Bonafide has little of biological value.

Historically, the great worth of Bonafide has been in a palaeontological context. During the NSS expeditions, in the mid-1980's, bone breccia was collected that reflected the past biology, [Grady F (1986). Bones from Jamaican Caves. Potomac Caver, 29: 23-24], [Morgan GS (1993). Quaternary land vertebrates of Jamaica. In: (Wright RM & Robinson E, eds.), Biostratigraphy of Jamaica, Memoir of the Geological Society of America, 182: 417-442]. These investigations revealed the past presence of nine different species of bats, including the now extinct Brachyphylla nana. These fossils were deposited in a time when the cave was larger, before erosion of the hillside in which it is found fed much of what was once a bat-roost into the cockpit below.

We have listed this cave as having a low vulnerability. It is unvisited, has no appreciable bat-roost, and no guano to attract farmers, and is in no way fragile. It is also not part of any hydrological system.

Having finished Bonafide, we now moved on to Stephenson Cave, a little further north on the cliff-side.