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Jamaican Caving Notes |
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Apr 2, 2004 ROEHAMPTON SCHOOL CAVE Position: WGS84 - 18 24' 17.2" N, 77 54' 36.7" W, +/- 5m Field notes: R. S. STEWART Cavers: R. S. Stewart, G. van Rentergem, M. Taylor, D. Roggy. Time in: 14:30 EST, Time out: 17:00 EST THREAT VULNERABILITY: Intermediate Roehampton School Cave is one of our discoveries, via Joan Blake, and although we had explored sections of it before, it needed more work. Guy, Martel, Dietrich, and I had journeyed to St James in the morning, but due to the length of the drive did not arrive until past noon. My original intention, for this day, was to have another try at locating the phantom Lawson Bottom Cave, but once again, no progress was made. Since time was marching on, we shifted our attention to Roehampton School. I thought that Guy would enjoy this one, and I wanted him to have a look at the particular hard strata, interspersed through Montpelier Limestone, that were so striking about the morphology of the cave. On our previous visit, Jan 24, 2004, when the water table was somewhat higher, at the farpoint of our survey I had left a double flag. This visit, I had neglected to bring the map but assumed that this would be no problem and that the double flags would be easily found. In fact, they were not. We were soon at the entrance, the GPS position confirmed, and I led the way in. I took what was, for the first part, our known route. At some point, we left it behind, indicated by the lack of flags, and I found myself in a new passage. We backed out, and tried another one, and again I found myself in a new part of the cave. Martel, who had been along last time, also had no recollection of where we were. What we had found was a much wider passage than any we had been in before, that was only some 1 metre high, and half-full of water. I went some distance through this, and had a look ahead. It didn't look particularly promising being very low and rather choked looking. I was hesitant about pushing through this, seeing no clear sign of improvement. I came back and told the others. Guy, intrepid caver that he is, headed up the passage, through the water, and when he got to where I had been, carried on. He soon reported back to us that not only did the passage continue, but it hit a main collector. Joining him, while Dietrich and Martel waited at the pool, we carried on for a good distance further, still not reaching the end. We eventually ran out of time and had to call it a day. I had flagged our new passages, and I carefully rearranged things on the way out so that there would be no problem finding our new farpoint. We were of course very enthusiastic about another return to the cave to pursue things. We scheduled this for the following day. On our way back out of the cave, we had taken a small sample of the unique, hard rock, (see notes: Roehampton School for Jan 24, 2004), that was lying on the floor of a passage. When we had done most of our drive back to Windsor, and had stopped at our usual pub in Friendship, Guy demonstrated the The Red Stripe Test. This marvelous bit of low-tech mineral testing revealed the particular mineral to be in all likelihood, chert. When the test was done, and we had finished quaffing the apparatus, we climbed back into the car and finished the trip to Miss Lilly's, en route to the Last Resort. Soon after we left the cave, we had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman who owns the land where the entrance is located, Mr. Vincent Cunningham. Vincent has considered using the outer part of the cave for occasional tourist actvities, and we see no harm in this. Tourists would not be interested in going as far as the sections that have a flood-risk, and there is no real damage that could be done in the outer sections. We intend to give Vincent a bit of advice on how to approach things and ensure that no one is hurt. (Continue to Roehampton School Cave, Apr 3, 2004.) |
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