General Meeting Minutes – April 25, 2017

Introductions

In attendance: Pete, Ken, Eric, Emily, Lauren, Mike I., Jim, Mike B., Lisa, Zeke, Robert, and Mark.

[I missed the question, but the answers were, respectively:] chocolate, cookies, soap, Graham crackers, cheese, chocolate syrup, Nerdz, cheese, Nerdz, marshmallow creme, ditto, and blue food coloring.

Business

  • Cave suggestions for the annual grotto trip? Crossroads, maybe? Suggestions?
  • Dues. Pay them if you haven’t. You may do so online via PayPal.
  • Wanna help get people on rope for Over The Edge? You get to rappel off the Wells Fargo building. There’s a training session on September 29, and the rappel date is September 30. Contact Mark if you’re interested in volunteering.

Trip Reports

  • Lisa and Mike went up for another BCCS project dig. After a super tight squeeze, Lisa has decided that all such future endeavors will be done in her slightly plasticized cave suit, rather than the one that catches on everything. It looks like it goes but it needs some serious work. Join them for a Butler dig. There is beer and an outdoor shower.
  • Rob went to Pig Hole Cave which has a rather pretty entrance pit. He knows the cave well enough now to lead a trip there. Also, he witnessed a self-rescue.
  • Jim described his trip to Grand Caverns for the Easter restoration weekend. He hauled gravel around and Ken gave him a tour. He also went to next-door Fountain Cave where he crawled through a maze.
  • After Grand Caverns and Fountain, Zeke, Ken, Eric, and Eric’s five-year-old visited Madison Cave. They saw George Washington’s John Hancock. Zeke noted how very blue the water was beneath the calcite rafts and remarked on how hard it was to find the cave, hiking “thousands of feet up the side of the mountain, through a jungle, in the dark.”
  • Pete visited Wakulla Springs in Florida, where a mastodon was found. Ten years ago, Wakulla Springs was established as the longest underwater cave system in the US.
  • Mark, Ken, Dave, and Carlin continued the SnoCone survey. Brian, Steph, and Carlin surveyed the stream passage. Ken, Dave, and Mark entered a huge room with a 30-foot waterfall and formations that resemble hanging tobacco leaves. They generated one lead, to a ledge above the waterfall, but reaching it will require scaling poles. The next day, they found Dutton’s Cave and Radon Cave.

Program

Culinary Experiments in Limestone Hydrology – Ken Walsh

layers of marshmallows (soluble rock), chocolate syrup (water), cookies (impervious rock), and sprinkles (sediment)Peter measures the strike and dip on a wedge of cheeselayers of snack foods that represent ... something