What Happened at the last meeting

December, 2004

Because of the Christmas party, there is no meeting in December

November 29, 2004

There were 10 adult grotto members at the grotto meeting tonight and one guest. The grotto members were: Jason Thomas, Brian Masney, Don Humphrey, Carl Werntz, John Barth,  Doug Moore, Doc Gilmore, Bob Griffith, Mary Davis and Doug McCarty. The guest was Bob Anderson of Quiet Dell in Harrison County

Topics discussed were:

Christmas Party: The party will be at 6pm on December 19 (a Sunday) at Bob and Mary's house in Morgantown. More details will come in the mail. The grotto will buy a meat and cheese plate. Bring a covered dish or desert. There will be a Gift Exchange of  $10 worth of caving related items.

Organ Cave Trip: Out of popular demand, the post Christmas trip will be an Organ Cave through trip--from the Lipps Entrance to the Commercial Entrance, with a few detours. We will tentatively meet at Shoney's in Lewisburg at 8:30am. I will arrange permission with the owners and set things up. (We may have two grotto members from far-flung places joining us--Dave Moyer and Kevin Frick).

Beginners Hand Out: In reference to what we discussed last week, I passed around a beginners handout/liability release for people to look at. Mary made some constructive criticisms which will be added or corrected, and I will put the finished product on the internet for people to download as they need it.

Officers Nominated: Nominations were opened up for officers. Surprisingly, only four people were nominated: Doug McCarty for Chairman, Jason Thomas for Vice Chairman, Bob Griffith for Secretary Treasurer, Chris Carpenter for Board Member. Following rules to a T, ballots will be sent out and voting will take place at the Christmas party

Druid Cave Dig Report: Brian Masney and I gave a report on the Druid Cave Dig (Details will be in upcoming issues of the WV Caver.)

Shavers Mountain Survey: I gave a brief report of the Shavers Mountain Survey invited people to join us

Spring VAR 2005: Will be at the state fairgrounds in Lewisburg April 29-May 1. Sounds like a great VAR in the making. A pdf of the pre-registration form can be found on the caves.com web site here

40th Anniversary Patch. All grotto designers and artists are asked to design a 40 Anniversary Grotto Patch. The judging and decision will be done at the January meeting, so remember to bring your designs.

Presentation: Bob Anderson gave us some information of the new CCC Museum in Quiet Dell, in harrison County. He gave us some CCC information in general as well.

The next grotto meeting will be at Three Ways in on the evening of Monday, January 31. Meet at 6:30 to eat. 7pm for the actual meeting. Remember that there is no meeting in December because of the Christmas party.

Finances: It turns out that we made around $1300 at VAR, which when added to the money we made at the last VAR is a pretty penny. We kicked around what to do with the money and decided to hang on to it until either WVCC or MAKC makes a purchase in our Preston County/Tucker County/Northern Randolph County area. Then we will make substantial donation to the purchase of that cave.

Unpaid Dues: Bob is going to send around a notice to remind people to pay their dues. 

Cave owner relations: I sent a letter to the owner of Fanchlers Pit thanking him for letting us go into his cave. I included a photo from the cave and offered to take him into it or to do work there if he ever needs it. We discussed the desirability of re-instituting the practice of sending Christmas cards to landowners. To Frank, Mrs. Teter, etc.

Adapt-a-Highway: The Bowden Adopt-a-Highway clean up will be on Saturday, November 20th. Meet at the Bowden cave parking lot at 10am.

Spruce Knob: We discussed the incident on Friday night at Spruce Knob where one of the members of WVUSG severely burned his foot and had to be taken to the Pittsburgh Burn Clinic. He went to sleep by the fire and his leg caught on fire.

Mystic Weekend: We discussed the trip to Mystic Cave on Sunday, which we regarded as a very successful trip. We had 16 participants, including five relatively new cavers. One of our beginners (Darcie), however, wrote us a curious two and a half page letter thanking us for "one of the most amazing adventures of [her] life" but making some suggestions on how we might better conduct beginner caving trips. Some of her suggestions were very good:

1. Having a beginners packet. I have been referring beginners to the web site for the necessary info, but an actual packet of information would be better. (I told Darcie to look at the web site for info on what she needed at the last meeting, but she apparently either didn't understand what I meant or forgot. That in itself clearly shows that we should use a packet instead of relying on the website.) I already have a such a packet I used prior to the website that I'll bring that to the next meeting and let people review it. 

2. Making it clear in the beginning that it is perfectly okay not to do something someone is uncomfortable with. We forget that things we take for granted may freak beginner cavers out--but that they may lack the assertiveness to say anything.

3. Get contact information in case they get injured

 Other suggestions she made were appropriate perhaps for her, but wouldn't be for 99% of our beginning cavers (based on our combined experiences with the hundreds of beginners we have taken through caves). Basically, she felt we would do better if we gave beginners one on one guidance through a cave, including pre-cave screening to make sure the person was physically and mentally able to handle the cave--essentially she suggested that we hold the beginner's hand all the way through the cave.

We assume that when somebody asks to go caving, they have checked out the web site as we have suggested and have adjudged themselves to be physically and mentally able to cave. We assume people will speak up if they are uncomfortable with a situation--especially when they are given a description of the passage, a clear yes or no option and no verbal pressure. Perhaps we have been wrong in assuming these things. Her letter will certainly make us more cautious in the future. Still, while we were taken aback by her perception of the trip, we appreciated her feedback and suggestions.

Christmas Party/Officer Nominations: We brought these topics up in order to get people thinking about them for the next meeting.

Christmas Cave Trip to Organ: We believe we will do an Organ through trip. No date is set yet. We need to get feedback on the list serve and see when people want to do it.

Shavers Mountain Survey: Will be on November 6th. Meet at 9am at Alpine Lodge.

The next grotto meeting will be at Three Ways in on the evening of Monday, November 29th. Meet at 6:30 to eat. 7pm for the actual meeting.

Dues Bob wanted to remind everyone that dues was due at OTR.

VAR Thanks to all for what we perceive as a job well done.

I am going to write a letter to the owner of Fanchler's Pit thanking him for giving us permission to go there. We are also going to offer to take him in again (he expressed that desire when I talked with him) and offer to do some work on the land--perhaps to put a new fence around the pit.

At first glance, Bob reports that we made about $843. Since we weren't in it for the money, that's not bad.

If you took any good pictures please send me copies and I'll put the best of them on the web site.

New Business included:

Landowner Relations: I proposed that we start being more active in general in landowner relations--maybe doing one or two landowner relations projects a year.

Camping/Caving: On the weekend of October 23rd we are going to have a camping/caving weekend with WVUSG. We will get Gatewood Group Campground near Spruce Knob. We will camp out, cook hot dogs and hamburgers and look at the stars. We will do a beginner trip to Mystic on Saturday. If anyone is just coming down for the day we will meet at Harpers Store at Seneca Rocks at 10am. People are asked to RSVP to me to via e-mail so we can be sure enough people are going to make it worth getting the campground..

Organ:  There has been interest expressed in doing an Organ through trip. If we do that it will probably be in December.

Vertical Training: Five different grotto members have told me that they would like to learn to do vertical. We debated a bit about the format. My first inclination was to do a one day intro to vertical rather like they do at conventions, followed later by a weekend long vertical class. Doug Moore thought we should simply do it as a single weekend thing. We tabled it for now and are asking for input from the people who were interested in learning

Anniversary: We all had a piece of the Mon Grotto 40th anniversary cake.

Presentation: Don Ferguson showed pictures of his recent ascent of Mt. Rainier.

The next grotto meeting will be on Monday October 25th.

Early arrivers will rendezvous at Walmart in Elkins at 11:30 sharp and caravan to the OTR site. 

The grotto decided to dispense with the traditional Sunday spaghetti dinner this year. 

Cave Trips

I am doing a dry run of my Otter Creek Cave Hike on September 11. Anybody who wants to go with me can rendezvous at Tucker County Inn at 9am.

New Business

I brought up a need to do an intro to vertical session after VAR. People can try out various systems and decide what they want. After they put their systems together we will have a full blown vertical class. I will bring that up after VAR when I can once again sleep at night.

VAR:

Guidebook--the deadline for articles is OTR.

Saturday Evening Meal--Doug Moore is going to give MARG another week and if they don't want it, have Camp Kidd do it.

Band--We're waiting to hear from the Terminal Syphons

Led Trips--Brian expressed a little concern about the lack of responses to his e-mail asking for people to volunteer as trip leaders. Doug Moore told him not to worry--that we could arrange for that at OTR.

40th Anniversary Celebration--Cara and Marty will have a budget of $200.

Speaker--Bob is going to keep in touch with Ed McCarthy and try to get him there either Friday or Saturday night. I will contact Ray Garton and see if he can put together a program on the early days of Tucker County Survey or something of the sort. 

Adopt-a-Highway: We will meet at the Bowden parking lot at 1pm on Sunday, August 15

Blackwater Pit Trip: We will rendezvous at the Tucker Country Inn at 9am on Saturday, August 21st. We need a cable ladder. I will send out an e-mail to the list serve to see who has the grotto's cable ladder. It would also be nice to have a map of the cave. 

OTR: We briefly discussed what to make at the traditional Sunday meal. We have had spaghetti for the last two years. Last year someone suggested we switch to soup beans and corn bread this year. We'll visit the issue again at the next meeting

It was nice to welcome Kevin, Josh and Justin Keplinger to the meeting. Kevin recently rejoined the NSS after many years and his sons Josh and Jason are enthusiastic new members. 

The next meeting will be Monday, August 30th at Three Ways Inn in Fairmont.

Celebration of the Outdoors: We gave a report on the event. Everyone involved felt it went quite well.

Vertical Training: Doug Moore had talked about doing a vertical training on the weekend of July 31st and August 1st. He is now not sure he will be able to get that together--so that may and may not happen. I suggested that some of we vertical people could pitch in to help in whatever way Doug sees fit. Stay tuned for updates.

VAR: 

Don Humphrey volunteered to contact former or inactive Mon Grotto members and invite them to the 40th Anniversary celebration. He will get Alan Carpenter to help him with that.

Guidebook: Mary Davis and Doug Moore will work on the guidebook. Doug has already gotten a quote on the printing costs from an outfit in Florida. Bob Griffith is going to write an article on the history of Tucker County. I will write an article comparing the description of the Great Cave of Dry Fork of Cheat River with a description of Cave Hollow. I will also write an article about the history of the grotto. Don Ferguson is going to interview some old Mon Grotto members for the guidebook. Brian Masney is going to put together a guide to non-caving things to do in Tucker County. Cave descriptions will come from Tucker County Survey records and other sources. (Any other article writers out there?)

Beverages: Jason Thomas will be in charge of beer and soft drinks. We figure about 3 kegs of beer will do. 

Saturday evening meal: Doug Moore will contact either Tucker Country Inn or just get it through Camp Kidd. A third option is that MARG might do it to make a little money. However, there is a training that day, so that may not be doable.

Led Cave trips: Brian Masney will organize those. Don will talk with Alan about contacting the owner of Lukes Cave and 76 Cave so we can do led trips there. 

Non-caving led trips. Doug Moore will be the organizer. There is talk of a mountain biking trip, a fly fishing trip and a paleontology trip up Horseshoe Creek.

Project at Limestone Mountain: I will get on the stick and find out who owns the windward side of Limestone Mountain and work on obtaining permissions.

Program for Saturday night: Bob Griffith has talked with Ed McCarthy about doing a slide show, but he is not sure if he'll be able to make it because of work. Other suggestions were Jeff Bray doing a presentation on Maxwelton Sink Cave, Aaron Bird with something on Raders Valley, or Doug Medville doing a presentation on something. Don Ferguson will talk with Jeff and Aaron. I will e-mail Doug Medville.

Anniversary Celebration: Cara Doud and Marty McKinley are heading this up. As the chairguy, I will say a few words and get a few people up to say a few words, tell an amusing tale or two about the grotto and so forth. 

I pointed out that we need to mention that there are flush toilets and a few camper hookups in our publicity.

New Members: We picked up two new members. Don Ferguson, a long time caver and member of WVUSG, and Heather Robertson, who we met at the Celebration of the Outdoors.

Cave trip: Assuming permission is gotten, we have scheduled a caving trip to Lukes Cave and 76 Cave on July 24th (a Saturday). I will disseminate more info on the trip via the list serve once permission is obtained.

New Business: The only new business was scheduling a summer Adopt-a-Highway, which we tabled.

Program: Doc Gilmore gave a slide show featuring old pictures of Indian Cave in Harrison County with some great close ups of the petrogliphs. He also had several shots of an old time OTR (at Alpine Shores) and a forgotten grotto trip to Sinnett Thorne.

Thanks to WVU Student Grotto for all their help.

The next meeting will be Monday, July 26th at Three Ways Inn in Fairmont.

Celebration of the Outdoors: The plan is that we will show up at 9am with garbage bags prepared to clean Cooper's Rock Cave. After the cave is cleaned we will set up. Bob will present a slide show on caving. Doc has given us some historical caving items for a display. I will bring a shot bag so we can put some ropes up in two trees for a vertical demonstration. I will do a frog. Jeff Lydic will do a rope walker. Rich will do knots. Afterwards we will take up to 15 people into Coopers Rock Cave. I will bring 15 helmets and lights. If there is anyone really interested in caving we will take them to Barton's on the following day.

VAR: The plan is to have it at Camp Kidd. Since I am not a negotiator, to my great relief, Doug Moore volunteered to talk with the Camp Kidd folks and get an overall price. I will go ahead and contact the Terminal Syphons and see if they will play. We will look into having Tucker Country Inn cater it as we did in 1995. We will ask Front Royal Grotto if they want to do their pancake breakfast. Interested parties are asked to write articles on Tucker County for the guidebook. We are going to table everything else until we definitely have the site locked down.

Bob White Cave: Don Ferguson brought a new register container for Bob White. (Thank's Don!) I will get a new register book.

Vertical Class: Doug Moore has gotten such an overwhelming response he may have two seperate vertical classes. The tentative dates are July 31-August 1st. Remember, these dates are tentative.

Shavers Mountain Survey: I gave a report on what's happening on the mountain and encouraged folks to come on down for the weekend of June 4-6. 

Cave Trip: Rich, Bob and I talked about doing a day trip this coming Saturday. The destination is yet to be determined--maybe Carpenter Swago, maybe Simmons Mingo.

Festival of the Outdoors We further discussed our presentation at the Festival of the Outdoors at Coopers Rock on June 12. We decided we nedded to clean up Coopers Rock Cave that morning. We will get some black plastic to drape around the corner of a pavillion in order to make it dark enough for a slide show.

Bob White On the management trip we found three piece of garbage in the cave and four pieces outside. We also found that the register was like a roll of wet toilet paper. You certainly couldn't write in it. We will work on getting a new register.

McClungs Cave at YTR Don Ferguson gave a trip report about a long trip in McClungs during YTR.

VAR I gave a report on how things went at VAR and about the fact that the Mon Grotto will be hosting the Fall VAR in Tiucker County. We discussed locations. Doug Moore and Don Ferguson are going to check on Timberline. I will check on Camp Horseshoe and Camp Kidd as back ups. Niether Canaan Valley State park nor Blackwater Falls State Park are suitable because they lack pavillions or shelters. We discussed the following aspects of VAR:

Guidebook--both Doug and I are already planning on things to put into it--it will be a focus on Tucker County guidebook with cave descriptions, Tucker County geology/hydrology, historical stuff, cave
related legends and tales. Local sights and such--like Blackwater Falls, the Olson Fire Tower, Otter Creek and so forth.

Trips--We plan to offer a variety of trips on Saturday, including a variety of surveying trips, ridgewalking trips, led cave trips, hiking (up the Blackwater Canyon to check out the karst features and small caves, a caving hike into Otter Creek to Confluence and Coal Run and even a led mountain biking trip. We may also have a conservation project. And we may even have a raft trip down the Dry Fork to raise money for WVCC

Food and beer--this will depend on our location.

Band--we will have a band Saturday night. Think about some good local bands who won't charge us an arm and a leg. (Or we may try to get the Terminal Syphons).

Friday night--what are we gonna do on Friday night? Think of something new and interesting.

Program-we need a program on Saturday night--a speaker with a slide show/power point show. Who would be good? Who would be interesting?

40th Anniversary Mon Grotto Celebration--what will we do for the party? We want to get as many Mon Grotto members and former members there as we can--if not for the weekend, at least for the evening. We will send out invitations. We need a cake.

Don and Doug came up with the idea of giving each registrant a very cool nalgene bottle with a list of VAR organizations printed on it.

We'll get more organized once we have a location nailed down.

The next meeting will be on May 24th, 2004. We do not meet the last Monday of the month in May because of Memorial Day.

Festival of the Outdoors at Coopers Rock- This will occur on June 12 (a Saturday). The grotto will give a presentation on caving (with a slide show) and will take small groups of people into Coopers Rock Cave. We may offer a beginners cave trip for the following day if there is anyone who really shows an interest. Mary Davis is the point person on this. 

VAR- I will make a bid to host Fall VAR in Tucker County to celebrate Mon Grotto's 40th anniversary. We discussed the work involved, and we agreed that we were willing to do what needs to be done. Doug Moore said we may not be able to host it because VPI Cave Club apparently hopes to do so. If not, we will plan a private celebration.

Great X T-Shirt. It was decided that we will raffle the Great X T-shirt at OTR for $1 a ticket or $5 for six tickets. The money will go the WVCC. We will award the shirt at Fall VAR if we host it. If not, we will award the shirt at OTR.  

Adapt-a-Highway/Bob White management trip Because we will get some free trash picker upper gadgets, we have moved the Adopt-a-Highway to Saturday, April 17. We will meet at the Bowden parking lot at 9am. Afterwards, because it is Tucker County Weekend, we will do a management cave trip to Bob White. Some folks may camp in Tucker that evening and do Tucker County Survey stuff on Sunday.

Web Site Report- I gave a report on the web site--how many hits we have gotten in six months of counting, and so forth.

Cornwell Cave- Doug Moore reported that the status of Cornwell Cave seems to be in limbo. Apparently, Allegheny Wood Products is no longer communicating with the caving community for some unknown reason.

Bats Kills at The Windmills- Doc Gilmore brought up the bat kills at the windmills on Backbone Mountain. Some folks were unaware of that, so we discussed the situation. (The situation is that there is a huge number of bats being killed by the windmills.) For more info check out these web sites: http://friendsofthealleghenyfront.org/newsdown7.htm  http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&newsid=5110  

And here is a story from the Charleston Daily Mail suggesting that the bat kills were just a fluke because "Someone left a sodium-vapor security light on, and the bats came in to feed on insects that were attracted to the light. It was basically just a blunder." http://www.dailymail.com/news/Outdoors/2004031951/display_story.php3?sid=2004031951&format=prn  

Vertical Gear at OTR- Bring your vertical gear to OTR. We will do a grotto trip to Fanchlers Pit.

Cavers Cruise- I informed people of the Cavers Cruise next January. For information go to  http://www.purringtonlooms.com/cruise/ 

Laurel Caverns- Doug Moore is having a get-to-know-Laurel-Caverns dayon April 10th, although I don't know when you are supposed to get there. For more info contact Doug.

Shavers Mountain Survey- I did a brief presentation on what is being done on Shavers Mountain, stressing the multiple digs, unsurveyed virgin cave and ridgewalking still to be done--with fair prospect for finding new caves. I stressed the fact that relatively few people are showing up and that since this is in our back yard it would be a good thing for grotto members to get involved with. The next Shavers Mountain Survey will be next weekend, April 3rd. Meet at Alpine Lodge at 9am. 

The next grotto meeting will be on Monday April 26, 2004 at Three Ways Inn in Fairmont. Meet at 6:30pm to eat. The meeting starts at 7pm.

VAR-Nobody at the meeting were sure they could make it, but a few are considering it. (I will be going for sure). 

Bob's Cave-Jason talked with Kenny Petrice, and he (Kenny) is having childcare problems, so for now the survey of Bob's is in limbo.

Bob White-Llew Williams was there about a month ago and found it clean and not in need of cleanup.

Great X Contribution-We have a thank-you for our $100 donation to the NSS Great-X Fund. Bob
will order an XL T-shirt which we will raffle off for additional donation money. Procedure to be determined.

Maiden Run- A local trip to Maiden Run (outside of Morgantown) was tentatively set for March 27.

The next meeting will be March 29, 2004 at Three Ways Inn in Fairmont

VAR--We passed out pre-registration forms for VAR and encouraged people to go. We also discussed our idea of hosting next year's Fall VAR on the weekend of October 8-10 2004 (in partnership with WVUSG) to coincide with the grotto's 40th anniversery. We would hold it either in Canaan Valley--perhaps at Timberline or we discussed the Old Mill north of Harmon. Of course, we need to get the idea to VAR. I will send a letter asking if we can host it. Brian and Doug are going to bring up the idea at a WVUSG meeting.

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