Cicurina Cave is a fun
through-trip under a dry creekbed, with watchable cave fauna along the
way. Be careful of rattlesnakes!
There are two entrances, almost on
opposite sides of the bed of Gorman Creek, which is normally dry. The South
Entrance is a 2.5-m climbable drop into a small, circular room. However,
to climb out requires a handline or step of some kind. A narrow passage
slopes steeply down for 10 m to a triangular room 25 m long and up to 20
m wide. The center is silted almost to the ceiling. This room is under
the creek bed and is damp from infiltration. The room contains abundant
invertebrate fauna and often has a single sleeping cave myotis bat (Myotis
velifer incautus). From the north end a passage 1 to 2 m high and 2
to 3 m wide zigzags generally northwest for about 60 m to the bottom of
an 8-m dome-pit that connects to upper and lower levels. The pit cannot
be free-climbed safely. The upper level leads through a short crawl to
the North Entrance, a shallow sinkhole in a cedar brake in the creek bed.
Watch out for rattlesnakes in this entrance area. The lower level leads
northeast as a sinuous passage 2 to 3 m in diameter for about 30 m, where
an intermittent stream enters, after which the cave gradually narrows and
sumps.
The cave has more than 20 species,
including the troglobites Cambala speobia (millipede) and Cicurina
sp. (possibly C. sansaba, a spider). Cicurina probably is one of
the better small caves in the park in which to observe fauna. The cave
is one of the weekend wild tours conducted at the park and is the subject
of a baseline ecology study in which visitors can participate. In 1996
the bones of two black bears were recovered from the cave by Dr. Ernest
Lundelius, Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory, The University of Texas.
