NC Museum of Natural Sciences, Explore on Four Meeting Room

The Triangle Troglodytes monthly meeting started at about 7:38 PM. Matthew B (Vice Chair) led the meeting, and for introductions asked “How many caving trips will you go on this year?” or alternatively, how many different caves? Numbers ranged from around zero to possibly dozens. Also in attendance were Stephan F (Treasurer), Matthew W (Editor), Jacob G (Editor), Mark D, John P, Emily, Chris T, Ken, Taylor O, Alexa, Nathan, Peter H, Eva, Sam, Alan O, and Zeke (Secretary) recording the meeting minutes. Joining online were Lisa, Mike Y, Piotr, Joe S, Matthew L, John B, and special guest Mollie.

Getting into business items, Jacob pointed out that only one trip report has been posted recently, and it was actually from several years ago. There is now an incentive for posting reports to the website. There will be an Inner Mountain Outfitters gift certificate for $50 given to the winner of a raffle at this year’s end, and the raffle tickets will be awarded one for every unique cave trip report posted to our website. The other incentive announced is that after a few other posts appear, Zeke will publish a second report from several years ago.

The scouting event at Camp Durant in Carthage is the second weekend in May, and needs input from the grotto. Mark is organizing the TriTrogs for this, and we have to figure out what we can do/make.

The museum is holding another Social in the Shire on May 15, and Ken indicated that we’re supposed to respond. After some questions and answers, Zeke said he could do the event, Taylor said he could be the organizer, other people could be interested, and we will respond positively to the museum.

Zeke had one last order of business, and that was to establish a Bylaws Committee. A committee may be established at any general meeting of the grotto, and be open to any interested members. The text of the Constitution and Bylaws needs to be looked at this year, and maybe other things, but that’s for the committee. Zeke is interested, and Lisa is interested and has experience in these processes. Mark and Zeke agreed that the Bylaws ought to be voted on by the grotto at some point, if just to have them reaffirmed. 

To begin trip reports, Ken, Emily, Mark, Piotr, and Zeke covered their reconnaissance and planning trip to Low Moor ahead of the May 2nd cleanup effort. Information is posted about the upcoming event at var.caves.org. Emily expressed that there is a lot of graffiti and much work to be done. Upon entering the ladder room and crossing the new ladder, it was discovered that the old ladder had returned, or perhaps never actually left? But yes, it had been removed and then brought back to the room and put on display, and only two days before our expedition, as it turned out. Our removal of the old ladder wasn’t considered a nuisance, but the rusty ladder was deemed historic and will remain. (“Return of the Iron Ladder” can be found here.)

Matthew W, Jacob, and John went to Low Moor Cave and Mine on the way to Bone-Norman, to check out an “orphaned” section of cave, and Matthew said plenty of bats were seen. The next day, they went in the Bone entrance and out Norman on an epic through-trip. It was characterized as mazy and amazing. They found the Great White Way and spent 3 hours there. Matthew forgot that there was a waterfall, even though he had been there on a photo trip some years earlier, as Ken reminded him. (A great report has been posted for this trip, with pictures.)

Upcoming Trips/Events include:
May 2 weekend – Low Moor cleanup
May 8-10 Spring VAR
May 8-10 Scout Leader Expo
May 15 (Fri) – Social @ Museum
July 6-10 – NSS Convention 
July 11 – Maxwell/Bone-Norman
Sept 18-20 (date tentative) Annual Grotto Trip, destination unknown 
not mentioned: May 12 (Tue) – Executive Committee meeting (all members welcome)

We took a short break.

The special presentation was given by Mollie Byrne, who is a wildlife biologist with the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
(The secretary initially did not intend to take notes here, but then did anyway, so this is not exhaustive.)
Mollie continued where she left off in November discussing her work in bat conservation. There was much discussion about the White Nose Syndrome disaster, but also signs of recovery. Cavers have had an adverse effect and have a potential to make things worse. There have been efforts against it, like temperature manipulation (in mines, not caves) actually making it colder. Polyethylene Glycol (PEG8000) is an effective fungicide that has to be sprayed onto things. We saw photos of data collection techniques and got some explanation. Little is known about bat migration, though it is being studied. Mollie talked about tracking and banding bats, and how they end up in surprising places. Cave gates installed up through the 1970’s were not well devised for bats and their populations declined. Gates have been improved upon and bats have done better as a result. We gathered that people can’t do wrong by installing bat boxes. The one big thing all of us cavers need to hear is that avoiding hibernation sites, and any cave could be one, from the beginning of October to the middle of April is the best practice.

We thanked our guest for joining us, and the meeting ended around 9:45pm.

The first meeting of the 2026 TriTrogs Executive Committee started around 6:30pm at Taylor’s house. Grotto Chair Taylor Tibbs led the meeting, and in attendance were Vice Chair Matthew Brown, Webmasters Matthew Weiss and Jacob Gonzalez, Treasurer Stephan Francke joining remotely, and Matthew “Zeke” Van Fossen taking minutes. For the purpose of the minutes, “we” should be understood to mean any or all of the members of the grotto.

Initial discussion was about the grotto trip projected for late summer. The officers want to set a weekend in August as soon as possible. For camping and caving, we might see if we can stay with RASS, and then take groups to one of the nearby caves.

Matthew Brown will lead the March and April meetings while Taylor is absent. We will need people to do presentations on their trips and projects in the coming months (and always). The program for March is set.

The Executive Committee discussed whether or not there would be a July meeting, and what the nature of that meeting might be. There was some assumption that we would have a non-meeting gathering in lieu of a meeting, considering that the NSS convention will be taking place, but since the convention (July 6-10) should not interfere with the regular grotto meeting (July 28), we could meet as normal, or we might meet at a different location. The officers are going to see what people are doing and make a decision later.

The Treasurer said that we have money in the bank account. Currently, the grotto only wants payments in cash or by check because of issues with PayPal, which we are likely about to dump for an alternative service, and Stephan may have found something. The grotto is set to put money towards our annual trip, the upcoming project in Low Moor Cave, and the end-of-year donation. The Treasurer also said that individuals paid for t-shirts in 2025, but apparently did not receive those t-shirts at or around the time of the grotto trip. The officers favor doing another t-shirt this year, with the proceeds going toward the purchase of loaner gear. The 2025 t-shirt sale raised $123.

The new officers were set up with WordPress accounts, and email forwarding. There was, for the sake of awareness and prevention, discussion about scammers and bots picking up email addresses and the names of the grotto officers and trying to spoof our identities and ask for money. Stephan says it happens about three times a month now, and they’re not fooling him. There was further discussion about what measures the Webmasters might take to obfuscate our contact information to prevent “easy pickins” while still remaining accessible.

Jacob wants trip reports to post on our website, tritrogs.org, so the world can see that we are an active organization. The Executive Committee brainstormed ways to incentivize the posting of trip reports. It was agreed that there will be some sort of year-end prize involved, and people can increase their chances of winning a prize or prizes by increasing the number of trip reports they post to tritrogs.org in 2026. Candy was part of the discussion.

Facebook group administration will be more limited from now on. The Executive Committee discussed Discord administration, mainly with regard to sensitive information. Matthew Weiss will look into limiting access for new (yet to be trusted) users to general chat, and the officers talked about how this would need to precede any possible increase in outward visibility or access to our Discord server. The Webmasters are going to look at our website in general and make some improvements.

The Secretary learned that he has to report meeting attendance to the museum, and he is awaiting that contact information.

Future agenda items include planning for the grotto trip in August, and also whether we should make any changes to the Constitution with regard to the Executive Committee (how many are on it, and what are their roles) and elections (when and how can they be conducted), and what those changes would be. The plan is to establish a committee of inclined members.

The next meeting of the TriTrogs Executive Committee was set for Tuesday May 12 at 6:30pm, and the first one ended at about 9pm.

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, 4th floor, green conference room

The meeting began a little after 7:30pm, was led by Taylor T, and attended in person by Cat C, Mark D, Matthew B, Matthew W, Zeke VF, Jacob G, Christopher T, & Dennis V, and joined remotely by Stephan F, Peter H, Emily G, Piotr S, Alan O, Diana G, & Mike Y.

The introduction question asked everyone what their favorite cave passage is. The same location was mentioned by more than one person, and at least one place was from fiction.

Annual Elections

Grotto elections were held after being postponed in the January meeting, which was held virtually due to severe weather. The election took the place of a regular program for this meeting.

• Taylor Tibbs was re-elected Chair by unanimous consent.
• Matthew Brown was elected to the office of Vice Chair by unanimous consent.
• Zeke Van Fossen was elected Secretary by unanimous consent.
• Stephan Francke was re-elected as Treasurer by unanimous consent.
• Jacob Gonzalez & Matthew Weiss were jointly elected to the Webmaster position by a unanimous vote of the membership in attendance, against one or the other holding the office solely.

There was discussion about the nomination and election process, whether more than one person can be nominated and elected to an office, and how to vote for all possibilities in that event. There was also continuing discussion about amending the grotto by-laws to redefine the role of Webmaster (Editor) with regard to changes in technology and communication, and how any changes would need to involve the broad membership.

Upcoming

• Mark shared information about the scouting fair in Carthage on May 9-10, talked about what kind of cool stuff we could do, and asked who was interested, which included Matthew B, Taylor, and Alan.
• Christopher talked about an upcoming trip to Maxwell Cave and other locations on July 17-20.
• There is a trip to Low Moor to plan for graffiti clean-up, which will be followed by the actual clean-up in May.

Trip Reports

• Piotr talked about a trip to Worley’s Cave on 2/21, and Matthew B added some details. They spoke with a couple going into the cave at a late hour without helmets or sufficient gear, and they found it odd.
• Cat talked about exploring Hancock Cave on 2/21.
• Stephan and Peter were together in Yucatan exploring cenotes.
• Dennis talked about Hawaii Cave Week, and witnessing some significant volcanic activity.

The meeting ended around 9:30pm.