Rob Harris, John Plyler, Howard and Hayden Holgate, Matthew van Fossen, Peter Hertl, Mark Daughtridge, Ken Walsh, Rob Phelps, Mike Broome, Matt Jenkins, Trina, and Diana Gietl were all in attendance.
Before the meeting began, Rob Harris described caves in Raleigh he remembers from his childhood. This possibility intrigued grotto members, and Rob agreed to check into which neighborhoods he might be remembering.
Everyone introduced themselves, and Mike Broome agreed to collect dues in the absence of the Treasurer.
Mike announced no changes to the web site. However, the Volunteer Values signup is the next item to go up on the site and will keep a log of volunteer activities over the year. The NSS gets grants based on volunteer hours. Members should look for an email across the list serve when it’s ready for use.
Diana acknowledged that programs from grotto members are better than those from the library, but she asked that people suggest topics of interest for future programs that may come from the grotto library.
Regarding the Center for Biological Diversity, Diana has been working on the letter to government officials in the Department of the Interior and Fish and Wildlife Service. It will also be sent to Senators and Congressmen for the local area, and she’ll cc the NSS. She passed the draft around for comments. Discussion then turned to the best way to share the letter with the government officials. I think we ended up deciding that Diana will share the letter with the entire list serve and invite members to add their names and addresses as signatures. Diana will then send the letter out electronically.
There is still a spot on the executive committee. Howard will take over in July as the Vice Chair. Diana will be arriving later at the next two meetings so will be unable to run the meetings.
There was discussion about how to treat the remaining grotto materials that came out of Brian Bolt’s house. Look for an announcement about organizing it, indexing it, serving it with beer or a cookout. We’ll rip out the cave maps and throw the rest on the grill. Mike will kill us if we wait 2-3 more years. Look for an announcement soon.
Mike read an email from Dr. Elwyn Simons about collecting giant lemur skulls from the pits in Madagascar. Ken filled in the rest of the details about how Dr. Simons plans to take two cavers on the August expedition, and he and Linda Waters put their names on the grant proposal Tuesday morning. Others were interested in traveling as well [sorry but Dr. Simons said that there are reasons he needs to limit the expedition size beside expenses].
Diana began the trip reports by describing how Dave Duguid, Ken, and Tanya McLaughlin went to document an historic saltpeter cave. Despite stories of an elaborate works, they found only old signatures and wooden plank boards. Dave and Ken surveyed just 350 feet of total cave while Diana and Tanya photographed.
The same group also checked for bat activity near the entrances of Buchanan Saltpeter, Marion Quarry, Worley’s, Hancock, North Fork, and Little Hancock. We saw bats near the entrance during our ½ hour stops but no activity indicating a chance of WNS. We also found out that the owner of Buchanan Saltpeter is amenable to letting trips visit the cave.
Mark Daughtridge and Matthew van Fossen gave a brief story of the sport trip to James Cave.
We were in Virginia. They went hiking at 1 AM. We made it to the cave by 1 PM.
We ate at a Mexican restaurant. Mark’s group couldn’t find our group. Mark kept us waiting while their group tried to find their way out of the cave. Fun trip.
A discussion about the Anabat training on May 5 in Asheville then began. Bat species may be separated by voice, but no one knew if such a device could be used as a remote bat counter at a cave entrance.
Dave Duguid will let us know if he hears more about a bat count at a bridge in Durham.
Other upcoming trips:
May 8—VAR Cleanup of Crystal Caverns
May 15—NRO in Cobleskill, Scoharie, NY
May 22—Spring VAR
June 11—Surveying Worley’s/Lovers Leap Caves and maybe some digging too
June 17-20—SERA Summer Cave Carnival
August 2-6—NSS Convention
After a break and a few switches in projectors, Peter Hertl entertained us with stories about his February trip down Fantastic Pit in Ellison’s Cave.
The meeting adjourned to The Diner on Glenwood Avenue.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment