2 NSS N - National Speleological Society

Transcription

Send items for the calendar to davebunnell@
comcast.net at least 6 weeks before desired month of
publication (i.e., by March 15 for the May issue).
USA
April 24–26, 2015—Spring VAR hosted by
Battlefield Area Troglodyte Society (BATS) at
The Caverns at Natural Bridge. Preregistration
closes April 10—form online at http://var.caves.
org/index.php/events/spring-var— and gets you
dinner Saturday night. College student discount
offered! Conservation project on Saturday in the
Caverns. Local led and self-guided cave trips.
Vertical workshop. Discounts to both the Caverns
and Natural Bridge for VAR attendees. Primitive
camping and BYOB; cottages available to rent.
Details at URL cited above or contact Meredith
Hall Weberg, merecaver@yahoo.com.
April 24-26, 2015—Spring MVOR gathering,
Hanson Hills Campground, 3643 County Rd. 221,
Kingdom City, Mo. 65262. More info the MVOR
Web site: http://mvor.caves.org
May 8-10, 2015—SERA Cave Carnival, held
this year at East Fork Stables Campground near
Jamestown, TN. Location is in prime cave country
on the west side of the Cumberland Plateau.
Hosted by East Tenn. Grotto; for information see
our web site at http://sera2015.subworks.com/.
June 26-28th, 2015. Karst-O-Rama. Great
Saltpetre Cave Preserve, Mt. Vernon, KY. For
more information, go to karstorama.com or
contact James Clements at j766clements@
gmail.com
July 13-17, 2015—NSS Convention in
Waynesville, Missouri. For more information visit
the Convention Web site: http://nss2015.caves.
org/ or contact co-chairs Joe and Kris Nicolussi
at chair2015@caves.org
August 7-9, 2015—The 62nd Indiana Cave
Capers presented by the Central Indiana Grotto
will be held at a new site for Capers, the Lawrence
County Recreation Park; a fantastic facility. Friday
night, once again, is the Campground Party and
Open Jam hosted by The Shallow Grotto, and
also great caving and led trips, vertical rope
practice, vendor Inner Mountain Outfitters,
Saturday night banquet, keynote speaker Clinton
Elmore on recent discoveries in TAG, door prizes,
and fun! More info: cavecapers.com or call Ron
Adams 317-490-7727.
September 3-7, 2015—The annual Old Timers
Reunion, Dailey, WV. For more information visit
www.otr.org
September 4-7, 2015—Rocky Mountain
Regional/Black Hills Caver Classic at Cavern
Wells, Host Springs, South Dakota. Contact:
Steve Baldwin sbaldwin9@gmail.com / 605673-1571
July 17-23, 2016—NSS Convention - Ely, NV.
Contact matt.bowers@caves.org for more info
or visit www.facebook.com/nss75th.
Rescue
July 25, 2015 – Aug 1, 2015—National Cave
Rescue Commission (NCRC) Cave Rescue
Operations and Management Seminar at
Park Mammoth Resort in Park City, Kentucky.
Extensive classroom instruction and fieldwork in
all phases of cave rescue including underground
environment, vertical rescue, hauling systems,
extrication techniques, medical management,
communication systems, and the organization
and management of cave rescue operations.
Visit our website at caves.org/commission/
ncrc/national/ or facebook page at https://www.
facebook.com/Ncrc2014 for more information.
August 20-24, 2015—Rescue Technician:
Cave Rescue I/II Class, Union Grove, AL (near
2
NSS News, April 2015
Huntsville, NSS Members can camp at the NSS
Headquarters for free)
Cost: $50, Register through HCRU
Also offered as a NFPA 1006 & Alabama Fire
College Certification course for fire/rescue
personnel; this class is the only NFPA 1006
course in Cave Rescue in the nation.
All phases of cave rescue and management
are covered including (but not limited to):
Incident Command System, underground
communications, patient packaging and
movement, cave-specific medical considerations,
haul & lower systems, vertical rescue, extrication
techniques, and logistics.
See www.hcru.org/rescueclass for more
information and registration.
Cave & Karst Science
October 5-9, 2015—The 14th Multidisciplinary
Conference on Sinkholes and the Engineering
and Environmental Impacts of Karst (also known
as the Sinkhole Conference) will be held in
Rochester, MN. This conference is co-hosted by
the National Cave and Karst Research Institute
and the Minnesota Ground Water Association.
More information and registration can be found
at www.sinkholeconference.com
April 11-14, 2016—International conference
on the origins, resources, and management of
hypogene karst, Deep Karst in Carlsbad, NM.
Deep Karst 2016 is being organized by the
National Cave and Karst Research Institute in
cooperation with the Karst Hydrogeology and
Speleogenesis Commission of the International
Union of Speleology. More information and
updates on registration at www.deepkarst.org
October 20-23, 2015—2nd International
Planetary Caves Conference, 20-23 October
2015, Flagstaff, AZ. Info: www.hou.usra.edu/
meetings/2ndcaves2015 or contact conference
organizer Jut Wynne: jut.wynne@nau.edu
NSS Grant Deadlines
(Visit www.caves.org >Who we are >Grants for
details on any of these.)
May 1, 2015—NSS Research Grant Proposal
Pristine, unbroken stalactites like these in an undeveloped California cave have been maintained
for decades through careful cave management, gating, and a trustee-based visitation system.
Front cover:
Mirror, Mirror on the Floor won a Merit Award and was the third place overall in the 2014
Photo Salon. It was taken in the Doll’s Head Passage in Fisher Ridge Cave Kentucky by
Dave Bunnell with assistance from Stephen Gladieux and the caver is Johanna Kovarik.
As can be seen, this passage has rimstone dams developed wall to wall, a situation
encountered in many cave passages. In this instance periodic flooding has left the dams
coated in thick mud, so this is an area where one can easily walk on the rimstone dams
without causing damage. We took special care to travel only on thick portions of the dams,
and not in the basins themselves, which were floored with mud but could be lined with spar
crystals. In situations where wall-to-wall dams are clean, care must be taken not to track
mud on them if boots are muddy, so either a trail should be established or aqua socks worn
to minimize impact. In many caves they occur in stream passages and cavers’ boots may
be clean enough to traverse them without impact. Whether in clean boots or aqua socks,
care must be taken to avoid stepping on thin shelfstone edges that sometimes form on the
margins of rimstone pools. It’s best to choose a path that eliminates risk of damage. [Editors’
Note: Think about the message that an image published in print or posted on the internet
may impart to the untutored. Include this type of disclaimer or explanation in the caption].
Back cover:
Right: Peter Jones’ print of a bell canopy in a New Mexico cave won a Merit Award in the
2014 NSS Print Salon.
Left: Salem Cave Crayfish, by Roy Gold, won an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Photo Salon.
Bottom: Peter Jones’ print of the Lake Room in Virgin Cave, NM won a Merit Award in the
2014 NSS Print Salon.
NSS News
POSTMASTERS OR MEMBERS:
Send address changes to National Speleological
Society, 6001 Pulaski Pike NW, Huntsville, AL35810
NSS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
President
Wm Shrewsbury
®
6609 Lasata Lane
Harrison, TN 37341
president@caves.org
(727) 424-2901
Administrative VP
Geary Schindel
Operations VP
David Luckins
3683 Oakleaf Drive
W. Bloomfield, MI 48324
(248) 520-6161 (cell)
ovp@caves.org
11310 Whisper Dawn
San Antonio, TX 78230
(210) 479-2151
avp@caves.org
Secretary/Treasurer
Gary T. Barnes
Executive VP
Curt Harler
12936 Falling Water Rd.
Strongsville, OH44136
(440) 238-6339
evp@caves.org
2250 Shady Creek Trail
Birmingham, AL 35216
(205) 492-7555
s-t@caves.org
National Speleological Society Office
6001 Pulaski Pike NW, Huntsville, AL 35810
Tel: (256) 852-1300; FAX (256) 851-9241
e-mail: nss@caves.org; Web site: www.caves.org
Please contact the office for address changes or back issues.
NSS NEWS EDITOR
Dave Bunnell
Box 879
Angels Camp, CA 95222
davebunnell@comcast.net
Please include “NSS News” in your subject line when e-mailing
material to help me sort it from the spam. Thanks!
Questions about submitting features and photos? Please see the style
and submission guidelines:on the NSS web site:
www.caves.org/pub/nssnews/style.html
ADVERTISING
Complete advertising information, including ad costs, deadlines, and
guidelines for preparation, are on the NSS wesite at: www.caves.org/
pub/nssnews/ads.html. Contact the editor if you wish to place an ad.
Payments for ads should be sent to the NSS office. New advertisers
are expected to pay for ads prior to publication.
DEPARTMENT EDITORS
CONSERVATION
Jim & Val Hildreth-Werker
NEWSLETTER REVIEW
Jonah Kidder
PO Box 207
Hillsboro, NM 88042-0207
(575) 895-5050
werks@cunacueva.com
370 Paul Copas Road
Winchester OH 45697
redonionprison@yahoo.com
SPELEAN SPOTLIGHT
Gene Hancock
UNDERGROUND ONLINE
Buford Pruitt, Jr.
ghancock@a-webdesigns.com
PO Box 526
McIntosh, FL 32664
bpruitt570@gmail.com
CAVE CHRONICLES
Philip Rykwalder
philip@cavenow.com
Deadline: Ads, articles and announcements should be sent to the
editor by the 15th of the month, six weeks before the month of issue
(e.g., material for the March issue needs to be in by January 15).
The NSS News (ISSN 0027-7010) is published monthly with
the Members Manual and American Caving Accidents published as
additional issues by the National Speleological Society, Inc, 6001
Pulaski Pike NW, Huntsville, AL 35810. Periodicals Postage Paid at
Huntsville, Al and additional mailing offices. Tel: (256)852-1300; FAX
(256)851-9241, e-mail: nss@caves.org, web: www.caves.org
Regular membership in the NSS is $45 per year. See http://caves.
org/info/membertypes.shtml for descriptions of other membership
categories. Subscriptions to the NSS News are $27 per year; individual
copies are $3.00 each. Contact the Huntsville office for membership
applications, subscriptions, orders, or for replacement of issues missing
or damaged in the mail. Moving? Please report changes of address to
the office promptly or online at: www.caves.org/info/changeinfo.shtml
April 2015
Volume 73 Number 4
Annual Cave Conservation Issue
Val Hildreth-Werker and Jim C. Werker, Guest Editors
Conservation Of or Thru Cave Locations?....................................... 4
Val Hildreth-Werker and Jim C. Werker
Are Cavers Contributing to the Growing Abuse of Caves?.............. 5
Bradley Jones
NSS Handling of Cave Location Data............................................. 7
Curt Harler
Concerning open publication of sensitive cave data on the
Internet (letter from Mark Adler to the NSS BOG)...................... 8
Participation in Public Lands Management................................... 9
Steve Peerman
Launching the Caves of Cyprus Project........................................ 10
Lauren Satterfield
Acquisition of the Paul Wightman Subterranean Nature
Preserve....................................................................................... 14
Carl DauBach, Pen DauBach, and Steve Taylor
Pryor Mountain Big Ice Cave Cleanup......................................... 17
Ken Stahley
Minimum-Impact Caving Code.................................................... 18
Restoring Wildlife Access and Airflow to Slaughter Canyon Cave,
NM............................................................................................... 19
Shawn Thomas and Stan Allison
Cliff Cave and the Hands of Man................................................. 22
Dan Lamping
White Nose Syndrome Update—2014......................................... 23
Jennifer Foote
Cave Cleanup In the Falls Creek System...................................... 24
Bob Johnson
Goodwin Sinkhole Cleanup Third Year 2014................................ 26
Klaus Leidenfrost
Pahoa Cave Lava Flow................................................................. 27
Fred Stone
NSS Convention 2015
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Carroll Cave............................................ 30
Jeff Page
Copyright ©2015
by the National Speleological Society, Inc.
President’s Message..................... 29
Underground Online...................... 32
Underground Update..................... 33
Society News................................. 34
Obituaries....................................... 35
Classified Ads................................ 35
3
Conservation Of or Thru Cave Locations?
NSS Conservation Division Chiefs, werks@cunacueva.net
Editors, 2015 Annual Cave Conservation Issue NSSNews
We’re publishing cave locations online!
Really? Us? The Sacred Society of TrueBlooded Cavers? Yep, us—and a whole lot
of not-so-cave-savvy-others out there as well.
Cave locations are popping up exponentially in all sorts of easily accessible,
transferrable, spreadable, electronic venues.
Whether posted intentionally, inadvertently,
or in sublime ignorance.… Sharing cave
locations.… It’s a growing issue.
Are we, aka The Society, that special
force tagged the organized caving community.… Are WE condoning online public
access to cave locations? Truth is, cave
locations are sometimes included in our
academic and esoteric publication spaces.
Those are systematically appearing online
with no redaction of cave location data. We
are archiving our legacy.
As the science of speleology advances,
we need to facilitate information exchange
and networking. But there’s an increasing
load of splash-back. Caves are suffering
inordinate amounts of damage as a result
of casual data-passing. (See Bradley Jones
article on Cave Abuse, this issue).
A lot of cavers are a bit clueless
about how much damage they’re
doing by posting cave coordinates,
locations, on Facebook, Twitter,
public sites. They forget that these
goofs are an easy way that noncavers, flashlight folks, vandals
can easily find new locations to go
partying, kill bats, leave trash, spray
paint, destroy resources and access,
and make a mess. If we don’t like the
consequences, we need to tighten up
Bradley Jones
NSS#63915, 2015
It’s a sad fact. Publishing, posting, or
broadcasting of cave locations opens the
portal for cave vandals. We’ve claimed a
couple of descriptive quotes as personal
favorites from the pages of this annual
Conservation Issue.
The cave was a blank canvass for
young vandals armed with a distasteful concoction of colorful spray paint,
teenage boredom, and ignorance.
Dan Lamping
NSS#51546 – 2015
Walt Kelley said it best. In his 1971
Earth Day classic, Pogo proclaimed, “We
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have met the enemy, and he is us.” Our
dependence on electronics, technology,
innovation, and the World Wide Web—
therein we find the original enemy that births
most of our contemporary cave vandals,
whether ignorant, careless, or mean-spirited.
Reality check. We can’t begin to fathom
actually removing ALL cave locations from
the Internet. A valid question might be
raised—are individual members of the caving
community willing to be responsible enough
to put in the time to go back and redact their
own location information?
Even if that daunting task were do-able,
there’s also a plethora of location thrills
posted through social media venues. How
much can we really do about that?
Sure, we’ve all got a few local ideas
about how to help out and get right with
the caves through social postings, meet-up
groups, out-reach, mentoring, get-‘em-to-a
Grotto meeting, cave gates, signage, permits,
and legislation. But.… what if.…
What if we could twist this social
outpouring of cave locations into something
more positive for the future of caves?
“Times, they’re a-changin’” to loosely
quote Robert Zimmerman (aka Bob Dylan).
Times are always changing. We can either
awaken ways to keep in pace, or we can
wither into our own headspace with whispering mantras of secret cave keepings.
Society Membership is down. Maybe
would-be cavers don’t need us anymore.
They can come up with great adventures
through simple searches. They don’t know
they need to know more—like the good
safety and low-impact stuff we can surely
provide. But who’s to say they care?
A better question is, how do we get ‘em
to care? How can we fuel ‘em with something
they want and will pass along to feed an
exponential explosion of passion for taking
care of caves?
Let’s not miss out on the beckoning
borehole of opportunity here! Location
mania is piquing the exploration game
in previously untouched segments of the
population.
This adventure, danger, do-somethingdifferent, social-media floodgate might be just
the ticket to turn the tides toward increasing
NSS Membership.
Let’s be smart and figure out ways to
ride the wave, attract new blood, entice new
Members, give ‘em incentives to stay, and
insure our legacy by training up and maintaining the next NSS caving community.
How? It’s not a cohesive plan, but a few
ideas to build from:
•
•
•
•
First, promote NSS Membership for
all your Grotto Members! Work it.
Create incentives to make any NSS
Membership Number a coveted status
symbol.
NSS Board of Gover nors, NSS
Regions, and Grottos—let’s wake up
to the fact that we have a lot of people
caving and participating in trips, meetings and events who are not currently
NSS Members. Offer incentives to
entice those cavers to join (for many,
it would be to rejoin and reactivate past
NSS# numbers). Offer easy incentives
to Grottos for signing folks up as NSS
dues-paying members.
Partner with KIP to promote each
other. If people use the Internet to look
for caves, they run across the work
“karst”. They search karst and they
find KIP. Promote NSS Membership
among KIP users and promote KIP
use and support among Members of
our Society. If technologically possible,
partner with KIP to require NSS#s
and passwords for access to any
NSS-sponsored sensitive location data
on the karst portal..
For adventure seekers searching out
holes in the ground, what if the NSS
creates a game ploy, moving through
various social media venues like an
electronic scavenger hunt, perhaps
a hodag hunt of discovery accessing
multiply social sites. Teach caving
tidbits along a journey connecting a
variety of social venues. Give incentives for exponential exchange of the
game (not cave locations). Include
opportunities for improving caving
ethics with online info-posters and
reach-out notes. Hands-on events like
meet-up groups, restoration events,
and Grotto meeting invitations could
randomly pop in for deserving game
explorers. A percentage will become
NSS cavers. Others will at least get a
dose of positive outreach that may last
‘em a lifetime and may be passed on
through exponential exchange among
social circles.
People are surfing the Sites seeking fun
stuff to do! Cavers, we can give ‘em tons of
fun stuff to engage for a lifetime! The good
ones will stick with us and become cavers.
Others will get a dose of good propaganda
that may last a lifetime: Caves are important.
Caves need protection. Care about caves. Be
gentle in caves. Caves live in karst. People
live on karst. Karst is important for water
quality. Caves are cool. Treat caves kindly.
… they know little about karst
and its relationship with the surface.
Nor do they know just how beautiful
the unknown darkness below can be.
Knowledge of such beauty and function often begets responsibility. This
correlation is the core of social, civic,
and environmental education. For
cavers living on karst, particularly
karst overlaid by urban development,
educating those who reside above
about that which lies beneath is a
fundamental responsibility.
Dan Lamping
NSS#51546, 2015
In the very real challenges-of-change
facing our day and time, the choice is
pretty clear. Our ultimate goal is to multiply
stewardship of caves and ownership of
sustainable caver values.
Are Cavers Contributing to the Growing Abuse of Caves?
Bradley Jones
I moved back to TAG in 2009 and
stumbled upon my first wild cave not long
after. My friend and I had no helmets and
really knew nothing about caving. We spent
a couple of hours in the cave, and in addition to seeing bats hibernating, which we
did not disturb, we also found string left by
“spelunkers” and new graffiti boldly boasting
2009 datelines.
This was where caving began for me so
I quickly tried to find more info on that cave
and more about caving in general.
I knew nothing of Grottos and first
contacted an organization that I knew was
responsible for protecting the forest. I asked
about the cave and if there were maps available detailing the various passages. I was then
told that I was not supposed to be in the
cave because all caves on Federal lands were
closed due to something called White Nose
Syndrome and that I could possibly be fined
$5000. I informed her that I meant no harm
and, honestly there were no signs stating
any of this, so how would we have known?
Signs informing such have since been
posted at trailhead kiosks. Some may be
concerned this is alerting would-be-cavers,
vandals, and untutored visitors of the fact that
the location has caves; however, without this
info how else are they to know what they’re
doing may be wrong?
Sharing Locations
I’m sure there are cases where people
stumble upon caves like I did. But I’m curious, how many caves like this one are getting
trashed because cavers are sharing locations?
… You read that correctly. Everyone wants
to blame “spelunkers” or locals for caves
getting closed and trashed to no end. But
has anyone stopped to think how they’re
finding out about all these caves?
A lot of cavers are a bit clueless about
how much damage they’re doing by posting
cave coordinates, locations, on Facebook,
Twitter, public sites. They forget that these
goofs are the only way that non-cavers,
flashlight folks, vandals can easily find new
locations to go partying, kill bats, leave trash,
spray paint, destroy resources and access,
and make a mess. If we don’t like the consequences, we need to tighten up.
The National Speleological Society has
a publication, NSS Guide to Responsible
Caving, which is available for download
right up front on the home page at http://
caves.org
Members have likely not read it as
they feel it mostly states common sense …
and it does! NSS Guide to Responsible
Caving literally states this about sharing
cave locations:
“Do not reveal the location of
caves to people whose regard for caves
might result in harm. In this way you are
responsible for protecting both the cave and
people you meet who do not understand that
special skills and equipment are needed to
travel through a cave. Causing an increase in
casual visitors to wild caves (by geocaching or
posting locations on Web sites, for example)
is misusing cave location information. This
leads to vandalism and degradation of caves,
and can upset landowners, causing them to
close their caves.”
The official NSS Conservation Policy
includes a clear message about publication
of cave locations:
Where there is reason to believe that
publication of cave locations will lead to
vandalism before adequate protection can
be established, the Society will oppose such
publication.
Cave Location Leaks
You are probably thinking you are in
no way contributing to this problem and this
article is a waste of your time; However, is it
possible you might be inadvertently leaking
cave locations?
Who doesn’t want to share with their
friends what they have been up to over the
past weekend? Facebook and other media
sites make this all too easy—but did you
Rockhouse Cave after publication on the Web
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Examining an image file’s Properties in
Windows can reveal GPS coordinates stored
in the file. If you are posting images of cave
entrances on the web, make sure you are
not including this information. [Ed: Some
sites, notably Facebook, strip all the EXIF
information out of image files to reduce the
file size. This eliminates GPS and any stored
copyright data.]
realize those pictures might have GPS info
embedded in them?
That’s right—most cameras and cellphones today have the capability of including
GPS info in the files. In the latest Windows
Operating Systems, all one has to do is
right click on the photo and obtain the GPS
coordinates. Luckily, by default most cameras
and phones have this feature turned off; but
it would be wise to verify that the location
is not present as some cellphone applications may turn it on without your knowing.
Please check this out to make sure it is not
happening to you.
Topo maps have also been found
posted online with cave locations marked.
I’m guessing the ones posting think that
the average person can’t figure out exactly
where the cave target is? I took one such
example … and I was able to find the location of the cave within a matter of seconds
using GoogleMaps. I am not a map guru by
any means. Thus, it really doesn’t take much
effort for most anyone to find and use this
information.
Saving locations on any type of google
maps is a horrible idea. Google is in the
business of mining data, so have you ever
thought what happens to this data once
you’ve provided the location? I’ve found
more than one instance of cave locations
saved in Google by simply doing a search
for the cave.
6
Stephens Gap and GoogleMap
One of the GoogleMap caves was
Stephens Gap, which was recently acquired
by the Southeastern Cave Conservancy
(SSC). SCC is in desperate need of raising
$150,000 to pay for it. Prior to this purchase
I had found a Google pinpoint with over
11,000 views of people who now had the
location from this one source! Other sources
also share that GPS info, further compounding the problem.
Dogwood City Grotto regularly updates
their closed cave list. Stephens Gap has had
contact info and closure info, which cavers
abide by. The owner was a hunter and liked
to hunt his land, and why not—it was his
land, he owned it. But due to irresponsible
leaks, the traffic-load of wandering cave
finders was leading him to be concerned
about shooting someone on his own property. These are worries landowners don’t
want—revealing locations gives ‘em reason
to close their caves.
Rockhouse Cave
Rockhouse Cave was used in a Disney
movie along with Cathedral Caverns and
Skidmore as documented in the NSS News
(November 1995, p 291). Rockhouse is little
more than a mile across the Tennessee River
from Cave Springs Cave, which is now gated
and home to the endangered gray bat. Signs
posted outside this cave say one can be fined
up to $10,000 for disturbing the bats.
Both Rockhouse and Cave Springs are
in Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, yet
Rockhouse, being across the river, is now
being destroyed and no one seems to care.
It is obvious that the Federal Government
has no plans to protect any of the caves on
this side of the river.
How did this location become public
knowledge and what can be done to change
this trend? Rockhouse has over 1000 feet
of passage and sits adjacent to a few other
caves. Even the smallest of caves should be
handled with more care as the bats haven’t
a clue as to which caves the nation sets aside
for them. Did the movie publicity have something to do with the public becoming aware
of this location? No clue. Visit the entrance
yourself—I’m pretty sure it didn’t look like
this when the movie was filmed.
A simple Google search of ‘Rockhouse
Cave Tennessee River’ instantly reveals what
a guy called Davy promotes on the Huntsville
Outdoors Web site:
This website was founded on the
premise that Huntsville needs an online
compendium of great makeout spots. Wait. I mean graffitied caves. Crap. What I really
mean is this website focuses on cataloging
those almost completely unknown outdoors
spots where awesome adventures await. And
Rockhouse Cave definitely fits within this
Google maps image showing locations of
numerous caves near Limrock, Alabama. [Ed:
printed small to avoid ourselves violating NSS
policy of giving away cave locations].
Google Maps used to provide directions to
one of the marked undeveloped caves
category. http://www.huntsvilleoutdoors.
com/index.php/hiking/wheeler-nwr/rockhouse-cave/39-rockhouse-cave-and-lookout
So … what ya think? This is OUR NSS
Huntsville! Davy’s site-quips also point out
“Huntsville is known as a cave destination. It was referred to as “Cave City” before
it became the “Rocket City.” To state the
obvious, NSS Headquarters is in Huntsville.
Davy goes on to give explicit road instruction
and tells how he first found the exact location
with a brief Web search …
From Google to Grottos
Getting Google and others to remove
these data is next to impossible. Their
purpose in life is to make data available, and
unless someone is willing to sue them, it’s
unlikely they’ll remove a cave location. I have
tried myself with no success. [Ed: A Google
employee who is also a caver confirms thatthey WILL remove it if the landowner makes
the request.]
Survey maps are found posted online as
well. This generally isn’t a problem for lesserknown caves. But what of those named after
a mountain, street, or something else easily
spotted on a map? The surveyors are proud
of their work (which is understandable for
the amount of time and skill that goes into
it), but wouldn’t this be better shown off in
a Grotto meeting, newsletter, Regional Cave
Survey? Posting one with hints could lead to
features being destroyed and/or cave closure
right after finishing all that arduous work.
If someone sees your posts and becomes
interested in caving, invite them to go on
a Grotto trip. More than likely you are
more than capable of taking them on a trip
yourself, but what happens to that location
when you take them and they then take their
friends who take their friends?
Somewhere the translation of all one
learns from being part of a Grotto is lost.
Hands down, it’s better to get those interested newcomers involved with a Grotto. It’s
better for the caving community as a whole.
It’s better for the caves.
Think First, Data Leaks
This article is not meant to single out
any one. Instead it is meant to make each
of us think of how we may be contributing
to damage in the caves we love. We may
be loving some to death—caves are being
destroyed and/or closed to our access.
Here’s a few items each of us can do to
help out.
~ Don’t post Survey Maps of Caves in
Public Forums. If the map is not your work,
the property is not yours, and anything in
the map should not be blatantly put in the
hands of the public.
~ Don’t post pictures to public forums
if they contain GPS or any info that would
give away locations. Some names of caves
are more than enough to give away the location, so don’t even post the name.
~ In high traffic areas don’t park directly
in front of the cave or make it obvious for
those driving by that you are going caving.
Be discreet!
~ When a non-caver sees your posts
in public forums and asks for cave locations
don’t send them the GPS or directions
privately nor post it publicly for all to see.
Instead invite them to hang out with a local
Grotto so they can learn all they could ever
want about caving.
~ If you stumble upon a cave on a Web
site giving away a location, please notify
the Webmaster and let them know they are
possibly contributing to increased violations
of their state Cave Laws which can be found
here http://bit.ly/1AjUFSJ
In addition many caves are federally
protected as detailed here http://caves.org/
section/ccms/fcrpa.htm#5
Hopefully, if all cavers can address these
situations before they happen, and when
they see them—then maybe future generations can cave and enjoy and share what we
love about the caves.
NSS Handling of Cave Location Data
Curt Harler, NSS Executive Vice President
The NSS has, at present, a stated policy
on publishing cave locations and has had one
for 40 years.
The NSS opposes, in general,
specific wild cave locations in publications intended for the general
public except where such publication better serves the interests of
the Society. (Act 07-281, August
16, 1974)
Note that the current policy does not
ban all publication, anywhere—including in
NSS publications—of cave locations. In fact,
07-281 leaves the door wide open to publishing information for cavers and in cases that
serve the Society’s interests.
The Internet has made the challenge
of keeping published cave data under wraps
difficult. Given the NSS’s current stance
against publishing any cave location data,
and the unanticipated (by early writers)
spread and accessibility of old publication
data via electronic means, the NSS needs to
define a realistic path forward. Do we censor?
Redact? Take a laissez-faire attitude? I can
find no official Act that says cave locations,
maps, etc. cannot be published—that prohibition is simply a long-standing convention
within NSS whose scope and intent has
grown to the status of a speleo-legend.
Cave location data have been published
since the late 1700s in books, newspaper
articles, and government offices. Much of
the rest of the world publishes cave locations—including GPS coordinates and 3-D
maps—just as they do the locations of waterfalls and mountain summits.
Note that Act 07-281 does not include
ALL publication of cave location information, only publication in media “intended
for the general public.” This would appear
to exclude such highly technical publications
as JCKS (although JCKS does adhere to the
broader NSS policy). It leaves IO publications—generally intended for members only
and not the general public—outside the
scope of the Act, too. Many would argue,
however, that the advent of the Internet
(unknown in 1974) has changed the game
and that everything now is in the hands of
the general public.
The BOG needs to ascertain whether a
policy of redacting and censoring cave locations will do anything to change the outcome
of today’s tide of information ubiquity. We
are well beyond the onset of the problem
of publishing cave locations. NSS members
for decades have (in good faith) published
cave locations in books, research papers,
and manuals.
As of early 2015, the Indiana Cave
Survey has 2464 Indiana cave-related publications cataloged, with 2373 documents
available online. You have to be an ICS
member to access these publications but
membership is only $5 a year.
Beyond NSS and I/O publications, there
is a world of cave literature out there. County
libraries, college geology departments,
USFS, state fish and game divisions, USGS,
DeLorme and Coleman maps, county
surveyor’s offices, private caver collections
and locals all have cave location information
accessible to anyone who wants it.
The Internet is just another outlet, albeit
a reference service on steroids: faster and
easier to access. Google any popular cave:
Bear Cave in PA, Valhalla, wherever…a few
pops down the list you’ll find a trip report
detailed enough that even a blind man could
find the cave. Penn State’s and West Virginia
U’s libraries have extensive current and old
materials on caves and cave geology in
those states…and there is no way PSU’s or
WVU’s librarians are going to censor that
info. Almost certainly, the information will
be digitized whether NSS likes it or not. So
cave info is and will be out there for anyone
who cares to look for it.
A close parallel to cave preservation is
preservation of archaeological sites. Many
professional authors decline to reveal the
location of sites in papers or articles. Yet
many states maintain websites with all data,
GPS, locations, etc. on file. As with caves, this
consists of hundreds of sites in each county,
some on public land, some on private. Plus
there are sites not in the inventory, known
by word of mouth and shared with friends
and associates as appropriate—much like the
caver community. Archaeological sites, too,
are a finite resource that is easily destroyed
by a guy with a shovel. That does not mean the NSS has to
facilitate or condone collections or websites
that make it easy to find cave information.
Nor can NSS put the genie of published work
back in the bottle forever. It’s akin to stuffing
toothpaste back into its tube.
The BOG should be mindful that almost
everything KIP has is also in the NSS
Publication Archives and vice-versa; in fact,
much of our materials came from KIP. The
NSS Archive pages all mention that NSS’s
online pubs ‘should’ have been redacted and
that any sensitive info found there should
be reported to the webmaster. Alex Sproul
told me “I have not received a single such
report, though I did redact one location that
I fell over.”
7
Censorship is anathema to most
Americans—even cases of well-intentioned
censorship. The First Amendment guarantees freedom to publish without prior
restraint. That would make enforcement
of any NSS-originated censorship policy
difficult to enforce on local grottos or
grotto members. Even the US Government
frequently is assailed for withholding information in the name of national security. Courts
may mandate release of such information
typically (although information that meets
the “clear and present danger” standard will
be redacted).
Cave location redaction is a different
matter since it is post-publication. In censoring and redacting cave location information,
will the NSS be accomplishing something
positive or just “doing something” for the
sake of doing something? Will NSS efforts
be effective? Will they be meaningful in the
larger picture? Does asking such questions
make one a cynic, defeatist or realist?
The decision, as it applies to NSS,
rests with the BOG. There likely are factors
beyond this discussion to consider. In any
case, the outcome of the pending BOG
decision or non-decision—while necessarily
limited in scope to the NSS—will make a
statement for cavers everywhere.
Options include the BOG acting to reiterate that the Society opposes publication of
cave locations (Act 07-281).
For locations published prior to this
1974 policy that are available in the KIP or
NSS archives, redaction of sensitive information can be done by volunteer groups.
Most newsletter and other Grotto publication editors today are wary of publishing
cave location data. Few, if any, deliberately
publish information that would lead even
members of their Grotto to a cave site. NSS
can encourage all I\Os to check their files for
such instances of cave location data in their
own resource banks and in their own publications and then to redact them. Whether they
will move on redaction remains to be seen.
One long-time NSS member said,
tongue-in-cheek, that he hoped the NSS
redacted everything, everywhere—because
the cash value of his collection of books,
convention guides, and newsletters would
skyrocket. NSS could encourage members
to redact materials sold through places like
Cave Chat and any other outlet. Whether this
will happen remains to be seen as much of
the intrinsic value of old documents is in the
specifics of cave information and baseline
data they contain.
For example, access to 50-year old
newsletters enabled the brand-new Walker
Mountain Grotto (established in 2013) to
relocate and find numerous caves in Smyth
County, Virginia; allowed Cleveland Grotto
a decade ago to relocate Wildcat Cave and
The Cave of Berea in Northeast Ohio; and
the York Grotto to reopen Womers Cave in
Pennsylvania 35 years ago.
How redacted information is preserved
and to whom it is distributed remain major
logistical challenges.
For many, the issue is a litmus test of the
NSS. For some, any attempt to censor and
redact information is anathema and contrary
to the Society’s mission on cave exploration
(which includes survey and documentation of
the resource) and cave science (which lives/
dies on publication of data). For others, any
failure to implement broad-based redaction
and censorship policies will be tantamount
to dereliction of the NSS’s duty and mission
on cave conservation.
The effect of any policy decision by the
NSS on membership numbers should not be
considered. This is a matter of doing what is
ethically correct. In conclusion, any changes
in membership numbers that can be tied
directly to policy statements and decisions
on censorship and redaction probably can
be viewed as a plebiscite on the issue.
Concerning open publication of sensitive cave data on the Internet
(Letter from Mark Adler on January 23rd, 2015 to the NSS Board of Governors and printed here by permission)
I respectfully write this letter asking
you to reconsider the open publication of
sensitive cave data on the Internet. I have
been an NSS member for many years,
have volunteered countless hours editing
multiple Speleo Digests as well as the 2012
Convention Guidebook and other guidebooks/newsletters, and have contributed
to the body of cave knowledge through the
exploration and mapping of new caves in
Indiana and West Virginia; I therefore ask for
your eyes and your mind for just long enough
to read and consider my views.
I have been familiar with the Karst
Information Portal (KIP) for several years
and for those several years have had misgivings about the ready availability of sensitive
information provided by the KIP. However,
recent updates and inclusions to the KIP
have increased the level of my agitation from
misgiving to outright concern and disappointment. As an information professional (prior
tech industry worker turned professional
librarian), I am no stranger to the desire
to share information broadly and without
impediment, leveling the playing field and
making access equitable for all. I’m a solid
believer that secrets and obfuscations of the
truth normally do more harm than good and
that breaking down barriers to information
8
and knowledge is the key to academic and
social enfranchisement. That stated, I’m
entirely opposed to the open publication
of sensitive cave information by the NSS to
non-NSS members. Expanding upon this
sentiment:
• Access to such information should be
a benefit of membership and a reward
for the monetary/dues support of individuals and organizations who create
and curate the information. There
really are few other benefits in most
member-based organizations. As the
member of multiple professional and
avocational organizations, I treasure
the benefits I receive.
• As the editor of information in question (a Convention guidebook and
multiple Speleo Digests), I must state
that I donated my time to benefit the
Society and its members and had not
considered that the fruits of my labor
would be published for all to consume.
• As a co-creator of maps and cave
descriptions, my intent was never to
make such information available to the
public at large.
• As one who wishes to respect landowners and maintain the best possible
relations with those willing to share
•
•
their underground resources with
the caving community, I’m deeply
concerned that information about
locations to their caves has been made
publicly available. I wonder if in some
instances this is contrary to agreements
(gentleman’s or more formal) to keep
such information private. The release
of cave locations could easily lead to
cave closures, something we as cavers
wish not to see, as it affects not only
the recreational cavers, but also those
conducting research or studies about
caves and cave history.
As an information professional and a
person of at least average intellect (I
do hold several advanced degrees), I
understand the value that a traditional
literature search can provide (and I do
not mean searching through Google or
similar digital interface). Such searches
require thought and planning and
encourage the seeker to grapple with
information and (hopefully) thereby
develop a better understanding of the
knowledge/information.
Finally, I feel obligated to mention that
the information in question has largely
been available to anyone who was
willing to put forth a minor amount
of effort. Many Speleo Digests and
other works can be obtained through
Interlibrary Loan from the USGS
Library in Reston, or through various
academic or public libraries worldwide.
It is the “put forth a minor amount of
effort” that is key here. Those willing to
do so demonstrate some level of dedication to caves, and we hope thereby
to conservation as well.
I sincerely thank you for your consideration and urge you to consider that
information is a valuable thing. Sometimes
providing open access demonstrates the
value. Unfortunately, sometimes providing
unfettered access disrespects the information
and devalues the information’s creator and
prospective users. I urge the NSS BOG to
consider implementing policies that curate
information to be used by members and
which are still flexible enough to provide
access for those conducting work of a
scholarly nature. Those simply seeking cave
locations should be encouraged to join a
grotto.
Sincerely,
Mark Adler, NSS 40434
Participation in Public Lands Management
Steve Peerman
It may be that cavers are not completely
aware of opportunities that may exist in their
communities for participation in the management of public lands. These opportunities
sometimes include caves that are managed
by such entities as the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) and the United States
Forest Service (USFS). This article discusses
one of the avenues for participation and
suggests that cavers seek out this and other
programs in their particular community.
The BLM provides an oversight mechanism for public participation in resource
management. This mechanism is called the
Resource Advisory Council (RAC). Several
BLM entities throughout the US have these
councils. In New Mexico, there are at least
three RACs, one of which is the Pecos
District RAC.
The Pecos District RAC is significant for
cavers in that the vast majority of BLM caves
in New Mexico are in the Pecos District,
which is essentially the southeastern corner
of the state.
Because the Pecos District has the
responsibility of managing those caves the
BLM has included cavers on this council. I am
privileged to serve on this council, along with
George Veni, Director of the National Caves
and Karst Research Institute in Carlsbad,
New Mexico.
Others on the council represent the
other varied uses for these BLM lands including oil and gas drilling, hunting and fishing
and ranching.
The members of the RAC are appointed
by the Secretary of the Interior, and have to
live within the district or state that they represent. Members may be nominated by the
community or organization they represent,
or may self-nominate. They serve a threeyear term and may re-apply for continuing
participation.
Issues considered within the RAC are as
diverse as the special interests represented
in the membership. A recent issue in the
Pecos District, “Open Trench Monitoring”,
illustrates the diversity of topics discussed.
Beforehand, I had no idea what this was
all about, but found the presentation on it
fascinating.
The issue: what should the BLM do
about animals who may fall into open
trenches that are created when pipelines
are put underground in the oil and gas fields
of southeastern New Mexico? I wasn’t even
aware that it was an issue. Open trenches are
not a natural feature and many animals fall
into them and either die because they can’t
find their normal shelter, or are covered up
when the trenches are backfilled. The BLM
has taken action to mitigate the problem.
In areas where there are threatened
species (e.g., Sand Dune Lizard), the BLM
has placed a time limit on how long the
trenches are open before being covered.
Plus, the trenches must be walked and any
animals found in the trenches removed
before they are backfilled.
Some of the questions: Is this adequate?
Appropriate? What more could be done?
Should this program be expanded to areas
outside the threatened species area?
While this example is outside the realm
of caving, it illustrates the types of issues for
RAC discussion. While the Pecos District
has not done so yet, the group could address
the issue of the BLM’s response to the WNS
threat. Is it appropriate? Is it commensurate
with the threat? What else could be done?
While the RAC members are not necessarily experts in the issues discussed, they
represent public interest, and their appointment by the Secretary of the Interior means
that their thoughts and recommendations to
the BLM carry some weight.
I encourage cavers, especially in the
Western US, to seek out involvement in the
management of the public lands, especially
those where significant caves are found.
Our participation benefits the management
agency, the caves, the karst, and our caving
community as well.
Erica Sughrue eyes some “Blood and Guts”. Bob Biddix shot this unusual flowstone formation
in a cave in Tennessee and it won an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Photo Salon.
9
Launching the Caves of Cyprus Project
Lauren Satterfield; uncredited photos by author
View from Garga Suyu karst feature in the
Pentadaktylos Mountains, looking north
The Caves of Cyprus Project began in
October of 2012. I was still plodding away at
a MS in Wildlife Biology at the University of
Georgia when my advisor sent a stereotypically cryptic e-mail explaining that a Cypriot
biologist named Dr. Salih Gücel was in town
and that I should talk to him about caves.
Salih revealed that he wanted to do
a cave conservation project but that he
couldn’t find anyone in or near Cyprus with
cave knowledge to help. He explained that
there were many caves in Cyprus, mostly
small (less than 1000m, with most less than
100m) but that little was known about them.
Further, he said the caves were increasingly
at risk of destruction by the blasting of mining
companies or the hands of locals interested
in taking home speleothems, and no formal
cave protection laws existed.
He wanted to collect data to understand
Cyprus’ karst ecosystems, educate the public,
and to possibly justify legal protection for
these systems down the road. After two
years of applying for funding in our “free”
time, I succeeded in securing a research
grant provided by the 2014-2015 Fulbright
US Student Program, which made all of this
possible. We are still laying the initial project
groundwork; thus, here we present project
background and preliminary findings.
IS CYPRUS A COUNTRY?
Leading up to this project I got this question a lot. Cyprus is, in fact, a self-governed
10
independent EU-member country officially
named the Republic of Cyprus, but the confusion is warranted.
To understand why Cyprus’ caves fell
into obscurity, and the challenges we face
today, one must first learn a bit about the
history of the island. Let’s orient ourselves.
Cyprus is an island in the Mediterranean and
lies north of Egypt, west of Syria, and south
of Turkey. It has a rich history dating back
to 10,000 BCE. Along the way, immigrants
from Greece and, separately, the Ottoman
Empire (which included present-day Turkey)
moved to the island. Thus were born “Greek
Cypriot” and “Turkish Cypriot” communities, different but with cultural similarities,
especially pertaining to cuisine.
Because of its ideal location as a military
stronghold, Cyprus had been occupied by an
assortment of rulers. This has generated a
complex history, but few records; documents
and artifacts were often lost or destroyed as
the island changed hands. Due to the most
recent turmoil in the 1960s and in 1974,
the island is currently divided politically.
As a result, the Greek-Cypriot community
is concentrated in the southern part of the
island, and the Turkish-Cypriot community
in the northern part with a UN Buffer Zone
between, created as a “firebreak” to the
fighting.
Anything in the zone at the time of
establishment had to be abandoned. Homes
and businesses still stand in apocalyptic fashion and passage through the zone is strictly
controlled via checkpoints. This tangled
political web is referred to as The Cyprus
Problem, and it plays a central role in our
project here.
The Cyprus Problem makes daily life
interesting. Language is Greek in the south
and Turkish in the north, although most
people speak at least a bit of English. Despite
the small size of the island (9,250 km2), I
have had to purchase different SIM cards,
separate car insurance, and even learn the
Greek and Turkish names for each village,
which differ significantly from one another.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The project’s focus encompasses inventory, education, and research.
To find caves we are reaching out to
several groups. Local goat and sheep herders know of many caves. Salih and some
of his associates, most notably Mustafa
Meraklı and his brother Muhtar (Turkish
for “Mayor”) Ömer Meraklı, have a natural
passion for caves and have mentally noted
local mağaralar (Turkish for “caves”). Rock
Salih Gücel squeezing through a constriction
in Saray Mağara
climbers have led us to the major limestone
outcrops. Retired British ex-pats who did
their military service on the island in the
1950s and 60s have explained where to
find “potholes,” as have some of (the few)
outdoor enthusiasts that know of holes here
and there. We are further combing through
old texts (some dating back to the 1800s)
and noting references to caves. When all
else fails, nothing beats a good old-fashioned
ridgewalk.
Cyprus currently lacks any sort of caving
community, but we aim to develop one
through this project. To this end, we have
registered the Mağara Meraklıları Derneği
(Cave Enthusiasts NGO) and we have an
introductory workshop planned for March.
We are also giving seminars on the
basics of cave geology, biology, paleontology, archeology, and the importance of
studying and protecting caves, alongside
updates from the local project. Further, we
have begun to recruit qualified researchers
to help identify bats, invertebrates, fossils,
and archeological finds.
GEOLOGY AND POTENTIAL
Cyprus is also complex geologically,
with the southern Troodos Mountains
formed via volcanic action and the northern Pentadaktylos Mountains generated via
collision of the Eurasian and African plates
some 10 MYA. The obducted Eurasian plate
brought with it a belt of massive limestone.
There is about 600 feet of depth potential
in the largest limestone areas, with most
areas offering a more modest 300 feet. The
few known caves in the northern mountains
are predominantly vertical while the coastal
littoral caves (a.k.a. “sea caves”) are numerous but smaller and horizontal.
ACCESS
Our efforts thus far have focused on
the limestone in the Pentadaktylos. To get
there from the southern part of the island,
one must walk to the nearest checkpoint
where you are asked to show your passport
before entering No Man’s Land (the UN
Buffer Zone).
The three-minute walk through the
buffer zone always fills me with intrigue.
What’s out there? Apparently there is at
least a (small) cave or two known to exist
along the strip, but securing access permission here requires cutting through a pile of
red tape taller than the guano mountain in
Gomantong Cave and matters are further
complicated in that the zone is still laced
with landmines from the previous fighting.
As you reach the other side, walking
along the safe pavement, there is another
checkpoint, this time to exit the buffer zone
and enter the northern part of the island.
Here you must get a visa if you don’t already
have one. Stamp, stamp, stamp and I’m
through.
Once one succeeds in crossing to the
Geological map of Cyprus with mountain
ranges and the capital, Nicosia, noted. To
see the map in high resolution vist www.moa.
gov.cy/moa/gsd/gsd.nsf/dmlGeoMap_en/
dmlGeoMap_en?OpenDocument or use this
shortened link: http://bit.ly/1x4TVRf
MEETING THE MUHTAR
I met my first muhtar in November
2014 in the village of Kalavaç. Muhtar Ömer
Meraklı is a portly man with an enviable
mustache accented by a cigarette, and he
was dressed in green army drab with leather
boots. We received a very warm welcome
and his daughter made us some Cypriot
coffee, a small cup of strong black joe. After
some chatting and a four-hour tour of the
village (which included seeing a 400-yearold olive press, a 200-year-old shoe, and a
100-year-old woman), we squeezed into the
muhtar’s car to drive up the mountain and
look for caves.
Muhtar Ömer Meraklı in his home in Kalavaç
Village
Salih Gücel
Iris Charalambidou
Lauren Satterfield giving a well-attended
lecture at the University of Nicosia on cave
formation, cave ecosystems, and findings to
date on the Caves of Cyprus Project
north, the next objective is to gain access
permission from the village muhtar. Because
of Salih’s previous conservation work, the
muhtars are quite welcoming and will explain
which roads to use to go up the mountain
and where “caves” have been spotted (even
though many are just alcoves). We have
been offered food and accommodation and
information about where the local military
operates.
The Turkish military have bases all over
the mountains. They will randomly exercise
(shooting and blasting), which typically
succeeds in scaring the living piss out of
anyone not expecting it, and causing major
headaches for the locals whose homes almost
shake from the noise, even when the source
is kilometers away.
Lauren Satterfield and Mustafa Meraklı taking
a break from ridgewalking to pick mushrooms
The ride up was amazing for many
reasons, and in particular for the car’s abilities, among them the fact that the muhtar
fit into it and that it was still running given
its condition (all windows and most doors
broken, handles snapped off, rusted and
beat up, etc.). The mountain was littered with
holes. We visited Saray Mağara (Palace Cave)
and he pointed out other holes, among them
Deve Mağara (Camel Cave) and a multitude
of karst features.
Muhtar Ömer explained that caves
continue to be used by locals for various
purposes, including making and storing
wine and halloumi cheese, a salty staple on
the island. They also offer respite from cold,
heat, and rain to herder and goat alike, and
we found evidence of such in many karst
features.
I belly-crawled into an alcove and
upon regaining my orientation on all-fours
I looked upslope into two large, glowing
eyes. I fervently reminded myself that Cyprus
lacks any large predators and once my eyes
adjusted I discerned the outline of a goat. I
quietly backed out before he ran me over in
a panicked dash to the exit. Salih jokes that
we should just buy some GPS collars for
the goats and follow them around to find
the caves.
No trip is complete without collecting
edible plants, the most popular of which
are mushrooms and wild asparagus. Some
days I wonder if we’ll ever make it to the
caves for all the plants around, but I’m sure
that I will leave with a rich botanical education and a full stomach, if nothing else.
We collected some with the muhtar on the
way back down. He and Mustafa said we
are welcome anytime, and we have visited
frequently since.
SOME FINDINGS TO DATE
First Day Cave
Named for its status as the first cave
visited on the project, First Day Cave has
also proved to be one of the most interesting. The cave has a large entrance on a cliff
and was shown to us by local goat herders
Ali and Fehmi. Salih and the goat herders
poked their head in and told me it ended.
11
The crew poses in front of the entrance to
First Day Cave. Left to right: Gökhan Cenk,
Salih Gücel, Fehmi, and Lauren Satterfield,
with Ali talking the photo.
I wanted to see for myself. I squeezed
through a hole and according to Salih and
Gokhan I “disappeared.” I found a dry fault
passage and climbed around for 5 to10
minutes. Eventually Salih followed and we
climbed into a tight upper room where the
cave choked in breakdown.
Air was flowing in from farther down
the canyon but it was also choked with
rocks and impassible. The cave was warm,
maybe 68 F, and somewhat tight. Mustafa
later tried to fit and couldn’t, after which he
swore off anything but yogurt and bread for
the next month.
Gokhan joked that his boss asked him
how big the cave was, and he said, “Very big!
We almost lost an American!” By American
standards the cave was tiny.
We also pulled out the flashes and slaves
and got them working for our very first cave
photos (all of which came out blurry and
over-exposed). A later visit supplied another
side passage with beautiful formations, along
with improved photography.
An inventory of the cave yielded a
horseshoe bat (likely the smaller species
Rhinolophus hipposideros), two species of
spider, mud cocoons from an unidentified
invertebrate, remains of a swallow nest,
bones from two goats along with a herder’s
staff (perhaps he was trying to save the goats
and lost the staff), bones from a rat, pigeon
guano, old flowstone, white gypsum walls,
Lauren and Salih in First Day Cave
12
well-preserved soda straws, some small
helictites, areas blackened in previous times
by fire, signatures from the mid-1900s, and
etchings in the walls (all with a patina indicating they were old, not recent).
French cavers from the Fédération
Française de Spéléologie, led by Bernard
Chirol, first visited the island in 2013 and
returned this February. We joined forces
with Bernard, his wife Sarah, and Théo
Savoi, and mapped the cave’s length at
84m (276 ft).
Salih’s Cave
Salih and I decided to split up and do
some ridgewalking in an area known to have
vertical caves. We walked for some time. I
was investigating a hole blowing air out of
a crack in the bedrock when I heard Salih
calling. He was digging on something. “Is
there air?” I asked. “Yes! Lots!” he replied.
“Can we fit?” “Not yet.”
At first there wasn’t even a hole and I
wondered what he was looking at, but when
I got closer I could see plants moving and I
could hear the air. It was strong!
We looked down at an opening the size
of a baseball and started to move rocks. As
the rocks came away, the air got louder and
louder. Salih kept turning his head saying,
“The soil is getting in my eyes!”
Air was blowing so hard that I kept
walking away from the hole to make sure it
wasn’t just wind, but it was all coming from
the cave. Every time Salih moved a rock the
cave blew all the dirt right in his face. I made
sure to video the experience. This one was
larger, but it would also require more work
to open. We decided to keep searching, so
we replaced the rocks with plans to come
back later.
The Sinkhole
In a field far below the mountains and
close to Nicosia (the island’s capital) there lies
a sinkhole that takes on all the water from
its associated stream.
A goat skull and sheperd’s staff in First Day
Cave
Sadly, as in the southeast US, locals
began using it heavily as a trash dump in
early 2014, and according to Mustafa over
100 trucks have dumped their waste into it.
There are clothes and tires and broken glass.
Salih, Gokhan, and I went down and
I found a small hands-and-knees passage.
As I started down it, my hands sank in the
quicksand-like mud up to my armpits. It got
tighter and would have required squeezing
down a body-sized passage. Rather than
getting hopelessly stuck in the trash pit, we
decided to leave it for another day.
Mustafa said that prior to the dumping
you could easily walk in and find a huge
room with a lake. He had not explored the
cave further himself, but heard from locals
that it was “huge”. As usual, there is a myth
that this passage runs for kilometers until
it connects with another cave, but all such
Delicate stalactites and soda straws in First Day Cave
Ozan Kirmizi
Upcoming goals
include continuing our
inventory of caves,
studying bat and invertebrate distribution,
promoting conservation, teaching people to
cave safely and softly,
and training those
interested in surveying
and mapping. Funding
awarded through the
NSS Conservation
Save-the-Caves Grant
Program will help us
promote cave and karst
conservation concepts.
The Sinkhole in November 2014 with over 100
truckloads of trash filling half of its depth,
with Gökhan, Salih, and Lauren at the bottom.
Mustafa Meraklı
An example of carvings in First Day Cave. Arrows point to voids
where circular pieces of rock have been removed.
Close-up of some carvings, showing a patina
The Sinkhole in 2013 before trash dumping.
A spider found in Lucky Saturday Cave
accounts have proved to be gross exaggerations and downright false.
That said, the amount of water it takes
on makes us curious to see it without all the
trash. Mustafa was able to stop any further
dumping there, but it is in need of a cleanup!
CLOSING NOTES
Not surprisingly, we are going through
the typical project growing pains of making
connections and trying to communicate
what we mean by “cave”. Over 90% of the
locations we have been shown are karst
features measuring 10m or less, or are of
manmade origin.
In total we have visited over 50 karst
features and documented 15 caves, with
the longest approximately 300m and the
deepest about 60m. We have found bones,
pottery, at least six species of spider, three
Egyptian fruit bat colonies, and old carvings
and signatures.
Some fun and interesting things have
happened, such as being asked to explore a
lost underground city and having the project
unexpectedly featured on all the local news
stations.
We originally had some resistance
to wearing basic gear (helmets, gloves,
kneepads) but now people understand the
importance of these things and even feel
“official” when wearing gear.
s
Great gift
s!
for Caver
13
Acquisition of the Paul Wightman Subterranean Nature Preserve
Perhaps it really is a metaphor. Getting
the “cave project” through the acquisition
phase could be compared to the Fogelpole
Cave system itself: areas of ‘high ‘n wide’
passages; streambed sightings of fauna found
nowhere else on the planet; speleothems that
provide clues to date earthquakes within the
New Madrid seismic zone; Pleistocene-era
relics of now-extinct animals preserved in
a muddy alley-like passage; and, precisely
metaphor-worthy of our organization’s
passage-to-project-success, areas of lowcrawl, nose-held above water during a
difficult push. Clifftop’s Board of Directors
discovered the metaphorical counterparts
of the cave system’s ‘high ‘n wide’ and
sightings of rarities, wonders, and research
projects galore in the pure pleasures of active
collaboration, sharing, and the heady sense
of working jointly to preserve and protect
something really special. But we had our lowcrawl moments, too, when it seemed we’d
hit a sump of non-cooperation, with expenditures of organizational funds that could
have procured at least a mastodon’s tusk,
we sometimes wondered if a Pleistocene-era
length of time would be needed to get the
deal done.
Karst Protection At Its Best
Karst conservation and cave protection
are not easy. Often the large size of a cave
system’s groundwater recharge basin and the
associated costs and cooperation required for
landscape-level property acquisition preclude
the whole-scale purchase of large tracts of
karst and cave terrain. That’s why so many
postage-stamp-sized small parcels around
the country simply protect a cave’s primary
entrance.
Secondly, while we know the basic do’s
and don’ts to limit groundwater contamination, rigorous long-term scientific studies
and research have not provided definitive
recommendations for best management and
stewardship practices to preserve the biota
of important cave systems. In an ideal land
use condition, we would undertake practices
allowing us to live on karst without damaging
the ecosystem of the fauna that live within
karst.
Cast of Karst Experts and
Partnerships
With these obstacles and realities in
mind, several collaborative partnerships and
a cast of engaged actors began to address
karst challenges in Southwestern Illinois
and the Fogelpole Cave system’s protection
beginning decades ago. First and foremost,
14
Steve Taylor
Carl DauBach, Pen DauBach, and Steve Taylor
Panorama of the karst-sinkhole plain in Monroe County, Illinois, showing a portion of the Paul
Wightman Subterranean Nature Preserve and the Fogelpole Cave Nature Preserve
the Reverend Paul Wightman (NSS 835FE),
the earliest surveyor and explorer of the
Fogelpole system, remains a consistent
proponent for the causes of cave protection.
During the 1990s, Diane Tecic, (Illinois
Department of Natural Resources (IDNR)
Regional Natural Heritage Biologist at
that time), and Joan Bade, formerly of the
Monroe County Health Department and then
IDNR, focused attention on and galvanized
science and support for karst conservation in
the Sinkhole Plain of Southwestern Illinois.
Geologist Phillip Moss (NSS
15977RLFE) conducted numerous dye
tracing studies and mapped groundwater
recharge basins in the area.
Dr. Frank Wilhelm, formerly of Southern
Illinois University-Carbondale and now at
the University of Idaho, began studies on
the Illinois Cave Amphipod (Gammarus
acherondytes), a federally listed endemic
crustacean species found only in six cave
systems in the Sinkhole Plain.
Dr. Julian (‘Jerry’) Lewis (NSS 13576FE,
Science Award) began systematic survey
studies for the Illinois Cave Amphipod.
Dr. Steve Taylor (NSS 29460RLFE),
Biospeleolgist, Illinois Natural History Survey
and University of Illinois-Urbana, conducted
research on cave-dependent fauna and the
groundwater systems that sustain life.
Bob Weck (NSS 57202), head of the
Biology Department at Southwestern Illinois
College, and self-described as “a biologist
with a cave, not a cave biologist,” conducted
and participated in backyard-based studies of
the Stemler Cave system.
In 2008, under Diane Tecic’s leadership,
a new conservation partnership was framed
to redouble and better organize conservation
efforts in the Sinkhole Plain and contiguous
Hill Prairie Corridor of Southwestern Illinois.
Since its founding, the Southwestern Illinois
Wildlife Action Plan Partnership has brought
an additional 1,579 natural area acres into
permanent protection, garnered $1.4 million
dollars for stewardship work in the region,
and conducted 104 conservation-oriented,
public outreach events, with 7000 attendees.
Principal Partnership members
include IDNR, the Illinois Nature Preserves
Commission, the Natural Resources
Conservation Service, the University of Illinois
Extension Service, the Illinois Speleological
Survey, the Illinois Natural History Survey,
the Friends of Stemler Nature Preserves,
the Salt Lick Point Stewardship Committee,
and Clifftop. An all-volunteer nonprofit
conservation organization, Clifftop serves
as administrative agent.
Big Farm For Sale – At First
In late 2012, the Clifftop Board of
Directors took an initial look at the proposed
sale of a large farm property in Monroe
County’s karst sinkhole plain.
It was supposed to be sold as farmland:
one big piece of land that, from the evidence
of erosive run-off rills, probably should have
been farmed for grass or forage. But it
was used for row crops and would be sold
as row crop acreage by the parties to the
estate that inherited it. Our land acquisition
committee took a brief look at the farmland
sale and noted that the farm surrounded the
27-acre Fogelpole Cave Nature Preserve, a
site owned by IDNR. Committee members
talked a bit, again, about the difficulties and
lack of clear guidance on the issue of protecting lands in the karst sinkhole plain, and
concluded that even continued row cropping
probably wasn’t the worst thing that could
happen on top of a cave system.
With plenty of tasks to focus on, our
all-volunteer organization was growing and
expanding both our public engagement
activities and the boots-on-the-ground
labor-intensive land stewardship work that
underpinned our start in 2006.
In three years, Clifftop had successfully
concluded two major land conservation
acquisitions and had put time and resources
into three additional but unsuccessful efforts.
Despite interest in taking a larger role in the
conservation of our area’s cave resources,
members of the committee tasked with the
Land Valuation
No matter how precious, rare, or valuable to wildlife habitat a given property may
be, it is simple reality that land is valued and
appraised on human-use terms. Valuation
is based on the “highest-and-best-use”
principal, which in our rural area means
either continued row-cropping agriculture
and recreational-hunting or residential
development.
Our appraisal indicated a per-acre
average valuation of nearly $5,000. The
land price and value of two buildings on the
property, and associated deal costs including
an appraisal, estimates of attorney’s fees,
boundary survey, and additional costs put
the total purchase price tag at more than
$2,760,000.
Foundations and Telling the
Wonderful Story of Karst
We turned to representatives of two
private foundations to begin answering the
“how to do this project” questions. Clifftop
had worked with both the Illinois Clean
Energy Community Foundation (ICECF) and
the Grand Victoria Foundation (GVF) for
funding assistance for earlier acquisitions.
Both foundations are committed to helping
Illinois’ land trusts and conservation organizations acquire and protect natural areas lands.
But this was a different type of acquisition, not just in terms of dollars, although
the budget itself was huge, but the property
itself—row-cropped farmland—made this
an unusual request. “We’re buying a cave,
not a farm” was the narrative we had to
bring forward and to do this we turned to
master storytellers to help us frame our grant
proposals.
Clifftop collaborated with Steve Taylor
as an advisor for both for the acquisition
and still-hoped-for-but-only-planned future
research efforts that would take place if we
successfully purchased the property. The
foundations’ project officers needed to transmit the importance of the overall endeavor
to their Boards of Directors and Trustees.
The spirit of joint work to good ends became
infectious as all of us—Clifftop’s Board,
science advisors, and foundation representatives—wrestled through the tough questions
and timing of the project.
Foundations exist to fund; again, a
simple reality. But what foundations want to
fund are successful projects. Success grows
from well-thought-through plans for longterm management, stewardship both of a
property and the organization, and long-term
Michael Bradford
“Farmette” Division Looms
Then, the sellers changed their strategy. The 535 acres were plated into 14
“farmettes,” each of which would be subject
to further subdivision, part of the toofrequent Midwest modern shift from corn
and soybean crop rotation systems to rural
residential subdivisions. This development
merited a new review with emphasis on
potential consequences. Excerpts from the
near-immediate responses to our requests for
advice gave urgency to our decision process:
“A conservation-focused purchase of
the parcels going up for auction would
be a huge step towards protecting one of
Illinois’ most vulnerable habitats and our
largest cave system.” Steve Taylor
“Fogelpole Cave in southwestern
Illinois is a valuable state and international
resource that should be protected to the
fullest extent possible.” Frank Wilhelm
“Having worked with the cave fauna
of Illinois for over 40 years, I’ve witnessed
the change in land usage in the sinkhole
plain karst in Monroe County. In my estimation, Fogelpole Cave is now hanging
in the balance. If the karst lands above
the cave are subdivided and blanketed
with homes, the fate of the cave and its
community will be sealed. Fogelpole will
become an empty shell where once a
vibrant subterranean community thrived,
only to become a conduit for carrying
away the waste of those blissfully living
above. I cannot express an endorsement
that is stronger than that of the need to
purchase the land above Fogelpole Cave. It
is a globally significant site that must be
preserved.” Julian (Jerry) Lewis
Those first answers to the “why do this
project” question turned into a torrent of
additional information. The Fogelpole Cave
system is Illinois’ longest and most biologically diverse, with 18 globally rare species.
It is one of the half-dozen sites that host
populations of the federally listed Illinois
Cave Amphipod (Gammarus acherondytes).
The site also holds Pleistocene-era
fossils and its speleothems have provided
dating information on earthquakes within
the New Madrid seismic zone.
Due to the efforts of Paul Wightman,
the Fogelpole family—early and long-term
owners of the primary entrances to the
system—and IDNR, successor owners to the
Fogelpole family ground, visitation to the
system was limited and selective, primarily
including researchers and agency managers,
supported by organized cavers.
The exclusion of partying spelunkers
and souvenir-seekers resulted in preservation of the system’s near-pristine wilderness
nature, with nearly no graffiti-scarred walls
and mostly well-preserved unbroken speleothems. The cave system is a treasure trove
and keeping the land above it intact and
undeveloped became our goal.
Michael Bradford
first look at potential land acquisitions felt a
sense of relief that the sale of the big farm
property was not an immediate threat to
karst fauna.
Michael Bradford and Chad McCain surveying in Fogelpole Cave,
Illinois
Chad McCain looks upstream towards miles of passage during a
Fogelpole Cave mapping trip in 2015.
15
financial and organizational stability. From
January to May we wrote, edited, re-wrote
and honed initial letters of interest and then
the prized, by invitation only, full proposals
to the two foundations.
Generational Questions
Our own Board undertook a series
of important questions, some spurred by
concerns raised by the foundations, others
due to our realizations that this would be a
“generational project,” a commitment by
our Board to carry through management
and surface restoration of the property for
decades to come. Did our organization,
an all-volunteer, relative newcomer on the
conservation land trust landscape, have the
capacity, the will, and the means to bring
this project forward?
Clifftop’s Board is comprised of
community business leaders, farmers,
conservationists, and teachers. The process
of exploring, assessing, and ultimately
pursuing this purchase also resulted in these
community members developing a much
deeper understanding of caves, karst, shallow
groundwater, and subterranean ecosystems.
Both foundations carefully scrutinized
our policies and procedures, our finances and
audit reports, our past work, and our lengthy
full proposals with management and stewardship planning documents for the property.
Foundation representatives visited, both to
tour the site and better understand the nature
of Clifftop’s working board structure.
Once again, collaboration made our
case, as Steve Taylor and Bob Weck showed
a portion of the Fogelpole Cave system to
foundation representatives, two tours made
possible by special permits using the stateowned cave entrance.
Fundraising Leaps Forward Through
Foundation Approval
In late April ICECF approved our
grant request for up to $1,905,050 for
the purchase and an additional $10,000
for initial restoration. In late May, GVF
approved our request for $796,960 towards
the purchase and additional acquisition costs
and $21,000 for restoration and initial public
access infrastructure costs.
Our fundraising efforts continued
through summer and fall. The cave-sciences
community, including the Subterranean
Ecology Institute, the National Speleological
Society Save-the-Caves Conservation Grant,
and the Illinois Speleological Survey, made
donations of nearly $4,000. An additional
foundation also contributed $5,000 to
this acquisition, and members of our local
community rallied to the cause and took the
necessary final fund-raising of more than
$40,000 needed for the purchase over the
top.
16
Months More to Close the Deal
With the ICECF and GVF approvals
in hand, we asked our attorney to contact
attorneys for the estate and made our first
formal offer to purchase the property in June
2013. Almost without warning our seeming
high ‘n wide passage turned a corner and we
entered a months-long sump of dealing with
parties to an estate seemingly committed to
making their probate process as protracted
and difficult as possible. Visits to court as
observers, e-mails and telephone calls to and
from our attorney and their attorneys, were
punctuated with reports back to our Board
and to the foundations’ representatives as
we were forced to passivity while probate
slowed, hearings were postponed, and the
heirs’ emotional states were reported to be
ever more on edge. We finally closed on the
purchase on December 30, 2013.
Celebrating Success
Our membership came together to
celebrate the acquisition less than a month
later and to ask about future plans and volunteer opportunities at the site. Opportunities
abound and volunteers already are at work
assisting with research and with developing our public access infrastructure so that
passive recreational hiking and nature observation can occur on the restored surface of
the land.
Clifftop’s first actions as owners of
the property were to ensure its permanent
protection from development. The property
has been dedicated by the Illinois Nature
Preserves Commission, a designation that
affords the highest possible legally binding
land protection in perpetuity in the state.
To honor and recognize his contributions to the Fogelpole Cave system, Clifftop
has named the site the Paul Wightman
Subterranean Nature Preserve.
Land Use Studies – A Model for Karst
Management
Clifftop’s management plan centers
on enrolling a large portion of the rowcropped highly erodible fields into USDA’s
Conservation Reserve Program and using
CRP income and cost-share funding through
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation
Service to plant a pollinator-friendly mix of
native grasses and flowers in the first steps
to returning land use to its historic prairie/
savannah cover.
Our USDA enrollment eligibility only
opened after one year of ownership, so,
during 2014, we leased 400 acres for row
crops. Far from seeing one more year of
soybeans on our fields as another slowdown,
we facilitated a set of research activities that
will serve as baseline data for ongoing studies
into the effects of land use transformation
on wildlife.
During the year, Dr. Walt Kelly, a
geochemist with the Illinois State Water
Survey, Sam Panno, a geochemist with the
Illinois State Geological Survey, and Steve
Taylor tested groundwater in the cave system
and established a baseline for monitoring
changes in groundwater quality, with the
conversion of 282 tilled acres to prairie in
spring, 2015. Water testing will continue
over the next decade, as the entire tract’s
land use is transformed.
Several additional research studies are
underway. Aaron Addison (NSS 30495
RLFE), Washington University, assisted by
Chad McCain (NSS 60641), are leading
the multi-year effort to resurvey Fogelpole
Cave, with the help of a select group of caver
volunteers from local Illinois and Missouri
Grottos. This effort is undertaken primarily
to support management and research within
the Fogelpole Cave system.
Sam Panno is continuing several geological and seismological studies in the cave.
INHS mammalogists are conducting
bat surveys in the cave, and, with the help
of University of Illinois microbiologists and
mycologists, are undertaking studies of white
nose syndrome.
INHS and Illinois State Museum researchers are conducting paleontological studies in
the cave and in associated sinkholes. Within
the cave, several entomological, crustacean,
invertebrate and herpetological studies are
under development.
Finally, working with various Universities
and other researchers, aboveground biodiversity surveys have begun to catalogue
avifauna, herpetofauna, insects, and
mammals, allowing us to monitor long-term
changes in biota as surface land use practices
are transformed.
Ultimately, our collective goal is simple
enough: improve conditions in the cave
by transforming land use practices within
our preserve, then using this model to help
educate surrounding landowners within the
Fogelpole Cave drainage basin, gently nudging them to shift from old attitudes to adopt
land use practices to help protect the hidden
world beneath their feet.
Pryor Mountain Big Ice Cave Cleanup
Ken Stahley – April 10, 1996 (Revised 2014); photos by the author
Note: This article was written by Ken
Stahley for the Exxon Refinery company
news letter in 1996. It was edited in July
2014 for submission to the NSS News
to expand on the colloquial nature of the
original article.
In about 1964 a new public access road,
parking areas, campground facilities, and pit
toilets were constructed for accessing Big Ice
Cave and the show case Dryhead Overlook
vista on Big Pryor Mountain in south-central
Montana.
The attractions were frequently visited
by local Montana and Wyoming residents and
by others from out of state. Both features
are on public land managed by the Custer
National Forest, Beartooth District.
Before facilities were improved, Big Ice
Cave was accessed by an extremely rough
road, susceptible to severe erosion, which
traversed partially through private property.
The cave itself had no provision for safe
access. The scramble to the entrance was
down a steep and slippery slope. A person
often had to hang on to the branches of
bushes to keep from falling, both going down
and back up the trail.
Once inside the cave, the flat ice floor
was wet and slippery. Near the back of the
entrance room, ice sloped dangerously to
a 4-foot diameter hole that dropped 15
feet into a lower room. The floor of the
lower room was covered with ice sloping
at about 15 degrees and rolled off sharply
onto a breakdown-filled chasm another 10
feet below.
Steve Carrington viewing debris from old cave
walkway, 1993
Big Ice Cave entrance steps and viewing platform, 2012
Access to the lower room was provided
by a makeshift, homemade wooden ladder.
All the ladder rungs were broken in the
middle but the rungs were still able to hold
visitors because they were frozen together
with a 2-inch thick layer of ice.
Walking on the sloping ice in the lower
room was treacherous. Some people used a
hemp rope as a handline and chopped steps
into the ice with a hatchet to reach the closest
stable rocky area about 20 feet away. A misstep on the slope would result in a 10-foot
fall onto breakdown in the chasm below.
About the same time as the new road
was built, the US Forest Service gated Big
Ice Cave and constructed wooden walkways
across the ice sheet to provide a safer experience for visitors and to prevent damage to
the cave. They also installed a spiral staircase
to a viewing platform below the hole to the
lower room.
The walkways and viewing platforms
were used for several summer seasons as
Forest Service personnel presented free
guided tours through the cave. The tour
included viewing the large ice sheet of the
floor, ice columns, and dogtooth spar pockets
in the ceiling of the entry room. The highlight of the tour was descending the spiral
staircase into the lower room to view the
4-to-6-inch diameter, beautiful ice crystals
attached to the ceiling.
In the late 1970s, the US Forest Service
management plan for Pryor Mountain was
reversed and the Pryor Mountains began a
period of “naturalization.”
The naturalization included eliminating
the guided cave tours, removal of the cooking grills at the campground, removing the
walkways from inside the cave, and installing
a locked, heavy grate across the hole into the
lower room. The cave gate was also removed
and entry to Big Ice Cave was no longer
controlled. (Note 2014: My observance since
that time is that very little additional damage,
if any, such as chipping at the dog tooth spar,
has occurred in the cave)
In June 1993, Ken Stahley, a caver by
hobby, was exploring the lower portion of
the ice cave and discovered that the lower
levels of the cave were heavily littered with
remnants of the walkway and staircase
materials. Apparently, during demolition of
the walkway, the persons performing the
removal process had discarded the materials
deeper into the cave.
Rather than removing the debris to
a landfill as required by the management
plan, “disposal” was made by dumping them
into the lower room. A couple weeks later,
Ken took caver friend and co-worker, Steve
Carrington, to the cave to make documentation photos. Both video and still photos
were taken.
Ken contacted the USFS with photo
evidence of the unfulfilled demolition work,
which showed piles of planks, metal hand
rails, and metal staircase treads on the floor
of the lower room.
In the spring of 1996, after a change in
local administration, the new (acting) USFS
District Ranger, Tom Highberger, contacted
Steve Carrington viewing discarded remains
of the metal spiral staircase, 1993
17
Ken by telephone for more information.
During the call the district ranger asked
Ken if he would be willing to help remove
the debris from the cave because the USFS
personnel did not have any vertical caving
experience to rappel into the lower section
of the cave.
Ken Stahley and Steve Carrington
volunteered to coordinate the in-cave
effort and assist the USFS in removing the
discarded materials from the cave. The cave
cleanup began on the weekend August 25,
1995 for two days. The cleanup effort was
completed the following Saturday for a total
of three long days underground.
The cleanup effort included using technical climbing and caving equipment, such
as climbing ropes, haul ropes, ice screws,
and hardhat mounted lights (head lamps),
supplied by Ken and Steve to safely descend
into the lower portion of the cave. Electrical
fluorescent lights, heavy duty cords with
water tight connectors, and chain ladders
were loaned for the effort by the Exxon
Refinery in Billings, Montana where both
Ken and Steve worked. The USFS supplied
a portable generator, and many hand tools
including saws, axes, and Pulaskis.
Hundreds of rough-cut 2-inch x 6-inch
boards were hauled out individually by hoisting each with a rope up a 20-foot vertical
pitch. Then, each piece of material was
carried 100 feet across the slippery ice sheet
to a staging area at the remaining viewing
platform at the mouth of the cave. Finally,
the piles of debris were carried 250 yards to
the visitor parking area up a vertical ascent
of about 150 feet. At the parking area the
trash was loaded in USFS trucks and a horse
trailer for removal to a landfill.
In the end, it is estimated that about
four tons of planks, metal scraps, and visitor
trash was removed from the cave. The cave
cleanup effort required the participation of
eight people over a period of two weekends
to remove all the lumber and steel materials,
as well as other trash tossed into the cave
by visitors over many years. Besides Ken
and Steve, there were 6 USFS employees
who volunteered their time over the two
weekends to help with the cleanup. Tom
Highberger was the supervisor for the USFS
volunteers.
As cavers, Steve and Ken were happy
to assist the Forest Service in making the
effort a successful venture in cooperation
among private citizens, private industry, and
a federal government agency. Ken and Steve
were recognized by the Exxon Refinery in a
company newsletter article. And, both Steve
and Ken received a letter of appreciation
from the District Ranger, Beartooth District,
Custer National Forest.
Minimum-Impact Caving Code
Val Hildreth-Werker and Jim C. Werker (Revised March 2015)
These guidelines encourage practices
that minimize negative impacts to caves. As
more is learned about cave environments,
cavers evaluate and redefine caving conduct.
Compiled from the experiences and contributions of many cavers, this code describes
safety and low-impact caving techniques.
Avoid damaging cave resources—aesthetic,
cultural, paleontological, geological, hydrological, mineralogical, meteorological,
biological, as well as microbial. Move gently
and be good stewards. Think safety—take
care of yourself and your team. Take care
of the caves.
• Each caver wears a helmet with a light
attached. Each caver carries water, food,
a bottle for urine, and three sources of
light with extra batteries and bulbs.
• Use freshly washed cave packs,
vertical gear, boots, gloves, knee-pads,
helmets, and lint-free clothing to avoid
transfer of mud, dust, and microbes
between cave environments.
• Follow current WNS decon protocols
at http://caves.org/WNS/
• Use footwear with nonmarring/
nonmarking soles.
• Use soft or padded cave packs. Avoid
hard-edged boxes. Choose gear that
is smaller, lighter, and more compact.
• Never disturb bats or other cavedwelling creatures. Watch for insects
and avoid crushing them underfoot.
• No smoking or use of tobacco in
caves. Smoke and fumes can kill bats,
invertebrates, and other cave-dwelling
animals.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
18
Wear gloves. Check gloves for mud,
dirt, and holes.
Know which areas require clean clothes,
shoes, and gear. Don’t enter pristine
areas with muddy or dusty garments
and gear.
Avoid isolated pools.
Limit scratching skin and hair. Tens of
thousands of skin fragments and debris
fall from each human body every hour.
Reduce introductions of new matter into
cave systems.
Remove all solid and liquid wastes.
Carry an emergency pee bottle and
burrito kit. Carry out all urine, feces,
spit, vomit, and other waste.
Avoid dropping crumbs and food
particles. Eat over a plastic bag.
Carry out crumbs and debris. Don’t eat
on the move.
If you light a candle, catch the wax drips
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
on a suitable base such as heavy foil.
If carbide is allowed, carry the spent
carbide out of the cave in sturdy plastic
bottles with threaded lids.
Stay on established trails. Sit inside
the trails. Keep packs and other items
within the path. Don’t stray off the most
impacted pathways.
Move carefully and gently through the
entire cave—avoid kicking up dust.
Always spot each other in fragile
areas. Especially watch heads, backs,
hands, feet, and packs.
Always spot each other in fragile areas.
Especially watch heads, backs, hands,
feet, and packs.
In areas of low hanging formations, spot
each and remove helmets to improve
control of gentle movement.
Spot each other on climbs. Safety
first—maintain three points of contact.
To u c h a s l i t t l e a s p o s s i b l e .
Avoid leaning on walls, ceilings, or
speleothems. Don’t sit on formations.
Look and avoid trampling floor deposits.
When movement requires handholds,
look first to avoid delicate features and
use small points of contact for balance
(knuckles or fingertips) rather than dirty
open palms.
During survey and exploration, establish
pathways on durable surfaces to
minimize future impacts.
Take nothing from caves. Removal
of natural or historical objects is
unethical and illegal unless you have
a collection permit for authorized
research. (Recently deposited trash
usually should be removed—always
carry extra plastic bags. Apply common
sense and safety precautions. First check
with cave managers, archaeologists,
biologists, and historians before making
decisions about large items or cultural
materials.)
• Point out unsafe or damaging
behavior. It’s every caver’s responsibility
to ensure that cave environments
remain as pristine as possible and that
every team member is safe and aware
of conservation ethics. Cave softly . .
. and leave no trace.
Permission granted to share, repost,
or reprint: Access these guidelines on
Conservation Division pages of the NSS
Web site at http://caves.org/committee/
conservation/
Restoring Wildlife Access and Airflow to Slaughter Canyon Cave, NM
Shawn Thomas and Stan Allison
BCI photo by Shawn Thomas
History Recalls New Cave
Slaughter Canyon Cave is fairly well
known among cavers and even to a portion
of the general public. While the park has
offered visitors primitive tours of the cave
for several decades, the cave first gained
historical notoriety after its re-discovery in
the late 1930s, when a local goat herder
lost his goats and found them after following
their voices to the cave entrance where they
were seeking refuge from a storm.
It quickly became apparent that the cave
had seen extensive prehistoric use due to the
presence of dark zone pictographs, pottery,
and yucca sandals. Soon local adventurers
began exploring deeper into the cave.
With Carlsbad Cavern itself already a
world-famous cave, the new discovery in the
Guadalupe Mountains created an instant stir,
with local newspapers heralding this “new”
cave to be on par in scale and grandeur with
the beloved Carlsbad Cavern.
The cave was simply named New Cave,
and though early reports of its dimensions
First breach of the rock and mortar wall
Guano Mining Operation
Reports of a sizable bat guano deposit in
New Cave eventually attracted the attention
of a mining company, and for a period of
time from the 1940s to 1950s guano was
mined from the cave.
During the mining days the entrance
was blasted and modified from its original
down-sloped pancake-like entrance to a
larger walk-in entrance with a flat bedrock
platform just in front of the entrance. This
was done to accommodate heavy equipment
used in the mining operation, including an
operational tractor inside the cave, and a
cable hoist that ran from the entrance to the
canyon floor to transport the guano.
The first gate was installed on the cave
entrance, as the mining company needed
a means to secure their equipment. The
existing platform on the entrance barricade,
which was reused for the recently installed
gate, dates to 1956.
The guano mining company was also
responsible for sealing the three smaller
entrances with rock and mortar. The mining
operation lasted through two phases over
two decades, but eventually the operation
was deemed unprofitable after causing
extensive damage to the natural, cultural,
and biological resources of the cave.
The guano that interested the mining
company was found to be extremely old.
Dating of a calcite caprock covering the
guano indicates the guano is older than 210
thousand years. This partially explains why
the mining operation shut down, as hundreds
of thousands of years of dripping water
leached the guano of any valuable nutrients.
Bat skeletons and bones deposited in
the guano suggest the bat colony that once
inhabited the cave is an extinct species of
bat called the Constantine’s free-tailed bat,
related to the extant Brazilian free-tailed bat
but slightly larger in size.
While the cave was clearly an important
bat roost in the distant past, it is unknown
whether other species of bats, or how many,
may have used the cave in more recent times,
prior to its discovery. While there may have
been sporadic use by bats, or possibly even
significant maternal colonies, certainly any
occupancy would have ended with the advent
of mining in the early 1940s.
were wildly exaggerated, possibly on account
of the dim lanterns of the day leaving a great
deal to the imagination, the cave still proved
to be quite significant, with a cumulative
length of about two miles and numerous
memorable formations of impressive size.
Old gate on main entrance and rock and
mortal wall on higher secondary entrance
Had the noise disturbance and exhaust
fumes from the operation inside the cave not
been enough to cause bats to abandon the
site, then certainly the construction of the
entrance and rock and mortar walls would
have eliminated the option for bats to use
the cave.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
Expansion
Carlsbad Caverns National Park was
expanded in 1939 to include Slaughter
Canyon and the caves within. At this time,
New Cave came under the protection of the
National Park Service, however previously
existing mining claims continued to allow
guano mining to occur.
After the mining ceased, the park
decided that the cave would offer a unique
opportunity for visitors to experience a
primitive, undeveloped cave (despite the
mining development) in the backcountry of
the park. Ranger-guided tours of the cave
offered a very different experience from
In January of 2015, a crew spent six
days constructing new cave gates on all
four entrances of Slaughter Canyon Cave,
a backcountry cave located within Carlsbad
Caverns National Park in southeastern
New Mexico. The project was conceived
by Stan Allison and Shawn Thomas, Cave
Technicians in the Cave Resource Office, as
a means of replacing the primary cave gate
with a bat-friendly cave gate. I
In addition, two other entrances to the
cave that had been completely sealed off by
rock and mortar walls were re-opened. A
fourth entrance containing a metal culvert
with a metal door that limited wildlife access
was replaced with a bat-friendly cave gate.
The intent of the project was to restore
natural cave microclimate conditions in the
entrance area by removing the rock and
mortar walls, and to improve wildlife access
to all four cave entrances.
Stan removing mortar
19
New Cave Gets A New Name
Tours of New Cave continued to be a
popular attraction, and the visiting public
often asked about this alternative to Carlsbad
Cavern when arriving at the park.
In 1986, diggers made a break-through
in another of the park’s backcountry caves,
Lechuguilla Cave. This dig led to one of the
most significant cave discoveries of the 20th
century, and a long and ongoing story that
has been relentlessly documented in this
publication and elsewhere.
With the discovery of a new cave, visi-
20
Brian and Shawn during welding of the secondary entrance gate
tors to the park began asking more and
more frequently about the “new” cave in the
park. Rangers were left flustered, having to
determine whether the visitors were inquiring
about New Cave, or the newly discovered
sections of Lechuguilla Cave. As the confusion mounted, the park made the decision
to rename New Cave. It officially became
Slaughter Canyon Cave in 1993.
With New Cave practically a distant
memory, Slaughter Canyon Cave has
become a familiar name amongst a new
generation of parkees, cavers, and the
general public.
that in Carlsbad Cavern, and hiking to New
Cave and exploring it by flashlight became
a popular activity for park visitors in the
early 1970s.
In 1982 a cave gate with a swinging
door was installed on New Cave, coupled
with an aluminum staircase mounted to the
gate platform. This installation provided visitors easy access into the cave while ensuring
the cave remained secure from unauthorized
entry.
Unfortunately, this gate did not offer
nearly as easy access for bats and other
wildlife. In fact, the most bat-friendly section
of the gate, an area above the door with
the longest uninterrupted horizontal flyway,
was largely blocked by a wooden NPS sign
mounted to the gate in 1991.
Removing the final pieces of the old gate
NPS Photo by Stan Allison
Main gate partially complete and rock and mortar wall removed from
the secondary entrance
Funding for Gate Improvement
Fast forward to 2014, when the National
Park Service received a considerable amount
of funding from the US Fish and Wildlife
Service to conduct projects related to bat
monitoring and protection, spurred in part
by the threat of the devastating bat disease,
White-nose Syndrome.
Carlsbad Caverns was one of numerous
parks to receive a portion of these funds,
and the Cave Resource Office reviewed a
number of options for how to use the funds
for bat research and protection. One of the
projects developed and ultimately chosen
was the restoration of the Slaughter Canyon
Cave entrances to provide bat-friendly access
to the cave.
The park solicited bids for the gating
project, and after rating the proposals, the
park awarded the contract to Environmental
Protection Solutions (EPS), based in Carson
City, Nevada. Brian Breiter, head of EPS,
came to the project with years of experience
gating mines throughout the western US.
In contrast to gating relatively obscure
mine portals, Brian was excited to design
and fabricate a gate for a well-known cave
that would be seen by thousands of people.
Brian and his EPS crew arrived in Carlsbad in
mid-January with a trailer full of steel, ready
to build a new gate.
The narrow, rocky half-mile of trail used
to access the cave climbs 500 feet in elevation, with precipitous drops looming next to
the uneven footing. In reality, the trail is quite
easy for anyone in decent physical condition.
Seen in the context of transporting
thousands of pounds of materials, though,
including a generator, welder, and numerous 20-foot sections of uncut steel, the trail
becomes a nearly insurmountable obstacle
to implementing a gating project.
In the days of the mining operation,
heavy equipment was transported to the
cave through sheer manpower, but in that
era, labor and time must have been in greater
supply. With a small crew, a small window
of time, and a desire to pull off the gating
project without literally breaking anyone’s
back, the decision was made to use helicopter support for transporting materials to
the cave entrance at the start of the project.
The helicopter was again used at the end of
the project to remove the old gate, rock and
mortal walls, and tools.
During the first day of the project,
after a series of helicopter drops delivered
all the necessary tools and materials to the
cave entrance, the crew wasted no time in
beginning demolition of the main gate and
adjacent rock and mortar walls.
The steel gate was cut into pieces using
a grinder, and the rock and mortar walls were
laboriously demolished using an electric jack
drill. Leaving the cave at the conclusion of
the first day felt strange with the entrance
wide open, all air and no metal in sight.
By the end of the second day, the new
vertical uprights for the main entrance gate
were in place, and the rock and mortar walls
were completely demolished and removed
from the two adjacent small entrances.
On the third day, the main entrance gate
was completed.
On day four, cave gates were fabricated
and installed in place of the demolished
rock and mortar walls, and a ring gate was
installed in place of the old metal door on
the culvert entrance.
Two additional project days were
required to clean up the site and implement
helicopter operations for removing the tools
and materials.
Helicopter delivering the pre-fabricated door
on sling load
the gating project, the helicopter access
prompted the decision to remove two aluminum staircases from the cave, one from the
entrance area and another from deeper in
the cave.
The staircases were unnecessary in an
undeveloped backcountry cave, created an
unnatural viewing disruption, and their use
caused a loud creaking noise when walked
upon. Also, the staircase at the cave entrance
would have decreased the bat flyway space
if left in place.
The staircases were removed and
replaced with a custom-built steel ladder in
the entrance and a knotted hand-line rope
on the tour route. With the completion of
the 2015 gating project, the entrances of
Slaughter Canyon Cave have been restored
as well as possible to a natural state.
Time will tell if any bats choose to enter
Slaughter Canyon Cave, and if so, whether
the habitat within is found to be suitable
for roosting. Regardless, all of the cave
entrances are now bat-friendly, and with
these new changes, perhaps other wildlife,
maybe a ringtail or an even owl, will find the
cave appealing.
Another positive benefit of the new
gate—park guides have a new, tangible prop
to use in public outreach-education when
explaining the importance of cave management and cave restoration.
Brian welding a vertical upright on the main gate
Gate Design and Materials
The gate design was primarily the
responsibility of Brian and EPS, however,
the park set some initial requirements, and
all design and material decisions were made
as a collaboration between the park and EPS.
The main entrance gate was constructed
with 3-inch square tube steel uprights and
2-inch square tube steel horizontal bars. A
pre-fabricated hinged door was installed on
this gate to facilitate visitor access.
A creative approach to the new gate
included moving the door toward the far side
of the gate (instead of centering it, as in the
old design), which maximized the horizontal
bat flyway achieved by the gate via offsetting
the vertical uprights.
The adjacent entrances, previously
sealed by rock and mortar walls, were
secured with 2-inch square tube steel gates
without any means for human access. The
old metal door on the culvert entrance was
Stan next to a newly opened entrance with
bat-friendly gate
removed and replaced with a pre-fabricated
ring gate.
Aside from the pre-fabricated main
entrance door and culvert ring gate, all
cutting, welding, anchoring, and fabrication
was done on site. This allowed the contractor
to custom fit the gates to the cave entrances,
providing for maximum security and an
aesthetically pleasing design.
For the finishing touches, the crew
grinded and de-burred all welds and cuts
to ensure the gate will be safe to operate.
The spacing on the horizontal bars of the
gate were set at 6 inches, which exceeds
the standard of 5¾ inches required of batfriendly gates.
The slightly larger spacing was chosen
to allow for potential future access by
larger nectar-feeding bats, including the
federally endangered lesser long-nosed
bat, whose range is close to but does not
currently include the Guadalupe Mountains.
The 6-inch spacing also provides easier
cave access to other wildlife native to the
Chihuahuan Desert.
One of the most satisfying aspects
of the project was demolition of the rock
and mortar walls. As the first breach was
made, airflow was immediately apparent
through one of the secondary entrances. As
the walls came down, strongly perceptible
airflow was observed moving through both
adjacent entrances for the first time in almost
75 years.
From inside the cave, the light shining
in from these newly opened entrances cast
a novel appearance to the twilight zone, and
a sign of restoration in action.
In conjunction with the rock and mortar
removal, Stan and Shawn spent a great deal
of time with hammer and chisels performing
detailed restoration work. Restoration was
completed with a round of spot vacuum work
to pick up any remaining debris.
As an additional restoration benefit of
Crew with the completed main gate
21
Cliff Cave and the Hands of Man
Dan Lamping
The City of St. Louis, as well as much
of the surrounding county, was laid atop
karst beginning in the late 17th century.
Over time, as the region grew, development
expanded into new karst areas, bringing
with it the unfortunate impact created by
the hands of man. In the past few hundred
years such “progress” has brought about
the destruction and degradation of many
caves and karst resources within the area.
Today there are nearly 140 known caves
within St. Louis County and far less in the
City of St. Louis. Unlike most of Missouri,
this number has decreased considerably over
time as caves were lost to the encroachment
of urban sprawl.
Cliff Cave is one of the largest and best
known caves in St. Louis County. It is nearly
5,000 feet long, a stream cave owned by the
St. Louis County Parks Department, and is
the namesake for the county’s Cliff Cave
Park. In May 2013, Advanced Placement
Human Geography students from Mehlville
High School in St. Louis County, Missouri
began what would become a bi-annual
cleanup project to remove graffiti from the
walls of Cliff Cave.
The cave’s rich cultural history likely
dates back to the Archaic Period where the
large, gaping entrance off the bank of the
Mississippi River was surely appealing to
early Native Americans. During the mid19th century, the entrance area was home
to the Cliff Cave Wine Company, which built
a large wall of stone in the entrance of the
cave, still standing today.
Since 1993 Cliff Cave has been best
known as the site for one of the nation’s
most tragic caving accidents. In the spring
of that year, the Midwest was inundated
with monumental floods. Six people, four of
whom were teenagers, perished in the cave
after it violently flooded due to an intense
afternoon storm that hit. The group was
22
exploring a tight side passage during flash
flood conditions. After the accident, a chain
link fence was put across the entrance, and
in October of 2009, a bat friendly gate was
installed as part of a National Cave Gating
Workshop sponsored by the Missouri
Department of Conservation, St. Louis
County Parks, American Cave Conservation
Association, Bat Conservation International,
Missouri Caves & Karst Conservancy, and
local volunteers.
The new gate has served in controlling
access, in turn allowing restoration of bat
habitat. Historic records of bat populations
that were no longer present, possibly due
to frequent disturbance, inspired this goal.
The gate was a controversial move with area
cavers. However, since installation of the
gate, populations of both Grey and Indiana
bats have increased.
The topography directly above Cliff
Cave is a small patch of oak-hickory forest
atop a dense sinkhole plane that is bordered
by a highly developed, residential, urban
area. Given its proximity to such a sizeable
human population, the cave has seen regular
visitation for years. Prior to the recent gate
installation, the cave was a blank canvass
for young vandals armed with a distasteful
concoction of colorful spray paint, teenage
boredom, and ignorance. Random names,
confessions of love, insults against enemies,
miss-drawn peace signs, expletives, drug
references, and a particularly large tribute
to “Ozzy” cover the wall for the first 1,000
feet of passage.
Urban Karst Education – Hands-on
Experience
As an active caver and high school
history and geography teacher, it’s inevitable that caving comes up in class at times.
Teenagers are often drawn to the unusual
and excited by the extreme. Hearing their
teacher tell them first-hand of spending an
entire weekend camped underground, or
of discovering and naming places that no
person before has seen, sometimes piques
their interest and ideally, inspires.
Living in Missouri, “The Cave State,”
particularly within a region that has a
reasonably high density of caves, these
young people are aware of caves but really
know little about them. Unfortunately, karst
education is neglected and access to caves
has been made more difficult in recent years,
curtailing firsthand opportunities to develop
an appreciation through experience.
Therefore, they know little about karst
and its relationship with the surface. Nor do
they know just how beautiful the unknown
darkness below can be.
Knowledge of such beauty and function
often begets responsibility. This correlation is
the core of social, civic, and environmental
education. For cavers living on karst, particularly karst overlaid by urban development,
educating those who reside above about that
which lies beneath is a fundamental responsibility. With this in mind, my classroom often
becomes a vehicle for introducing kids to new
insights about their world in the past and the
present, aboveground and below.
To date there have been four trips, with
another planned for this Spring, and with
hopes of continuing for years to come until
the cave can be restored as close to its natural
condition as we are capable of doing. So
far, trips have been after school and during
weekdays. Participation has ranged from
10-20 students, along with other teachers,
two administrators and local cavers.
We’ve typically spent three to four hours
scrubbing the walls using hand-held wire
brushes and a couple of hand-held pump
sprayers. After scrubbing for awhile, small
groups have been taken beyond the twilight
zone and allowed to explore upstream
to the point of crawling. An encouraging
variety of questions about biology, geology,
exploration, and cartography are typically
asked, and not a single kid has shrieked in
the presence of bats.
Local Support
So far the project has received a lot of
support from a variety of benefactors. In
recent years, the Mehlville School District
has encouraged service-learning projects to
engage students in volunteerism throughout
the local community, a goal this project
certainly supports.
In addition, St. Louis County Parks is
instrumental in recognizing the problem and
encouraging access so that we can be part of
the solution and so that area residents can
be educated on karst.
A local grotto, Meramec Valley Grotto,
has donated use of their club helmets and
lights.
Cave Research Foundation Ozark
Operations has helped finance the cleaning equipment along with providing use
of quality helmets and lights. Additional
financial contributions have been made by
the Mississippi Valley Ozark Region (MVOR)
of the NSS to purchase helmets and lights.
A grant awarded by a local community
group, the Mehlville Oakville Foundation,
also supports the purchase of equipment.
Lastly, several cavers have given their time
to work with these kids, some of whom have
also volunteered to make financial contributions in support of the project.
From Ignorance to Protection
The St. Louis Metropolitan Area is an
unfortunate example of the negative impacts
that ignorance and development can have
upon caves and karst. The paint-covered
walls of Cliff Cave, an example of this
ignorance, are the handy work of this same
demographic whose hands are now working
to remove it. As these students embark upon
whatever journeys life leads them to, they are
now equipped with a personal experience
and first-hand knowledge of caves and karst.
Let’s hope that through education this trend
of senseless abuse ends as we enlighten area
residents and future policy makers of the
potential they have to appreciate and protect
the underground.
(A short video on the project can be
found at http://bit.ly/cliffcave)
White Nose Syndrome Update—2014
Jennifer Foote
Th e fun gu s Pse u d o g y m n o a s c u s
destructans that causes WNS is currently
confirmed in 25 states and five Canadian
provinces, as far south as Mississippi and as
far west as western Arkansas. In 2014, the
detection of the fungus on a Myotis velifer
bat in Oklahoma in 2010 was found to be
a false-positive result. The disease has been
confirmed in seven bat species, and the
fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans has
been detected on five other species without
causing the mortality associated with the
disease. 2014 was my first year as WNS Liaison,
and it’s pretty overwhelming. The WNS
Liaison is now part of the permanent
Biological Response Committee in the
Conservation Division under the department
of the Administrative Vice President. If you
Decon is as easy as a cooler plus 122 F water
for 20 minutes.
are interested in contributing as a member
of the committee, please contact me. I am
active in USFWS teleconferences as part
of the Stakeholder and Communications
committees, and I submit comments on
policies.
Blanket cave closures continue in the
eastern half of the US, though there is more
movement toward allowing cave entries
for science and management activities. I
attended the USFWS WNS Working meeting in September and will be attending the
North American Joint Bat Working Group
Meeting in March.
At the 2014 Convention we had a WNS
agency panel as part of Conservation talks,
followed by additional individual conversations after the panel. We also had a WNS
brainstorming session and created an e-mail
list to better disseminate WNS news of interest to cavers http://lists.caves.org/mailman/
listinfo/wns.
The White Nose Syndrome Rapid
Response Fund is still an important funding
source for researchers; much federal funding
is limited to federal or state agencies. So far
the NSS has provided over $115,000 of
funding for 21 research grants. Check out
http://caves.org/WNS/Rapid_Response.
shtml to donate or apply for research grants.
NSS is at the forefront of WNS investigation with cavers volunteering for cave
expert fieldwork. NSS members have
23
volunteered for field surveys, bat counts
in caves during hibernation season, and
baseline acoustical monitoring. Cavers can
contribute by sharing knowledge about bats
and decontamination with other cave users.
On the WNS website we provide fliers that
can be printed and shared.
Please continue to apply clean caving
practices. Don’t carry contaminated gear
to clean areas, and be extra careful in
non-saturated areas to reduce the risk of
human-assisted spread of the fungus—or
spread of any other future pathogen.
There is increasing publicity about bats,
with the Batman movie stars even filming a
message about WNS.
Science-wise, studies are making progress. Scientists have determined that the
fungus makes bats die by increasing the
amount of energy they use during winter
hibernation. Studies are also showing more
about the differences in how bat species are
affected.
Three species have high infection and
mortality. Little brown bats are identified as
super spreaders. Virginia big eared bat may
be immune. Researchers are finding about
80% average mortality in roosts after two
years of infection. There is hope for evidence
of resiliency in survivors and maybe even
some hope of recovery.
In the last year, Aeolus Cave bat-count
numbers increased from 500 to 2000 bats,
following mortality estimates of 300,000.
There is hope for the future with testing for
potential treatments such as VOCs, surface
treatment studies, and artificial roost climate
adjustment. There won’t be a miracle cure for
WNS, but there is the potential to increase
survival rates.
For more information visit the WNS
Web site: www.whitenosesyndrome.org
NSS WNS Liason Jennifer Foote and NSS
WNS Support Poster Presentation at the WNS
Workshop Sept 2014
Find easy access to all information,
updates, and current decon protocols on
the NSS Web site: http://caves.org/WNS/
Cave Cleanup In the Falls Creek System
“Vertical Bob” Johnson, NSS 35023; Photos by Ruth Stickney and Kim Luper
Members of the Oregon Grotto (OG)
caving in the area of Falls Creek System,
in the state of Washington, came across a
skylight opening to a cave that had been used
as a dumping site. They figured that the pile
had to consist of about 50 to100 trash bags
on the floor under the skylight. The bags
were in bad shape. The skylight is hard to
see unless you are very close to it.
The OG scheduled a cave cleanup for
May 24, 2014 and invited other cavers to
help with the project. I’m a member of the
Willamette Valley Grotto, so I told the WVG
about the cave cleanup. The pit looked like
it needed a high-line lift system to raise
the bags out. I’ve always liked to play with
ropes and pulleys and now after all of these
many years I’d get to do something with
that passion.
After doing vertical practices for the
WVG for 25 years, this will be my first highline lift system. For those practices I used
many different lengths and types of ropes.
I found three dynamic ropes that I could use
to make a cargo net. Out of the three ropes I
produced a small net that worked okay. Next
I next set up a hauling system with pulleys.
When I arrived at the cave, I was told
that the day before two of the guys had gone
to the cave and tossed out about half of the
bags. What! My really neat system will not
be needed after all!
The figure below shows how I envisioned my system would work:
Then they said that the bottom bags
were heavier and we might need the system.
So off we went to see for ourselves. The
opening to the cave was only about 20 to 30
feet from where we parked our cars.
The bottom bags were in such poor
condition they needed to be re-bagged.
Fortunately, the guys prepared for this
and brought STRONG trash bags. They
all wanted to see the high-line lift system
so I started to set it up. My plan was to
climb up one tree and tie off the end of my
strong static rope, then climb another tree
on the road side of the skylight so that the
rope stretched across over the skylight. The
person on the right would raise the cargo
Haul system rigged over
the skylight entrance
24
Here I am placing one end of the rope in a
tree. The other end will be in the tree to the
left of the man holding the rope. The skylight
is between my tree and the man in the white
sweatshirt. The road is behind that man.
net and the person on the left would pull
the net over to the road area as the person
on the right released some of the line. Once
the net was emptied, the person on the right
would pull the net back to the hole. A small
line was added to pull the net down into the
skylight because the pulleys that we were
able to scrounge up made a poor lift system.
(We really needed a block and tackle system.)
It was confirmed, we did need the lift
system. The bottom bags were heavier than
anyone wanted to toss out. It worked well. It
was fun. And the photos tell the story.
Trash bags visible through the skylight
entrance
Right: Bags inside the lava tube
Nenita Luper getting ready for a ride on the
rigging. The rigging allowed us to move faster
and quicker and also leave less impact on the
cave! This photo by Lisa A M Bauman.
After we finished the bag removal,
anyone that wanted to have some fun
could get a ride in the cargo net.
A few of the re-bagged bags that were hauled
out.
These three images received Honorable
Mentions in the 2014 Photo Salon.
Appreciation, by Peter Glanvill
The Wizard, by Dave Bunnell
Dagger Delight, by Bob Biddix
25
Goodwin Sinkhole Cleanup Third Year 2014
text and photos by Klaus Leidenfrost, NSS 62906
Goodwin Sinkhole and Cave are located
less than 45 miles west of Waynesville,
Missouri the site of the 2015 NSS annual
convention.
The sinkhole, which is located immediately adjacent to a county road, was used
as an illegal dump for over 50 years. In
1980 and 2009 the Missouri Department
of Natural Resources did a dye trace at the
sinkhole. The runoff from the sinkhole was
traced to Ha Ha Tonka Spring (twelveth largest spring in Missouri) before it entered the
Niangua Arm of Lake of the Ozarks.
The previous owner tried to stop the
illegal dumping and get the sinkhole cleaned
up to mitigate environmental groundwater
concerns. However, he was not successful.
Dumping did not stop. The sinkhole was
not cleaned up. The extent of dumping
was significant enough that the previous
landowner was willing to donate Goodwin
Sinkhole to the Missouri Caves and Karst
Conservancy (MCKC).
In 2012 MCKC initiated cleanup of
the sinkhole and cave. In 2012 and 2013,
a majority of the work was done by hand. In
2014 we started using heavy equipment to
remove material from the sinkhole.
Some of the material removed from the
sinkhole contained such a high percentage of
trash that it was taken straight to a Transfer
Station or Landfill.
A nearby landowner gave MCKC
permission to place any clean fill we removed
from the sinkhole onto their property. To
ensure that all the material taken to the
nearby landowner’s field met the definition
for clean fill, the following protocol occurred.
Before any material was loaded onto waiting
trucks, any tires, metal (which could be recycled), and trash was removed. The nearby
landowner provided people to remove any
trash as the trucks dumped the material.
After the piles of material were spread out
helpers again removed any leftover trash.
Besides uncovering trash, tires, mud,
and gravel in the sinkhole and cave, we also
uncovered a lot of large sticks and logs (up
to 16 inches in diameter) within or near the
cave entrance.
We dug down over 20 feet to reach the
cave. We even had a mini excavator in the
first 10 feet of the cave. Though less trash
at this depth, we continued to find garbage
and tires.
Before opening the cave entrance, we
needed lots of people to form a human chain
taking the material from the cave up the hill
a half a bucket at a time. This was a very
slow and physically demanding process. We
removed enough material that you can now
walk into the cave for approximately 50 feet.
Prior to this you had to hunch over or crawl
at the same location. Now able to walk, it is
a lot easier to remove material from the cave.
This area also serves as a second sediment trap. After a heavy rains we have to
pump out the lower sediment in order to get
into the cave.
We also enlarged our upper sediment
trap this year. Over 90 acres drains into the
sinkhole. Over 100 gallons-per-minute seeps
out of the upper sediment trap. Depending
on the intensity of rain, our upper sediment
trap can contain up to 1 inch of rain.
We can now walk the first 50 feet into
the cave—then it’s a crawl or belly crawl.
Human chain removing material in 2013
Human chain removing material in 2013
Klaus Leidenfrost standing in entrance to
cave. Note all the accumulated material in the
cave which still needs to be removed behind
him. This photo by Larry Looney.
Opening up the entrance to the cave
On December 7, 2014 people discovered
a tire approximately 130 feet into the cave.
However, the tire was immovable and blocking the passage.
In 2014 we removed 0.65 tons of
trash, collected additional metal and tires,
took 48.34 tons of trash-laden material to a
transfer station or landfill. We also removed
Removing material from Goodwin sinkhole.
Note the trash and tires which were separated.
approximately 2,847.5 tons of clean fill. We
had a total of 150 volunteers at the sinkhole
and cave during 24 workdays.
In 2015 we plan to continue removing
material from the sinkhole and cave. Prior to
initiating the cleanup, it took 2 to 3 days to
drain the sinkhole when it was full. In 2012
it only took about 12 hours to drain water
after rain events. As we keep opening up the
Removing large log by entrance to cave
26
Pahoa Cave Lava Flow
Fred Stone
Hawai’i Volcano Observatory
sinkhole and cave, the sinkhole will be able
to drain quicker.
However renting heavy equipment is
very expensive. Depending on how much
equipment we need, the cost can exceed
$400.00 per hour. We are seeking help
with these equipment costs. It is unknown
how many thousands of tons of trash-laden
material still need to be removed from the
sinkhole and cave.
Both excavators working near cave entrance
The active flow next to the label “Brush Fire” is covering Pahoa Cave. Image is from January
13, 2015. For the latest images and updates, visit http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/
Pumping out the second sediment trap in
front of the cave
Volunteers removing trash from material
removed from Goodwin sinkhole
ones. HCCTF will continue to advocate for
inclusion of the area into the NAR system,
with the active lava flow being an additional
resource.
Kenneth Ingham
Mini excavator working at entrance to cave
The Hawai’i Cave Conservation Task
Force has been working with the Hawai’i
Department of Natural Resources to get
the land surounding Pahoa Cave declared a
Natural Area Reserve (NAR). Pahoa Cave is
a major lava tube on the East side of Hawai’i
Island, with important natural, biological, and
cultural resources. It is covered by an early
succession native forest, and its upper end
is protected by the Wao Kele O Puna NAR. This project was recently made more
complex when a lava flow from Pu’u O’o
on Kilauea Volcano began to move closer to
the cave. Biogeographer Asa Aue, archaeologist Tim Scheffler, and NSS caver Steve
Smith got permission from the Office of
Historic Preservation to survey the section
of the cave with two fortified entrances and
Hawaiian cultural sites.
During January 2015 the survey was
disrupted by smoke from burning vegetation
entering the cave. Later, as the survey neared
completion, the lava flowed within 10 yards
of one entrance, and covered a portion of
the passage. The cavers could feel hot water
dripping from the ceiling below the lava flow.
Since then, the lava has continued to expand
by inflation of the main flow and outbreaks
from its sides, covering more of the cave. It
appears that although entrances are being
covered, the lava tube beneath the flow is
intact, except for some ceiling breakdown.
This lava flow could become a valuable
site for measuring the time it takes for new
lava tubes to be colonized from existing
Diana Northup and Asa Aue next to a Hawaiian
stone wall fortifying an entrance to Pahoa
cave. They are discussing a large microbial
mat on the ceiling. The roots are from native
‘ohi’a trees, a component of the food web
for endemic cave insects. This entrance is
threatened by active lava flows from Pu’u O’o.
27
Above: U-turn, by Peter Jones, won a Merit
Award in the 2014 Print Salon. It shows a near
180-degree turn in the calcite-coated Snowy
River passage in Fort Stanton Cave, NM.
28
Below: Superheroes!, by Nathan Williams and
Sabrina Simon won an Honorable Mention in
the 2014 Photo Salon.
Headquarters Update
After a six-month rest period, office
renovations are again taking off. Work
weekends are scheduled for the 2nd and 4th
weekends of nearly every month for the
next 6 months. Contact Maureen Handler at
hqvolunteer@caves.org (423-605-5569) or
HQ Chairman Dave Haun hqcomm@gmail.
com, (317-517-0795) if you want to make
sure you have the right weekend.
In December the National Speleological
Foundation (NSF) held a meeting in Cape
Canaveral Florida. NSS S-T Gary Barnes,
HQ Chair Dave Haun and I attended the
meeting and gave an update on our renovation and donation status. In the process of
preparing for the 2014 NSS Convention and
moving our office up the street to the new
HQ we accelerated part of our renovations,
leaving us unable to finish other areas. The
NSF discussed this among themselves, and
after some discussion, passed a motion to
donate $100,000 to the NSS so that we
could complete the Library and Archives
areas. In January the NSS set the wheels in
motion to make this happen.
It’s the last weekend of February as I
write this and the walls are up, complete
with electricity, in the Library and Archives.
Paul Johnson, OVP Dave Luckins and I took
rollers in hand and covered the new walls in
primer. More members finished installing the
ceiling tiles in the office area and other items
on Dave Haun’s punch list. By the time you
read this the walls will be painted and the
ceiling in place. Doors, windows, carpet,
and furniture will quickly follow.
Team 404
I’ve been asked to detail what the Team
404 program numbers mean. Our mortgage
payment currently requires 404 members
donating $25 per month to keep us on
track. There are members who are donating
more than $25 a month and a few others
who are making donations as their finances
allow. There are three major donors who
are making a combined $25,000 a year in
donations and have pledged to continue this
for as long as we have a mortgage. If we add
these folks into the Team 404 group they
would account for 83 alone. We currently
have just fewer than 200 members paying
our mortgage, and we need to increase that
to at least 404 individual members. This will
allow us to use the larger donations to pay
down our principle instead of counting them
in the bigger number.
My primary Grotto, The Chattanooga
Grotto, just joined Team 404 this year as
well as sent in an additional donation to help
pay down the principal. If at least half of our
over 250 Grottos were to join the yearly
Team 404 @ $25 a month or $300 a year,
we could be paying $37,500 more on our
principle. If the same 125 held a fundraiser
or two and sent in $1,000 a year we’d raise
$125,000, or more than the total mortgage
payments for the year!
The donation form can be downloaded
from our home page (www.caves.org) or call
the NSS office (256-852-1300) and they’ll
take your information down for you.
Cave softly,
Wm Shrewsbury
President, National Speleological Society
29
Jeff Page (45699RL)
CCC Membership & Access Chair
a nine month period beginning November
2000. Carroll had a new entrance. Carroll
cavers had new life!
Over the ensuing years, CCC maintains
an active membership roster of about 80
people, making us one of the larger caving
groups in the state. We are not a Grotto,
but draw members from Grottos in Missouri
and surrounding states. CCC does not own
any land above the cave, but leases a one
acre plot where we’ve dug our entrance.
Membership is required to access Carroll
through this entrance. During convention,
we’ll waive membership requirements, but
will ask all who enter to sign the landowner
waiver (and we certainly won’t discourage
anyone from joining). Our main mission is
to manage and maintain this entrance, stay
in the good graces of our landowner and
secure the orderly exploration of this cave
which has proven to be so elusive. In addition
to the ongoing survey work, CCC conducts
regular biology inventories, hydrology monitoring, restoration projects, photography
trips, and trips for landowners’ families and
friends to enhance their appreciation of their
natural resources. We’ve also conducted joint
cave rescue training with local fire district
personnel.
Carroll is home to a sizable maternal
gray bat colony, along with solitary bats (Big
Brown, Little Brown, Tri-color and more).
The man-made entrance allows us to bypass
their habitat at critical times when they would
be disturbed by cavers coming through the
natural entrance. Trips during Convention
will be planned with the non-disturbance
of bats in mind. We will, of course, observe
WNS decontamination protocol for all
cavers.
Carroll Cave is located about 25 miles
Carroll Cave Conservancy
On behalf the Carroll Cave Conservancy,
I’d like to encourage one and all to come to
this year’s convention in beautiful Pulaski
County, Missouri. We look forward to
making new friends and reconnecting with
some old ones. In the February issue of the
NSS News, it was announced that Carroll
Cave is the “crown jewel” of the convention. We couldn’t agree more and are eager
to share this jewel with as many convention
attendees as possible. In the guidebook, we’ll
delve deeper into the rich history of the cave
and current exploration efforts. For now,
we’d like to make a brief introduction to
CCC and the role we’ll play at convention.
Who we are: CCC is the brain child
of Rick Hines (37511RE) who has several
contributions to the NSS News under his
belt. Rick first explored Carroll in 1970,
assisting pioneering cave photographer Andy
Kramer and others on trips in the cave. It
was not until the early 1990s that Rick was
able to pursue his dream of exploring and
photographing this incredible cave. But by
that time, relations between the owners of
the natural entrance and the caving community had gone sour and the entrance was off
limits. Not to be deterred, Rick studied maps
and introduced himself to area landowners,
eventually securing a sinkhole on grazing
land that looked to be a promising place to
dig into the cave. Upon recruiting others who
had a passion for Carroll, digging began in
1995 with the expectation of a new entrance
in short order. But, as Rick puts it, “it was not
to be. Due to safety concerns, the sinkhole
dig was reluctantly abandoned after five years
and over 1000 man-days of digging. A new
approach was needed. In the interim, the
conservancy was chartered. A vertical shaft
through the solid rock was blasted during
30
from the convention site in neighboring
Camden County and is the third longest
cave in Missouri. We pledge to get as many
as possible in the cave, without overburdening the highly sensitive environment. Some
vertical gear will be needed- For the descent,
standard rappel gear. For the ascent, we’ll
climb a 120 foot ladder using a chest
ascender for belay. No frog or rope walking
necessary. Note: The ladder also has a steel
cable running its length and we have some
climbing devices for it. Some groups may
use this system.
At the bottom of the ladder, climbing
gear is stashed and it’s horizontal caving
from then on. All groups should plan on
getting wet, but with the possible exception
of certain advanced trips, wetsuits should not
be necessary. Trips of varying levels of difficulty will be offered, all led by CCC members
familiar with navigating the cave. The cave
has three major trunk passages (Carroll
River, Upper-Thunder, and Lower Thunder
River). The Back Door entrance comes
into the cave near the intersection of these
passages. Each day, trips will take different
directions, lessening the impact on the cave.
Every group should have the opportunity to
visit Thunder Falls- Carroll Cave’s crown
jewel. Other highlights that will be covered
include Convention Hall, Conference Room,
Flat Rock Falls, Carroll Passage, Angel Pool
Passage, and the Rimstone Room.
If you’ve been on the fence about
attending convention this year, we hope this
brief intro will help bring you around. Carroll
Cave trips will be announced May 1st, along
with the other cave trips being offered for
pre-registration during 2015 convention.
Hope to see you in July!
* For more details on the creation of
Carroll Cave’s “Back Door” please visit
www.cavediggers.com Issue 1.
You can reach Jeff Page at pagejk@
yahoo.com
Carroll Cave Conservancy
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Carroll Cave
2015 NSS CONVENTION July 13-17, 2015
Office Use Only
Reg #
Waynesville, Missouri www.nss2015.caves.org
Pre-Registration must be postmarked by June 13, 2015
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Questions? Please E-Mail: registration2015@nssconvention.com
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ITEMS
COST
Adult Registration 18+
Pre Register
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$160.00
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$150.00
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Adjustments
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Bat Workshop
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31
Mark Hodge has a Facebook page
dedicated to his Back Door Dig, Bath
County, Virginia, an official Butler Cave
Conservation Society site he discovered in
February 2013 about 70 feet up a cliff behind
his house. He dug it open the following May,
opening into a little phreatic room with a clay
floor that he began digging into. By June
2014, he had used a 2:1 pulley system to
haul out >5100 five-gallon buckets of dirt
from a shaft 31 feet deep. By November,
the shaft was 32 feet deep above another
40 feet of slope leading down into a canyon
passage. Initially stagnant, air flow had been
encountered by December 2014: tinyurl.
com/ncnp6xt.
Karst Underwater Research’s Andy
Pitkin on January 5 posted on Facebook a
video of cave divers scootering through the
underwater and biologically rich Eagle’s
Nest Cave, Hernando County, Florida:
vimeo.com/117723088. Caving News this
past month linked to three more cave diving
videos from around the world, and I probably
overlooked several more on Facebook. Why
is it that there are so many cave diving videos
but only a few dry caving videos coming out
every month?
Brian Williams posted to Facebook on
January 20 that his team had added another
1200 feet to the survey of Lowmoor
Cave, Alleghany County, Virginia. The
two-team trip was led by Bill Balfour and
consisted of Williams, Carl Cornett, David
Socky, Rebecca Stewart, Steph Petri, and
Nick Socky. Dave Socky posted later that
day that the trip total was 2134 feet. The
cave is now mapped to 1.49 miles: tinyurl.
com/mfdwn85.
The next day, Bill Balfour posted
more cave maps to Facebook, these being
Smith’s Milk Cave and Sheep Cave, both
in Lee County, Virginia: tinyurl.com/kqdljgj.
Caving News on January 31 posted that
near-record numbers of bats were counted in
Jewel Cave on January 28, finding 1437
flittermice distributed as 904 Townsend’s
big-eared bats (Corynorhinus townsendii),
531 various Myotis species, and 2 big brown
bats (Eptesicus fuscus). This represents one
of the largest known hibernating colonies
of Townsend’s big-eared bat: tinyurl.com/
p5uwfjo.
Amos Mincin uploaded the Winter 2014
issue of Philly Grotto News on February 5.
It contains obituaries of two former Philly
Grotto members, Brother Nicholas and
Frank Eckert, BoD election results, information about the Philly Grotto field house,
and other local grotto news. It also has an
article by David Field about the grotto’s 1970
32
expedition to Mexico, including a note about
one of their vehicles blowing an engine in
Texas and having to be towed to Monterrey,
Mexico for a replacement. Their efforts were
spent on Cueva de Cerro near Soledad
Atzompa, Veracruz: tinyurl.com/qh3cp6t.
Allen Mosler related in the Southeastern
Cave Conservancy, Inc. (SCCi), Web site
on February 6 the gating of Hollow Ridge
Cave, Jackson County, Florida, conducted
in early December by Kristin Bobo and Uriah
Pryor. Mosler organized the event and lugged
around cut steel along with Tevis Kouts and
me. Tiffany and Terrin Kouts and D’Ann
Mosler ran errands and Guy Yates ferried
gas cylinders back to Tallahassee. One gate
and three barriers were constructed in front
of four entrances to the cave over three days.
Formerly an out-of-the-way cave, the State
of Florida is building a public trail nearby,
precipitating this effort to protect the cave’s
stal and biological resources. The gating
was funded by Flint River Grotto, Florida
Speleological Society, River City Grotto,
Tampa Bay Area Grotto, Middle Georgia
Grotto, Paul Aughey, Matt Fisher, Jerry
Johnson, Kitty Markley, Roger Moore, Allen
and D’Ann Mosler, Steve Nemeth, Ed Pratt,
Larry Rueff, and Philip Walker. Hollow Ridge
Cave is owned by SCCi and managed by
Mosler. Left-over steel was then transported
to Gainesville in preparation for the re-gating
of Warrens Cave, which is owned by the
NSS: tinyurl.com/pbpw3cq.
Ellie Falgout reported on the
Texascavers listserv on February 7 the
results of the January expedition into Honey
Creek Cave, Comal County, Texas. Over
two weekends, 115 cavers hauled 42 bags
of gear and otherwise supported four cave
divers, 98 of them going into the cave and
17 working surface support. Ellie noted that
Bennett Lee made 28 trips from the entrance
to Camp Awesome! They established Camp
B by leveling two campsites and setting six
bolts for hammocks plus a gear line through
sump 1. Support divers Matt Turner and
Laura Battle were familiarized with the
cave beyond sump 1 to add a safety factor
for this and future explorations. Multi-flash
still photography was done, the first ever at
and beyond sump 1. They were unable to
proceed with additional exploration due to
time limitations, but their efforts will enable
the next trip in to push on. The effort was
supported by the UT Grotto, Bexar Grotto,
Dallas Fort-Worth Grotto, Greater Houston
Grotto, TSA, and Stone Aerospace.
Tag-Net Digest on February 9 carried
a report by Andy Zellner of a couple of
trips to a remote and secret site in Franklin
County, Tennessee. He had found several
nice leads there while solo ridgewalking,
including a pit in the 40- to 50-foot range.
Returning later with Tamara Hughes, Charlie
Emerson, Elliot Stahl, and Clinton Elmore,
they hiked in and began digging. Noticing
a bamboo bush not far away waving in the
wind on a windless day, Stahl investigated
and found blowing air and heard the sound
of a waterfall emanating from a 9-inch wide
crack. Elmore and his “Special Tools of
Persuasion” were immediately relocated.
Meanwhile, Zellner continued to hammer
on the original dig and was eventually able
to get into a little “cubbyhole.” He then
rappelled into a decorated 30-foot chamber
about 55 feet deep. He couldn’t fit into its
water drain, instead climbing up a few feet
to a second pit. They “rigged to something
terrifying,” backed up by the entrance rope,
into a 15-foot wide pit that was 43 feet
deep and blind. Stahl confirmed via sound
that the two digs led to the same cave. To
make a long story shorter, they found a
50-foot tall, 20-foot wide canyon leading to
a spacious 50-foot dome, a hands-and-knees
crawlway, an 8-foot cascade spilling over an
undercut lip, more beautiful walking canyon
passage, spectacular white formations, more
cascades, and finally a flowstone near-plug.
The total length was estimated at 1200 feet
and depth about 170 feet, and they left three
leads to follow on another day.
Millerton Lakes Cave, Fresno
County, California, is a notable corrasional
cave formed by water-borne particle abrasion in granite that is almost a mile long.
It is developed along the convergence of a
fault and a joint and is noted for speleogens
such as sculpted blades, flutes, pendants,
and potholes. Some of the current proposals for expanding storage capacity along the
San Joaquin River will totally flood the cave,
although several alternative proposals would
create increased storage capacity without
inundating the cave. Doug Viner pointed out
on the NSSwest forum that there is a Web
site dedicated to the cave (savemillertoncave.
com/) and Dave Bunnell created a Web page
for Millerton Cave photographs at tinyurl.
com/nxc2r4z.
Gary Storrick has been collecting,
using, and displaying SRT gear for several
decades, often exhibiting them at NSS
conventions. His Web page portrays them in
photographs and contains short descriptions
of their uses, advantages and disadvantages,
and inventors: tinyurl.com/nhskl45.
Central Indiana Grotto
January/February 2015, Vol. 59, No. 1
Dan Chase recalls the discovery of
Birdless Pit Cave (it had no birds in it).
Though small (the map appears to show
roughly 700 feet of passage), Chase calls this
one of his favorite discoveries. He stomped
his way into the cave in 1964 after finding a
spongy-bottomed sink with no opening. The
original map and description are reprinted
in this issue. This is another example of
sinkhole-stomping yielding results, the fourth
such that I’ve heard of or experienced.
Karst Chronicle
Mid-Atlantic Karst Conservancy
Spring 2014, Vol. 16, No. 4
A meticulous description of Cave Creek
Cave, Pocahontas County, WV, has been
written by Walt Hamm. This small cave
(1,813 feet), carries a significant stream
and has one of the most impressive and
picturesque entrances of any cave within
the Swago Creek drainage. While this cave
is closed by its owner, special permission
was recently granted to allow for a modern
and complete survey. Walt Hamm’s beautiful
map is included in this issue.
The Potomac Caver
Potomac Speleological Club
July/August 2014, Vol. 57, No. 4
On the cover of this issue is a photo of
an old house. Below, a necktied individual
poses with an armload of bourbon bottles.
This is the original PSC field house in 1960,
and an example of the goings-on within. This
house, in Germany Valley, was the originally
established by Pittsburgh Grotto and served
as the PSC base until 1987. The new field
house was located in Smoke Hole, WV,
where it has been in use by PSC cavers ever
since. Pete Penczer has written a historical
overview of these properties in order to
acknowledge the valuable contributions of
Barry Chute, who was the chairman of the
field house committee from 1980 to 2013.
Much of the success in finding and maintaining the current field house was thanks to
Barry, who unexpectedly passed away on
December 1, 2014, while Pete’s article was
being prepared.
Sag Rag
Shasta Area Grotto
November/December 2014, Vol. 33, No. 6
Pluto’s Cave, in northern California’s
Shasta Valley, has long been known to be
a night roost for several thousand Mexican
Free-tail bats. This roost was recently
attacked by vandals with shotguns, and
more than 250 carcasses were recovered
by cavers and wildlife biologists. While the
roosts seems to have escaped with relatively light damage, it is unfortunate that
law-enforcement officials have no means to
identify the perpetrators.
Scoops
Detroit Urban Grotto
2014, Issue 3
Of the many trip reports in this issue,
none stand out particularly from a discovery
standpoint, though new survey is being
consistently gained. Therefore, I was most
interested to read the report of a caver on
his first trip. Ben Davis’ introduction to
caving came on a survey trip into Fisher
Ridge Cave System. His description of the
realities of caving, as stacked against his
expectations, is both amusing and thoughtprovoking. He writes of the inability of cave
photographs to describe caves, and of the
true nature of exploration, “I used to think of
exploring as… some romantic “Lord of the
Rings”-esque vision of a roughed up traveler
journeying through unbearable hardship to
always, always discover something spectacular. As I know now, exploration is nothing
of the sort. It is something filled with more
hard work put forth to fail to reach a goal.”
Hopefully, Mr. Davis and the other new
participants of the FRCS project will find
real-life caving to be rewarding, and keep
the cave growing for many years to come.
Several pages of survey notes and
excerpted sections of the drafted map by
Stephen Gladieux show that a finely detailed
and extremely high-quality map is being
produced. They also show a great deal of
remaining leads. Three-dimensional renderings of the cave, generated by Andy Edwards’
program Breakout, make possible the virtual
navigation of complicated, overlapping
passages. The program has more features
than can be detailed here, and is available
for use from its creator.
Southwestern Cavers
Southwestern Region NSS
January/February 2015, Vol. 53, No. 1
A trip to County Line Cave became a
lesson in decision making. The weather in
Chaves County, New Mexico was unstable
on June 7, 2014, when a survey team
entered the cave. Though Jen Foote was
uncomfortable with the low crawls and flood
debris during the trip toward the beginning of
the survey, the group traveled on together.
Eventually, after more low, long crawls,
Foote decided to leave the cave alone and
watch the weather. After surveying 371
feet of passage the survey team headed
out to find the entrance taking water and
hailstones. A violent storm had passed, hail
had damaged the vehicles, and water was
flowing everywhere across the pastures and
roads. Foote had rigged a handline through
a skylight near the entrance, and the surveyors made their way up through this crumbly
hole. These events reinforce the idea that
one team member’s discomfort with a situation should be carefully considered, and all
weather warnings should be taken seriously.
TAG Caver
Sewanee Mountain Grotto
Vol. 5, No. 4
Ben Miller has continued to head the
survey of unmapped TAG pits, and published
ten new (and very good) maps of Tennessee
caves. They range in depth from 126 to 293
feet. One of the newly surveyed pits is called
Storm Chasm, and a scan of Marion Smith’s
1988 notes on its original discovery add
some interesting background information.
Another is named in honor of the much
missed Avis Moni, to whose memory this
issue is dedicated. Photos of Avis are on both
covers, and more photos and scans of three
of her cookie recipes are found within. One
of the newly surveyed pits is called Storm
Chasm, and a scan of Marion Smith’s 1988
notes on its original discovery add some
interesting background information.
2015
Scholarships
Doctorate: $15,000
Masters: $5,000
Undergraduate: $5,000
www.caveconservancyfoundation.org
www.caveconservancyofthevirginias.org
Telephone: 804-798-4893
Cave Conservancy
Foundation
33
Submit Abstracts for Conservation
Day at 2015 NSS Convention
Calling for presentations, PowerPoints,
or panel discussions to fill our NSS
Convention Conservation Day. Please send
a quick e-mail now of your intent to present—send to werks@cunacueva.com NSS Conservation invites abstract
submissions for all Conservation, Restoration,
and Management Sessions at the 2015 NSS
Convention, July 13-17 in Waynesville,
Missouri. Send abstracts by May 1, 2015 to
werks@cunacueva.com Limit abstracts to 250 words or less.
Include title of your presentation and the
authors’ names, professional affiliations,
and mailing addresses. For later publication
in the Journal of Cave and Karst Studies,
abstracts should draw a conclusion or explain
the upshot of your study or project in a
concluding sentence. Equipment will be available for
PowerPoint presentations. Please make
special arrangements with us for any other
media-viewing equipment. For online details
about sessions and abstracts, visit the NSS
Convention Web site: http://nss2015.
caves.org Cave Conservancy Roundtable
Since many cave conservancies have
become well-established institutions, what do
we do now to build permanent legacy and
extend the concept in perpetuity? Everyone
interested in cave management is welcome
to attend and share ideas so we can all learn
from each other.
The Eighteenth Annual Cave
Conservancy Roundtable will be held at
the 2015 NSS Convention in Waynesville,
Missouri. The session will start about
2:00 PM on Friday, 17 July. Check NSS
Convention Web site updates for exact time
and place: http://nss2015.caves.org/ Group and Grotto Cave/Karst
Conservation Awards The NSS Conservation Division offers
two annual awards recognizing conservation efforts of Groups and Grottos. Winners
will be announced at Convention, receive
a certificate, and have their names posted
on a permanent plaque displayed at NSS
Headquarters. For consideration for either of the
two 2015 awards, please send a letter of
application or nomination summarizing your
contributions to cave or karst conservation,
along with supporting documentation and
letters of support.
Now accepting nominantions for a
34
Grotto or Group in recognition of their
conservation activities. The 2014 Group
Award for Conservation of Cave and Karst
Resources was presented at Convention
by the NSS Conservation Division to “The
Lint Pickers.” Recognition was given to Pat
Jablonsky with John Roth, Bill Yett, Sandy
Kramer, and Jim Nepstad, along with all the
Link Pickers over the past 28 years! This
was Pat’s last year leading Lint Camps, but
the tradition will continue. Many thanks to
Pat and the Lint Pickers for their hard work
over the years. To learn more about Pat and
the Lint Pickers, as well as Grotto Award
recipients, see NSSNews, April 2014, pages
13 and 15.
Please send nominations to the
Conservation Committee Awards Chair,
Kathy Lavoie (lavoiekh@plattsburgh.edu) by
May 31, 2015.
Conservation Task Forces: Making a
Difference A Conservation Task Force (CTF) is a
great way to gather like-minded people and
make good things happen in cave and karst
conservation.
Some CTFs have a specific project that
may take a year or two to complete. Or it
may be an ongoing project that continues
and maintains conservation for many years.
A CTF may tackle a significant cave
vandalism problem, or it may work alongside
landowners and civic leaders to clean up a
groundwater pollution source. Any conservation or protection concern fits.
NSS CTFs make a difference in karst
areas around the United States. Since passing of the Federal Cave Resources Protection
Act of 1988, many CTFs are recognized
by local federal agencies as primary representatives of the caving community on
conservation issues in their areas. Due to the ongoing efforts of CTFs,
caves are mapped and inventioried.
Management plans are implemented.
Restoration and cleanups happen—cave
habitats are restored.
Passages are cleaned up. Many caves no
longer have unsightly boot prints where they
don’t belong! Vandalized stalagmites have
been rejoined! In some areas more caves
are being restored than are being vandalized. Cave locations revealed on the Internet
and through Social Media are disappearing
because cavers are catching it and addressing it and getting it offline—Conservation
is gaining! CTFs do outreach to residents in karst
areas, sharing the use of current best practices to curtail and prevent pollution and
excessive siltation of cave systems. Members
of CTFs are helping to manage caves on
behalf of public and private landowners.
To join an existing CTF: http://caves.
org/committee/conservation/CTFS.shtml Establish a New CTF
Create an NSS Conservation Task Force
to focus on local cave and karst conservation issues. If your work would benefit from
CTF designation, contact CTF Coordinator,
Jonathan Beard: mokanman@att.net or
contact Conservation Division Chiefs, Jim
Werker and Val Hildreth-Werker: werks@
cunacueva.com Cave Geology and Geography
Abstracts
The NSS Section of Cave Geology
and Geography is accepting abstracts for
presentations at the Geology and Geography
Session of the 2015 NSS Convention, to be
held July 13-17 in Waynesville, Missouri. All
abstracts will be considered to be for oral
presentations unless a poster presentation is
specifically requested. At this time, we have
not reserved poster space, but could accommodate a poster session if there is sufficient
interest and enough advance notice is given
to convention organizers. As we did last year,
we also encourage interested researchers to
bring posters from other conferences such as
GSA, AGU, and ICS that may be of interest
to attendees at convention. This provides an
additional opportunity to share your work
with your colleagues.
Abstracts may be no more than 250
words in length (this limit must be strictly
met). In addition to the text, the abstracts
should contain the title of the paper, and the
name(s), address(es), and e-mail address(es)
of the author(s). The abstracts should be
informative summaries that include the
conclusions, and not lists of topics that “...
will be discussed.” Bibliographies and references should not be given in the abstracts.
Papers may be submitted for either oral
presentation as a poster. Please specify your
preference when submitting your abstract.
Send any questions and your abstracts
by e-mail to:
Paul Burger
cavemonpaul@hotmail.com
The deadline for abstracts is April 25,
2015. Early submissions are encouraged.
Confirmation notes will be sent to everyone
sending an abstract. Details on presentations
times, dates, and other information will
be sent to all confirmed participants after
the deadline. For online details about the
convention, visit: http://nss2015.caves.org.
Convention Abstracts
As you can see from the preceding
announcements, abstracts are soon due
for presentations at the upcoming NSS
convention in Missouri. Unless submitting
to a specific session chair, who may have
an earlier deadline, all abstracts should be
sent to overall Convention Session Chair
Jim Sherrell (jimsherrell@sbcglobal.net)
by May 1.
International Exploration Grants
I am pleased to announce this round
of NSS International Exploration Grants.
See the numbers below. Thank you to the
committee members for their work reviewing
proposals. We had more funding available
this time since only one grant has been given
out this NSS fiscal year.
Congratulations to the recipients.
Remember that the award winners must
provide an NSS News article or an NSS
Convention presentation, or better yet, both.
Huautla (Mexico) - Bill Steele - $1400
La Grieta (Mexico)- Gilly Elor - $1000
Tongzi (China) - Mike Futrell - $1200
Houping (China) - Erin Lynch - $ 900
Selempin (Guatemala) - Ben Tobin - $1200
Have great expeditions all!
Joel Despain
International Exploration Grants Chair
BCI Announces Summer Bat
Workshops
Check out the exciting Bat Survey
Resources from Bat Conservation and
Management for 2015!
We are happy to announce the schedule of training courses for 2015. Starting
with an Acoustic Software Training class
after the Joint Midwest/Southeast/
Western Bat Working Group meeting
in Missouri this March, we then shift
quickly to field-training classes with three
venues of week-long bat survey courses
in Arizona, California and Kentucky
throughout the remainder of the summer.
Find additional information
about BCM’s training courses on our
Website at: www.batmanagement.com/
Programs/programcentral.html
Caver’s Lost & Found
Kelly Smallwood has put together a
Facebook group page for cavers. It’s a closed
group so you must request access. As the
page intro states:
Ever lose a piece of gear or find
one while out caving? Ever wanted to
return it to its owner? Join the group
and share what you’ve found or lost.
Roioli Schweiker
NSS 3164
September 1929 – December 2014
Roioli began caving in the early 1950s
with rock climbing friends in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. After moving to Massachusetts,
she joined the Boston Grotto. Her biggest
contribution to speleology came in the late
1950s, when she and Richard Anderson
began the New York State Cave Survey, the
first successful attempt to catalogue all the
known caves of upstate New York. It had
been considered too big of a project, but they
did it by breaking it up into counties. With
the help of Boston Grotto and the NRO,
SPELEOBOOKS.COM 518 295 7978. Cave and
bat gifts, books, clothing and jewelry. Prompt
personal service since 1973.
BOOKS ON CAVES & CAVING - new, used.
Also vintage cave brochures, postcards,
viewmaster reels, and more. Send for FREE
list: Bill Cotrofeld (NSS 3986), PO Box 235,East
Arlington, VT 05252.
5
BOOKWRIGHT: The first of a sci-fi trilogy that
tells the story of a spaceman marooned on a
backward planet with wizards, black-powder
weapons, marauding nomads, and a church
seeking to become all powerful. Purchase a
copy and make me rich and famous: http://
authorwebservices-gem.net/iUniverse/496603/.
George Dasher.
5
SITES, CAVE RAT AND SITES ATTIC CAVES
FOR SALE. Approximately 410 acres wooded
mountain land near Franklin, WV in area of John
Guilday Preserve-Trout Rocks Caves. $1000/
acre, will consider offers. For information and
showing, contact Gene Boggs at 304-358-7982
West Virginia Cave Books
www.WVASS.org
Vienna, VA – Environmental Field Technicians
$17.00 - $22.00 Hourly. Two positions are
currently available. We are seeking someone
cave lead reports, written and oral, were
compiled, caves were located, the same
caves under different names and different
caves under the same name were sorted
out and marked on maps. And all this with
a baby and a young child in tow. Her story
about the process was recently published in
the Northeastern Caver Volume XLIV #4
and XLV #1.
Later, Roioli’s activities turned more to
hiking, canoeing, snowshoeing and skiing,
but she maintained her interest in caves
and her membership in the NSS for the
rest of her life. She still went underground
occasionally, especially at NSS Conventions.
She helped with the 1991 Convention in
Cobleskill, NY and 2002 Convention in
Camden, Maine. Her last Convention was
2010 in Essex Junction, Vermont, where
she camped out, against her cardiologist’s
advice.
After 22 years, heart problems finally
caught up with her. Her caving legacy is
carried on by her daughter Vi.
Vi Schweiker
with 1-2 years of experience or we will train
the right individual. Position Summary:
Perform investigations of all types of water
conveyance utilities. Vienna, VA location;
worksite is the DC Metro area although
occasional extended travel may be required.
Essential Skills & Experience: High
school diploma or GED certificate; Ability to
pass a background investigation, a motor
vehicle record check, and a drug screening.
Benefits: We offer an outstanding
compensation and benefits package.
To Apply: Please forward your resume or
expression of interest to ddvorak@rjnmail.com
AD RATES: 50 cents per word, with a 10% discount
for prepaid ads running three months or longer. The
following count as one word each: P.O. box #; street
address; city; state & zip; phone number. E-mail or web
addresses exceeding 10 characters count as two words.
Payment must precede publication, but copy should be
e-mailed to the editor (davebunnell@comcast.net), to
reserve space. Copy should be received six weeks prior
to publication date (e.g., by May 15 for July issue). Make
checks payable to the National Speleological Society
and send to: Att: NSS News Advertising, 2813 Cave
Avenue, Huntsville, AL 35810-4431.
35
APRIL 2015
Annual Cave Conservation Issue

2 NSS N - National Speleological Society

Transcription

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