Crystal Sequoia Cave trustee and restoration meeting On friday May 5th at about 9:20PM,  Myself, Tony Williams and Tom LaFrank left for Sequoia National Park, to go to the Crystal Sequoia Cave trustee and restoration meeting. The weather was great on the way down and the trip went smoothly with no problems. As we got into the park the weather started to change and we found ourselves in the middle of some thunder clouds which drastically dropped the temperature from the eighties to the sixties We arrived at the cave parking lot around 2:30PM and found out that we were the first to arrive at the parking lot which is where we would be camping for the weekend. We all quickly set up our tents and waited for the others to start showing up. The first of the other trustees to arrive was Allen Hager from the So. Cal. grotto followed a few hours later by Bill Roberts and his wife Mary, also from the So. Cal. grotto and the others would trickle in through out the rest of the night and early morning. After waking up to an over cast sky we counted a total of eighteen people there to participate in the weekends activities. At about 8:30AM Joel Despain the Parks cave specialist arrived and laid the weekends task. It was decided that myself, Bill Roberts and Mike Dillon from the So. Cal. grotto would be in charge of installing a hand rail in the Ephemeral Pools area while the others would be pushing wheelbarrow loads of contaminated diesel dirt up the steep half mile trail to the parking lot. Years ago when the cave was first set up for electric lighting there was a generator in the side entrance of the cave which had a slow leak that no one knew about until a few years ago when other restoration projects removed old iron ductile pipes from the old bathrooms and in the process had to dig through where the generator used to sit and the contaminated dirt was discovered. So after getting a welder, chop saw, sawsalls, rotor hammer drill, four sacks of concrete, grinders and 160 feet of stainless steel tubing hauled down to the cave the work began. First we had to drill 2" by 10" deep hole in the pathway next to the pools to set the post for the railing in and after that we had to run the top and bottom railings and weld everything in place. By the end of the day saturday we had all the railings ran except for the last rail on the bottom end, so we decided to come back in the morning and install it and cement all the post and finish up all the welds on the railings we already had installed. Some of the others had spent most of the day exploring the vast passages of the cave system, my group never had time, but there is always next time! Saturday night we had a potluck with lots of good food and lots of laughs and stories shared. Sunday morning we woke up to beautiful sunny skies and warm temperatures. Work was started around 9:00AM and the rest of the hand railing went quickly along with the cement and the welding would have gone quickly except that we ran out of the welding gas and had to wait for someone to bring the spare bottle from the parking lot. We completed all of the work by 12:00PM and headed up the hill with all the tools. After a short rest for some food and drinks we loaded the truck and said our goodbyes and were on the road by 1:20PM and were back at my house at 6:10PM. Mike

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