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CAVE RESEARCH FOUNDATION QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER MAY 2008 VOLUME 36, NO. 2 SCALING THE ROCK OF AGES See Carlsbad Cavern Restoration, page 6 2 CRF NEWSLETTER CRF National Expedition and Meeting Volume 36, No.2 October 25 - November 2, 2008 established 1973 Join the CRF officers and local cavers for a Send all articles and reports for submission to: great week of caving, meetings, and activities in William Payne, Editor Carlsbad New Mexico this fall. 11203 N . Auden Circle, Missouri City, TX 77459 The next CRF National Expedition will be a five-day intensive re-survey of Slaughter Can The CRF Newsletter is a quarterly publication of the Cave yon Cave inside Carlsbad Caverns National Research Foundation, a non-profit organization incorpo Park. Up to 18 cavers may jo in in the effort to rated in 1957 under the laws of Kentucky for the purpose of map this very beautiful cave that is approxi furthering research, conservation, and education about caves matelya mile long . Pat Kambesis is coordinat and karst. ing the survey project (Thank You Pat!), which Newsletter Submissions & Deadlines: will run from October 26 through 30. There Original articles and photographs are welcome. If intending may be additional survey work in Carlsbad Cav to jointly submit material to another publication, please in erns itself this-week in the evenings. If we have form the CRF editor. Publication cannot be guaranteed, es high demand, other caving objectives (probably pecially if submitted elsewhere. All material is subject to on BLM land) will be added to the expedition. revision unless the author specifically requests otherwise. Those working in the park will stay in the park For timely publication, please observe these deadlines: at the CRF huts during the week . If we have February issue by December I more people than the huts can accommodate May issue by March 1 there are hotel rooms and camping available at August issue by June 1 nearby White's City, just outside the park. November issue by September 1 There will not be a food plan for this expedi tion , but there are two f ully-stocked kitchens Before submitting material, please see publication available in the huts and so cavers should come guidelines at: www.cave-research.org prepared to cook. NEWSLETTER STAFF: Friday, October 31, 2008 will be the annual Content Editor: William Payne, CRF Board of Directors Meeting. Layout and Photos: Ralph Earlandson, Saturday, November 1, 2008 will be the annual members meeting . Both meetings will Mailing: Bob Hoke likely be held within the city of Carlsbad , 20 ©2008 Cave Research Foundation miles north of the park . CRF Southwest Opera tions Manager Barbe Barker will be coordinat Cave Research Foundation Board of Directors ing these events and is looking into some very President - Scott House, s nice venues. (Thank you Barbe!) Barbe is at Vice President - Joel Despain, Treasurer - Bob Hoke, t Note: All sketchers who work in the park Secretary - Bernie Szukalski, must be park-approved in advance. If you plan Hamilton Valley Director - Pat Kambesis to participate and are a sketcher please supply George Crothers, Charles Fox, Joyce Hoffmaster, Pat Kambesis with copies of good quality sur Pat Seiser, Diana Tomchick vey sketches that you made to forward to the Operations Council park . Pat is at . The park Barbe Barker (Guadalupes), Mick Sutton (Ozarks), requires sketching to scale and detailed cover Pat Helton & Bruce Rogers (Lava Beds), Dave West pages, and a north arrow, scale bar, sequential (Eastern), John Tinsley (Sequoia/Kings Canyon) numbering , date , and the sketcher ' s initials on every page . For information about the CRF contact: Other activities are being planned for the Scott House week , so set aside the dates now! For more in 1606 Luce St. formation and to sign-up please contact Joel De Cape Girardeau, MO 63701-5208 spain at or 559 565-3717 . phone 573-651-3782 Donations to CRF should be sent to: Cover Photo Bob Hoke. CRF Treasurer J a nice Tucker, Rebecca Crow and Deb Runyon 6J04 Kaybro St. of the CRF restoration team tackle the massive Laure l. MD 20707-2621 Rock of Ages formation in the Big Room of Carlsbad Cavern . Photo by Will Hughes . 3 From the President By: Scott House It.took a while to recover from the fun and Spike, Kyle, and I mapped a new Riverways friendship of the CRF 50 th anniversary meeting. cave (Poker Cave) while Mick, Sue, Gary , and Thanks go to all those who attended and made Jim searched in vain for a reported cave . Dan the thing a week to remember. and the rest of the group mapped the accessible Everybody should keep in mind the CRF Na portions of yet another new cave. It was a fine tional Expedition to the Carlsbad region during weekend to be out and about with really good the last week of October . More details will be people. coming so watch the website for latest updates . Jim Cooley and another caver from Kansas At the end of that week will be the CRF Annual City could return and do field work the next Meeting, hosted by Barbe Barker and our good weekend so wife Patti and I headed back out to folks from the southwest. the park again. We spent Friday hiking around So far this year has been extraordinarily the Tunnel Bluff area again so I could work on a busy. Fortunately I cleared other obligations sketch of surface features. The KCAG guys and set my sights on getting some good cave spent two days hiking around and monitoring work done during January. With your indul caves while Patti and I spent Saturday morning gence I will digress a bit into the fun of being resketching a rhyolite cave (honest, it has a active in the cave world . roof) before head ing out. The first weekend 0 f Jan u ary saw a gro up 0 f Prudence dictated that I spend a weekend at us descend on the Ozark Riverways ' Powder home but Tony Schmitt wanted to do something Mill Research Center for some survey work . the next weekend so prudence was shelved. Spike Crews, Kyle Rybacki , Dan Lamping, Ko Tony is a perpetually pleasant person who goes rey Hart , Dan Lamping, Tony Schmitt, and Kris at it with enthusiasm so a two man crew with ten Schulte all went to Cave S, which is a large, Tony being 60% of it is fun . We went out in going stream cave. They did good work there, very frigid temperatures to try to finish up yet surveying a bunch but bringing back more leads another R iverways ca ve. We did good work and than they started with. Charley Young and Max surveyed some muddy stuff but circumstances White from Springfield showed up and spent the and hibernating bats kept us from completing all day taking some nice photographs of the same our leads . The mud froze on our clothes as we cave . Meanwhile Mick Sutton, Sue Hagan, Jim hiked back to the vehicle . The old furnace ran Cooley, Gary Johnson and I went to a mess of all night keeping the research center warm that caves along the lower Current River in Tunnel night. Next day was too brutal and our gear too Bluff Natural Area. Too difficult to easily de mud-covered to contemplate in-cave work so we scribe, we had a good day of surveying both un fiddled with databases and cave locations for derground and above ground while also finding hours. a new cave and doing some bio inventory. This The next weekend was the Missouri Spe was a great crew and a lot of fun. The next day, leological Survey meeting. Most of us spent Tony Schmitt and Kristen Schulte in Cave S. Tunnel BIz~[r Shelter cave. Photo by .J. Cooley. Ph oto by Korey Hart. 4 Saturday indoors while some went surveying. of fun, with good people . Jerry and I have caved The next day (Sunday) Mick and Sue took Kyle together since the early 1970 's; one of the great to another cave while Andy Free, Spike, old things is caving with folks you have known for friend Jerry Wagner, and another warm body a long time and another is caving with friends (Ensign Fodder we named him in honor of the you didn't even know five years ago. This is nameless crew members who turned up dead in how generations mix in caving. We had a lot of Star Trek episodes) went to Outlaw Cave on Na fun and hope the ensign comes back! tional Forest lands for survey and inventory. I worked with Spike on cave files on the fol The cave was located and surveyed with an out Io wing day, co rrect ing e rro rs in the ca ve fi Ie s, stand ing crew. We then hiked to another nearby and also worked with Mark Twain National For cave which we began a new survey of (an older est folks getting a revised dataset into GIS . survey never resulted in a map). This was lots Then I headed to Jefferson City where the next day I w 0 r ked a II day wit h Bill E II i 0 tt r e fi n i n g even more cave locations . That was time well spent, and we worked hard while trying to ig nore the weather outside as the temps dropped from 70 to 20 . Thereafter I headed on to the Missouri Natural Resources Conference, an an nual conservation agencies event, where I met up with Mick Sutton, Bill Eddleman, Tom Aley, Gene Gardner, and lots of other agencies friends for a few days of papers, socials, and network ing ; this is the kind of thing that builds our reputation as an organization that gets things done .