CASCADE CAVERNS (KCS025)
Alternate Names: Cascade Cave, Cascade Cavern, Hester Cave, Hester's Cave.
Length: 509.0 m
Depth: 40.2 m
Quadrangle: Boerne 7.5’
Special Hazards: none
Description:
A large ravine leads to the cave, routing in overflow flood waters from Cibolo Creek. A dam has been built 50 m upstream of the cave, spanning the 30 m wide by 10 m deep ravine, and prevents the cave from being frequently flooded. Cascade Caverns is a commercial show cave with two natural entrances. The "Peep In The Deep" is a 3 m diameter by 23.5 m deep shaft. The other, walk-in, entrance is an artificially enlarged window, in the north wall of the shaft, that has a staircase leading to the base of the pit. A heavy steel door guards the passage that leads southwest from the Peep in the Deep. The cave is essentially a single passage that heads southwest for 260 m to where it drops to a lower level that heads 120 m southeast before ending in a sump. Several "rooms" are encountered in the cave as the passage widens or gains in ceiling height. The first room is immediately inside the gate and is 20 m in diameter and about 2.1 m high. Along the east wall is a case displaying a mastodon tusk discovered in the cave, and along the west wall is "Mirror Lake", a 10 m long, 2 m wide and 1 m deep travertine pool. Past this room the cave narrows to an average 5 m width and maintains a ceiling height of almost 8 m for 52 m to the "Giant Molar". Along the way towards the Molar, extending off either side of the passage, are the "Indian Chimneys", two domes that almost reach to the surface. The Giant Molar is a meter long, tooth-shaped, shield stalactite that marks the original explored end of the cave. At this point the cave sumped for a distance of 64 m. This stretch of passage is now known as the "Lake Rooms". At the Molar the floor drops about a meter and the ceiling lowers to within 2 m of it. The commercial trail runs along the west wall and a long dammed, meter deep, lake runs along the east wall. Near the end of this section is the "Rain Forest" and the "Diamond Ceiling", where the water droplets of hundreds of incipient soda straws sparkle overhead. Following the former sump, the passage steadily gains in width and ceiling height, extending past the "Tobacco Room" and the "Wall of Faces" (both named for the shape of speleothems along the walls) until reaching the "Cathedral Room". This room is one of the largest in Kendall County, measuring 55 m long, 10 m wide and up to 20 m high. Large domes extend into the ceiling and an artificial entrance has been placed in one. This entrance cannot be seen from inside the cave and is used for the placement of lights for the commercial tours. A small passage (not shown on the map) on the far side of the dome, from the entrance, is unexplored. At the southwest end of the Cathedral Room, near the ceiling, is an upper level passage that goes 62 m before becoming too tight. The passage has been walled off with concrete because it carried water whose volume ranged from a trickle to a torrent and would periodically flood the entire cave. This water was also the source for the cave's namesake, the "Cascade". Presently water is pumped to the upper passage and allowed to cascade down the southwest wall of the Cathedral Room into a 15 m long by 8 m wide lake. Prior to commercialization, the water would flow down through a constriction of rocks and organic debris to a lower level. Access to the "Lower Level" is now gained by a vertical 0.8 m diameter tube. The tube extends just above water level and contains a metal ladder for the 5.2 m descent leading into the "Register Room" or the "Pump Room", because the pump for the waterfall is located in it. This room is 15 m long, up to 10 m wide, and 2.4 m high. A 2.5 m high tight passage extends off the northwest wall for 6 m before dividing into an impassibly tight upper level and very tight, sumped, lower level. The main part of the Lower Level, however, heads southeast as a passage averaging 8 m wide by 3 - 4 m high. The floor of the passage is thickly covered in mud, and noted features, on tours of this unimproved section of the cave, include: the "Pulsating Heart", a shield stalactite with a regular pulse of water flowing over its surface; the "Shell Room", for the many fossils in its walls; and the "Wishing Well", probably because every commercial cave has to have one. One hundred meters into the Lower Level is the 4 m drop into the "Mud Room" (a short crawl along the west wall bypasses the drop). While the passage width, entering into the Mud Room, stays the same the ceiling goes out of sight into a fissure. At floor level the cave slopes down a sticky "Mud Slide", interrupted by some mud covered breakdown blocks -- "Neptune's Throne", and goes into the cave's terminal sump. The sump is 7.6 m deep and ends in mud fill.
History:
The cave was discovered in 1840. During the late 19th century a young German fellow, spurned in romance, retreated from society to live out his days as a hermit on a ledge 8 m down the entrance pit. By the mid-1920's the cave was well known and known to extend to a sump at the Giant Molar. The sump was actually a series of low air spaces, only 15 m of which required free diving. Frank E. Nicholson and a companion made that dive, sealing their flashlights in glass mason jars, and explored the cave as far as the Cathedral Room. Nicholson described the drop to the Lower Level as "a seemingly bottomless pit into which the stream emptied, the sparkle of the water losing itself in the gloom of a black hole -- no man knows how deep!" In 1932 the sump was drained and the cave was commercially opened. During World War II the cave went out of business, but was reopened after the war in 1949 under the new management of a Mr. Lindberg. Sometime in the 1950's the Lower Level was dug open and a trail was placed as far as the drop to the Mud Room. Floods buried this trail in the 1960's(?) and it was never reexcavated. Since then tours to the Lower Level have been occasional and offered as an idea of what real caving is like. In 1967 the pal view of the cave was surveyed by John Bridges, James Brummett and Jack Burch. The cave's profile was surveyed in 1976 by a crew led by Keith Heuss. Other versions of the map were also done by Carl Kunath, in 1971, and by the St. Mary's University Speleological Society, in 1973. In the mid-1970's divers were requited to dive the terminal sump, but their results were inconclusive. Wayne Walker also climbed the fissure above the Mud Room. In the late 1970's the artificial entrance was dug into the cave to improve the lighting of the Cathedral Room. Don Arburn, John Cross, George Veni and Randy M. Waters dug open the narrow passage off the Register Room in 1980-81, and, on 1 June 1982, Veni and Waters used SCUBA to dive the terminal sump and find its muddy end. In 1985 the management of the cave changed to Jill Beardsley and Jim Kyle, who made many renovations and improvements on the property until Jill died of an accidental drug overdose on March 2, 2005. On March 19, 2005, Jeffrey Donofrio was shot and killed while working on an electrical box on the property. The cave’s manager, Dario Acevedo, who had been Jill’s boyfriend, was convicted of murdering Donofrio. The conviction was overturned on appeal over a technicality in January 2008. Cascade Caverns has periodically served since the early 1960's as a site for formal meetings of the Texas Speleological Association, and for many caver vertical and rescue training sessions.
Biology:
Cascade Caverns contains a rich cavernicole fauna which, although impacted by commercialization, is still quite diverse. The cave's size and frequent flooding allow for substantial influxes of organic debris, as a food source, and epigean fauna which may, with time, become cave adapted. Fauna collected from the Caverns include: Sphalloplana reddelli Mitchell (troglobite) (flatworms), "Hauffenia" micra (Pilsbry and Ferriss) (troglobite) (snails), Polygyra mooreana (W.G. Binney) (accidental) (snails), Sphaerium (Musculim) sp. (accidental) (clams), Stygobromus dejectus (Holsinger) (troglobite) (amphipods), Stygobromus russelli (Holsinger) (troglobite) (amphipods), Cicurina varians Gertsch and Mulaik (funnel-web spiders), Eidmannella rostrata Gertsch (troglobite) (spiders), Speodesmus echinourus Loomis (troglobite) (millipeds), Arrhopalites sp. nr. pygmaeus (Wankel) (springtail), Ceuthophilus (Ceuthophilus) sp. (cave crickets), Ceuthophilus (Geotettix) cunicularis (cave crickets), Bembion picipes Kirby (accidental) (ground beetles), Rhadine speca speca (Barr) (troglobite) (ground beetles), Tachys (Tachys) sp. (ground beetles), Anapleus marginatus (LeConte) (hister beetles), Batrisodes sp. (short-winged mold beetles), Ptilodactyla serricollis (Say) (beetles), Rhymosia triangularis Shaw (fungus gnats), Trichobius major quadrisetosus (bat flies), Eurycea neotenes, Eurycea tridentifera (troglobite) (salamanders), Syrrhophus marnocki Cope (cliff frogs), Rana pipiens, Schreber (leopard frog), Myotis velifer incautus (Allen) (Mexican brown bat), Pipistrellus subflavus subflavus (Cuvier) (eastern pipistrelle) Observed fauna include undescribed centipedes, millipeds, terrestrial isopods, and crayfish. The flatworms and Stygobromus dejectus amphipods are the only known records for these species.
Geology:
The cave is a swallet developed in the lower member of the Glen Rose Formation. The cave's upper level is primarily strike oriented and the Lower Level trends down-dip. The terminal sump is at the regional water table for the lower Glen Rose.
Reported by: unknown
Bibliography:
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