John Wilkerson, Art Katser, and Ken DeJonge attended the January cleanup
trip at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. The clean up projects are done in steps.
The materials slated for removal are torn apart and removed from their current
locations then placed in a staging area of sorts. In this cleanup the materials were
removed from the Echo River and Cascade Hall area and placed in areas which are
not in the "flood zone" to prevent them from floating away. Items removed
consisted of  hauling bags of  lumber, heavy electric wire and lights.
Much of the lumber had already been removed and cut up however it needed
to be placed in bags then hauled away from the flood zones. The Wire had to be
dug out of the sand and/or from under breakdown and the lights needed to be removed
from the cave walls after which they were hauled away.
 Forty or fifty years ago someone hauled all the stuff into the cave to create trails
and walkways which are now being removed in order to return some
of the cave back to its original state, or as close to that as it can get.
The next scheduled clean up will be in April and will consist of hauling all the unwanted
materials up to the surface where they will be recycled or properly disposed of.
If you are interested in attending a future clean up project contact John Wilkerson.
 

L2R
Ken, Art, and John stopping briefly for a photo.
 

Volunteers heading toward the work site at Echo River.

This is the end of the boardwalk which is in the process of being removed.
Approximately 50' has already been removed. 370' remain in this section.

This is a continuation of the boardwalk section that you see above.
Notice the patches on the walk surface covering the badly rotted wood.
 

This is part of the second section which needs to be removed.
Its approximately 297' in length.