All,
I hope this message finds all the property owners in the Little Creek area in good health! I also hope that this year does not have any natural disasters in the area such as we had last year with the fires and floods.
The 2025 caving season at Fort Stanton Cave is about to begin!
Fort Stanton Cave is closed to all entry between November 1 and April 15 of each year to protect the bats, so in a few weeks the Bureau of Land Management will again re-open the cave for research and exploration. Last year was a very successful year for exploration with the surveyed length of the cave going over 50 miles. Some of that new exploration last year occurred under private properties in the Enchanted Valley Estates and Rancho Ruidoso Valley Estates. We are very appreciative of each of the owners who have allowed us to conduct these exploration activities, whether or not the cave went directly under their property.
We anticipate continuing exploration trips this year at the southwest frontier of the cave under private property. We are in the process of finalizing those plans right now.
Another activity that we plan to undertake is radio location. Radio Location involves sending a team into the cave with a radio beacon which is deployed at a specific location at a remote point in the cave. Another team, on the surface, uses a radio receiver to locate the point directly over the beacon in the cave. This allows us to correct the map and properly locate the position and depth of the cave. It is possible that we may choose a location for this activity that is under private property. If that is the case, we will be asking permission from affected property owner(s) to have a team on the surface in a specific area for a few hours.
Our spring expedition is May 10 — 18. This will kick off the season for these exploration and/or radio location trips. Once again, we appreciate our private property partners in the exploration of the cave and we will continue to provide you with information on what we are finding. As we finalize our plans for trips, we will let you know when and where we are going, and when the teams return and we process their data, we’ll let you know what they have found.
If you have any questions, concerns or comments, feel free to send a message to me or to Ron Lipinski, the FSCSP Project Director at rjlipin@msn.com
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