Howdy all. I am a newbie here. I live in the Texas Hill Country. I have been in an out of caves for at least 40 years. As recently as last year, my wife and I bought a property and built a home on it. Before the home was finished, I discovered cold air pushing out from a crevice under a large Cedar Elm Tree about 50 years old approximate. It took me 4 months to find some cavers (not spelunkers) that wanted to come out an explore. I had already dropped a Go-Pro camera on a long pole with a light into the crevice and saw a cavern ceiling about what I thought was 30-40 feet down. On the left side of the tree, we found a place to bust through and get into the cave entrance. The cavers were great and came out a couple of times when the had time available.
They were mesmerized (as I have been) at the amount of air pushing from the cavern entrance when the barometric pressure drops. Equally interesting is watching the cavern pull air when the barometric pressure is high on the surface. I have recorded these occurrences for about a year now. It appears the cavern is about 54-58 degrees in the winter here in Texas about 18 feet below the surface. In the summer. the air that is pushed from the cave is about 68 degrees. I have noticed that about every 10-15 days, we have cave crickets at night on the surface near the cavern entrance.
Now for the mysterious part. Our cave has a chamber about 25 feet below the surface and ( have so me pics taken by the cavers) but they were not able to find out the source of the air on their two visits. I have no idea whether they will come back out in the future and the caver that led the group has dropped from the radar. I sure would like to see where this cave leads to, but safety is a top priority. I will not list the location of the cave per forum rules.
I have always been interested in caverns, especially wet/solution caves. We found some stalactites in our cavern that are still growing and from the size of them some National Park Rangers at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky estimated the stalactites to be over 3,000 years old from pics. I am hoping to create dialogue here on the forums to learn as much as I can about our cave and if anyone has any advice on how to source the cold air pushing out, I would be much obliged.
I am not sure yet whether I can post a link to my cavern find, If its permissible per the rules, I will share. I am in hope that I can find a group of seasoned professional cavers that might find my cave interesting as well. I am an IT Exec here in Texas for an out of state company with interests in project management, Information Security, Photography and Geology.