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…
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Troop 677, Bozeman, MT Goes To Dragonbreath Cave, Idaho
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by - Eli Kutsch, SPL, Troop 677 Troop 677 of
Bozeman, MT recently headed to Idaho for our first caving high adventure (low
adventure?) experience. We were guided by Vern Bowden, an experienced caver and
scouter from Manhattan, MT. We were also joined by an adventuresome scout from
Troop 676.
Mr. Bowden came to our troop meeting the
week before our trip to show us how to “be prepared” for this trip in terms of
the necessary gear, caving “leave no trace” ethics, safety awareness, and
positive attitudes. We thought we knew what to expect…..but were soon surprised
by the rugged beauty of the lava desert and the cave itself!
We followed Mr.Bowden off-road through
miles of sage and lava rock and wondered how anyone could have found this cave
in such a remote area. We learned later that the rubble resulting from the
collapse of a portion of the Dragonbreath lava tube caused a suspicious
formation that was noticed from above by someone in a plane!
When we arrived in the area of the cave,
Mr. Bowden led us to a small area where there was more grass than sage and we
set up our camp. We brought the troop fire barrel and stand so we could avoid
leaving any trace of our campfire and could be especially cautious in the dry
conditions.
After camp was set up-we headed to the
cave entrance. We put on our helmets and lights; got
on our work gloves; loaded our daypacks with extra light sources, water, snacks
and emergency gear. The cave entrance was a small crack in
the lava boulder jumble-but it opened immediately into a giant room. Of course,
the sight of this secret space caused my little brother Eric start to humming
the theme music from “Indiana Jones”!
The lava tube was massive in some spots,
like an airplane hangar. In other spots it became more
narrow, but never a tight squeeze. Mr. Bowden pointed out interesting things
such as “moon-milk”, soda straws, roots sticking down from the roof, and the
skeletons of pack rats. After a while, we got to marvel at the
bright red “secondary lava flow” that cut a channel in the floor of the lava
tube and was even hot enough to re-melt the rock walls of the original tube.The only cave life that we encountered
was a single bat that fluttered past us.
After nearly a mile of careful travel
underground we stopped to rest and snack-being careful not to drop any crumbs.
While there, we turned off all of our lights for a minute to experience total
darkness. We returned to the entrance.
We climbed out back into natural light and desert heat-a different world! My
Dad mentioned that several Native American tribes have origin stories that
involve people emerging from the ground like we did.
At that time we realized that we had not seen
litter or any trace of other people in the cave. We were grateful to the cavers
who went before us for allowing us to feel like we were the very first people
to see this beautiful cave.
We returned to camp and cooked dinner. That night we stargazed after our
campfire and were lucky enough to see the International Space Station fly
overhead!
We backed up early and headed back north after a quick breakfast. On
the way home, we stopped to climb and play on some sand dunes.
We had a great time, learned a lot, and
are very grateful to Mr. Bowden for showing us our first wild cave!
Join me on Twitter @youcave. Check us out on Face Book and Google+. And share us with your friends. If you ask a question in the comment section I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks, Allen “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but well placed footsteps, kill nothing but time.” – cavers’ creed
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.
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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 …
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…
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