Middle Cave Lake Clean-Up

Timpanogos Cave National Monument

November 3, 2001

 

Many tours of Timpanogos Cave have crossed Middle Cave Lake on an open grate catwalk.  Debris carried in stuck to the bottoms of the tourist's feet has fallen into the lake and accumulated over the many years.  This debris negatively impacted the esthetics as well as the undefined effects to the surrounding biota.  This project was started to reverse these effects.

 

On November 3, 2001, after the seasonal closure of the Timpanogos Cave to tours, the project to clean Middle Cave Lake started.  The group consisted of Jon Jasper, Cami Pulham, Trisha Sorber, Quincy Bahr, Chuck Acklin, Mike Beer, and Scott Robinson.  The project started by draining the 80ft long by 10ft wide lake into a holding pond that would reserve water needed to clean the lake’s walls and floor.  Introduced sediment was gathered in 5-gallon buckets and hauled out of the cave.  Then the walls and floor were scrubbed and sprayed using backpack sprayers.  By the end of the day, a 10ft by 15ft section of the lake was cleaned.

 

 

Additional supplies were carried to the cave to produce more productive work days.  Heavily amounts of snow that fell over the Thanksgiving weekend, and all clean-up efforts were aborted.  The project is scheduled to continue in the fall of 2002!   

 

 

Return to the Timpanogos Grotto Website

Copyright © 2002 Timpanogos Grotto

Maintained by Jon Jasper - last updated 2/27/2002