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Jamaican Caving Notes |
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Aug 19, 2003 COOL GARDEN CAVE 4 Position: WGS84 - 18 19' 42.1" N, 77 49' 03.4" Field notes: R. S. STEWART Cavers: R. S. Stewart, I. C. Conolley, M. Taylor The Cool Garden Caves 1, 2, 3, 4 were the targets for Aug 19. Cool Garden 4 was the second of the three caves visited during the day. A GPS position was obtained 10 metres, (paced), 245 d true, from the entrance and saved as wpts 110/111. The resultant accuracy of the WGS84 position given above may be considered as +/- 10 metres although the true accuracy is probably better. It should be noted that in the area there are four caves with a total of 7 entrances and although I believe that the marked entrance is the west entrance of Cool Garden 4, I'm not 100%. The fourth cave was not found due to time constraints and until a repeat visit is made to locate and GPS reference all 7 entrances, along with doing inside surveys to find conformity with JU, then the cave that this position marks is not absolutely identified. The cave entrance was about 5 metre high and 4 wide and led into an active stream passage that was taking water. The passage was rift-like in nature and soon became less than 2 metres wide and about 2 high. As we had entered the cave, the familiar booming of thunderstorms over the Maroon Town district accompanied us. The flow of water in the cave was not great but rafted organic debris could be seen on the walls of the passage all the way to the roof. Once again, the memory came to mind of watching Peterkin west entrance go underwater in the space of an hour, in June of 2002, not many kilometres away from where we now were. The topography of the surrounding land didn't suggest that such a rapid rise might be possible in this cave, but nevertheless, the bits of bamboo stuck on the ceiling of the passage were not that old. The passage was followed for over a hundred metres until the height was under 1.5 metres and the water level was about 50 cm deep. The width was down to about a metre at this point. The conditions, both inside and out of the cave, suggested that it was time to pull the plug and turn us around for the journey out. Biologically, the cave does not supply habitat for inverts other than sesarma although a few of the usual suspects were observed in close proximity to the entrance. No amblypygi were seen. The majority of the cave is active stream passage, at times to the point where it is flushed out completely, and habitat is thusly limited. No bats were observed, for the reasons just given, but the area just inside the entrance probably offers seasonal roosting space for Artibeus fruitbats. Some pasturing of livestock is taking place in the catchment for the stream that enters this cave and it would be expected that there is resultant pollution especially during times of extended heavy rains. It should be noted that the sound of the thunder outside was heard, and felt, for much of the time we were inside the cave. It suggests that for much of the length of the passage the depth below ground is not that great. It also supplied an unusual sonic back-drop to the journey and kept us very aware of the flood-risk in the river caves of the district. After exiting Cool Garden 4 W, we hunted down the most interesting of the three caves that we visited, Cool Garden 2. |
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