Caving With Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania Council 11-18-18

-
Image
Yes, they were at it again. This time there were two new Troops to introduce to caving. Eastern PA Council set this one up at the same time as the one in October. This trip originally had sixteen people, but one Troop backed out at the last minute. It’s a shame because they missed a very good time with these girls. Maybe they’ll come out again when they can. We have been having a tremendous amount of rain and unprecedented snowfall for this time of year. As a result the cave actually had a good bit of water in it.

I like to use this cave for beginner trips because it is stable. But I’ve never seen this much water in this cave. Parts that usually have a little sticky mud had water over the top of my thigh. I choose to avoid the lower parts of the cave. For most of the girls this was their first wild caving trip. I didn’t want to take any chances with them and I didn’t want anyone cold and miserable. But they all got very muddy, and had a blast. How could I tell? Watch the video. L…
Post a Comment

Dragon Breath and Philly Grottos Go Caving

-
PICT0003I got to our usual McDonald’s that we meet and Amos and Andy were already there and finished their breakfast. A little while later Steve arrived, then Katy and Pete. As we were getting ready to pack up the cars Krista arrived, just in time. Don’t trust those online directions.
We divided into two vehicles and took off to meet up with Bill near the cave. Of course I’m running behind schedule and was about 15 minutes late. But we all did get together and got to the cave, suited up, and carefully walked through the rows of corn find the entrance to our adventure for the day.
PICT0083
No one had been there for about a year and a half. The “gate” was filled with all kinds of debris. There’s not enough room for more than one person to work in there. It took Bill about 20 minutes or so to clean out the entrance and unlock the gate. Then one at a time we slid down the tube into the cave.
Many years ago before I had a chance to get into this cave I heard someone describe it as “sporty”. I now know that “sporty” means tight and a lot of work to move around in. A good bit of the passages are tight enough I just fit chest-to-back between the walls. There are some passages that open up a little more and one fare sized room. There’s also a lot of opportunity for scrambling.
PICT0082
Sliding down the “cork screw” is not so bad. Just push your shoulders into the walls and slid down. But climbing back up is, well, challenging, especially for us bigger guys. All in all a well worth the effort. A great little cave to spend a hot Sunday afternoon in.
Take a look at the pictures and you’ll get an idea how tight this little cave is.

Dragon Breath Grotto Venturing Crew 9

Philadelphia Grotto

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wanna Play With the Squeeze Box?

-
Image
A Squeeze Box is a device that is designed, built, and used by cavers to practice and determine how small of a space we can get into. While this is originally intended as a tool to be use for serious preparation for cave exploration it is also a source of entertaining competition that can get impassioned.

The basic squeeze box is just two parallel “walls” that lay horizontal. The bottom one is fixed and the top one is adjustable up and down in one quarter inch increments. The one we use is about four feet wide by 6 feet long. This is large enough to encompass most people.
There are many variations on the squeeze box. Some are larger, some have turns, some have obstacles between the two walls, and some are even vertical. I have some ideas of my own that someday I’ll implement, but for now what we use is relatively easy to transport and set up and help novices to understand what they are really capable of achieving.











Please subscribe to my blog, leave a comment below, and share with you…
Read more

Boy Scouts Help With WNS Winter Survey

-
Image
by Kirsten Alvey-Mudd



Thanks to Boy Scout Troop 864 from Wildwood, Mo and Christa Droste from Oakfield, Wisconsin for helping with WNS Winter surveys in Northeast Missouri yesterday!

The group learned about caves, cave safety, formations, cave biology and conservation while counting 241 bats, 11 live and 9 dead pickerel frogs, 10 creek chub, 2 wolf spiders and 1 dead raccoon. 127 tricolor, 11 little brown, 2 endangered gray and 8 endangered northern long-eared bats that were visibly WNS free. 1/3 of bats seen showed visible WNS, some quite extensive: 50 tricolor, 39 little brown, 1 endangered Indiana and 3 endangered northern long-eared bats.

This site has suffered an 87% loss of overall bat populations: 63% of tricolor and 74% of little brown. Since some recent movement has been seen in big brown bats already, we're assuming the 100% loss of those is due to early spring warm temps. Hopefully these same warm temps will allow some of these WNS bats to fly out, forage and survive at …
Read more

Caving With Boy Scout Troop 368

-
Image
The Scoutmaster of Troop 368 contacted the Pennsylvania Cave Commission looking for a way to take his Boy Scout Troop on a beginner cave exploring trip. He didn’t want a commercial cave with walk ways and lights. He was looking for crawling and climbing and getting muddy.

A friend of mine from the PCC forwarded his request to me hoping I could help. This was all back in 2016 and May 2017 we made this happen.

Their meeting place was a bit far for me to travel to give a cave talk at their Troop meeting. We set up a Skype call which worked out really well. We could see each other and talk about caves, how they are formed and how we, as cavers, try to preserve them.

Coming from difference places, we all met up at a convenience store about a mile from the cave. They were all set and ready to go. At the cave we distributed and checked helmets and lights. Inside the gate entrance we had a reminder talk about safety and cave edict and made all the introductions.  These guys were good sports…
Read more