Minutes from TriTrog General Meeting 10/23/2007

Attendees - John Plyler (Vice Chair), Kathy Thompson, Matthew van Fossen, Samantha Keating, Pete Hertl, Dave Duguid, Mike Broome (Editor), Howard Holgate (Chair), Hayden Holgate, Ken Walsh (Secretary), and Will Summer

John Plyler called the meeting to order and initiated introductions of those present. He announced that we'd be holding the meeting after the meeting at Armadillo Grill.

Mike Broome announced that Matt Jenkins' great photo gallery site for the TriTrogs was not going to be available any longer because the server was gone. Mike had them all on CD and agreed to look into options for getting the photos on another site linked to the TriTrog web site.

Mike had also received an email from Duke's TIP program looking for caves to lead teenagers to in the NC mountains; he pointed them to the Flittermice Grotto for more information about the appropriate cave to visit in that area.

We scheduled a vertical practice for 10/25/2007 at 7 PM at John's house in Raleigh (Will and Ken joined John for the practice).

Pete Hertl shared his trip report about his VAR/MAR trip. After prerigging the day before, he ran a five-hour trip for seven people. They didn't have to rush through the cave and went to the back where he saw more bats than he's seen in the last few years combined. He also described large salamanders at the bottom of the drop and a climb on a static rope that almost imitated a dynamic's spring.

Ken talked about his VAR/MAR trip that no one wanted to join him on (survey in Middle of Nowhere Cave), so he signed up instead for the through trip traveling to Alpena Cave. Barry Horner had surveyed, modified, and explored the new sections of the cave, so he led an excellent tour for six along and in the stream that is Alpena Cave. Ken mentioned that the delay in putting out signup sheets until 10 PM allowed people to arrange their own trips before the signups went out, but Pete thought that the mad rush at 10 PM was a bit extreme.

Mike and Pete also described their rappel at New River Gorge that went smoothly with no incidents.

The featured video was The History of Vertical Caving from the NSS Library.