Shasta Area Grotto

info about what they are and why the exist

What they are – A record to be filled in by visitors

Why they are there – To determine the number of visitors/usage of the cave. A factor considered in cave management. This is often collected for the owners/managers, and to satisfy curiosity.They are also part of a long term NSS study to find out how many/what caves receive usage, from what groups, how they are equipped and how frequently they are visited, geographically where visitors are from, whether it is mostly cavers that are there or the general public.

We used to have a Special Use Permit with the USFS, to maintain cave registers in a few of the heavily-used lava caves on the McCloud Ranger District, we elected to not renew this and removed the cave registers which we maintained. We maintained registers that gave a conservation message and offered a place for the visitors to leave their names. The data was used in estimation the number of visitors the caves receive each year. This data in return, gives the land manager sometime to compare past and present usage, and to justify future funding to administer and maintain these sites. Generally, we do not like to put anything into caves, as it is unsightly and detracts from the visitor’s cave experience, but justify these registers as a needed tool in educating the public about their own potential impacts to caves.

In the Lava Beds National Monument, which is in Northern California, there are registers in some of the caves which lets the rangers know about the kind of usage of the more wild caves in the park.

The Shasta Area Grotto currently does not have a cave register program. We in the past have had some but we have removed all traces of our registers and discontinued the program.