Howard Holgate, Mike Broome, Mark Little, Martin Groenewegen, Duke Dooley, Rob Harris, Melissa, Bryce Schroeder, Pete Hertl, Mark Daughtridge, and Ken Walsh attended the meeting.
Dues go to Mark Little ($15 for regular members and an additional $7 for family members). Mark then shared the annual Treasurers Report. He reported that we are running a balanced budget, but we still had allocated $100 for conservancy donations from a VAR door prize a few years back. The treasurers report did not include some wear-and-tear fees collected for borrowed grotto gear.
Mike Broome had no news about changes to the web site.
Howard thanked everyone who brought desserts to the Holiday Party. However, he insisted that they should go home with people in the future.
Wiley Elementary School will be holding its Science Night on the evening of March 10, and the TriTrogs are invited to come back to talk about caves again. The theme this year is Mythbusters, so Pete Hertl and Ken Walsh are soliciting input about what myths we should try to bust.
Howard announced that the NSS is now offering a membership category titled Conservation Life Members. A five-year donation of $1000 will be going toward cave conservancy efforts.
Mark Little made a motion to donate the previously dedicated $100 for cave conservancies to ACC Gilley’s Cave Capital Fund. The motion was accepted unanimously.
At least five members were interested in the TriTrogs producing T-shirts in the next year.
As the first trip report, Melissa described her first caving trip in Starnes Cave with Rob Harris. They enjoyed a formidable mud wall, an interesting waterfall, and lots of climbing on rocks and ropes last October.
Mike Broome described a BCCS expedition trip he took the previous weekend with Lisa Lorenzin. Nittany Grotto joined the expedition, so they had seven different trips headed to three different caves. Lisa and Mike changed clothes in a neighbor’s garage and then descended into Wishing Well Cave. Mike shared how the dig through sandstone was now shored up using polyurethane foam. His team surveyed for 8 hours and 550 feet of passage across a very muddy room. The Romper Room had a dry sand floor and trended downward at the same dip angle as the rest of the cave. The team took a side trip to the well-decorated Sugar Run before exiting after ten hours underground.
Mike also shared a description of the first survey into Copenhaver’s Cave in Smyth County. Dave Duguid, Matt Jenkins, Trina Cooke, Ken Walsh, and Mike stayed in the warmth of Tanya McLaughlin’s house the night before, after shoveling a few inches of snow from her driveway. They met a nice landowner and an icy cave entrance with some spectacular icicles. Matt, Trina, and Ken surveyed the upper cold part of the cave while the other three dropped the cable ladder down twenty feet. Tanya did fine going up and down the cable ladder, and Mike’s team worked their way down to a room full of breakdown blocks. Mike found a way to climb up through the breakdown to another open room before they quit surveying for the day. Mike’s suit was freezing on him as he returned to the car in 16-degree weather. While Matt and Trina went snowshoeing the next day, Ken, Dave, and Mike went back to the open room. While surveying the Zen Garden, they found a duck under lead that led into a major mud-filled room and down to pretty rimstone dams and a larger flat-bottomed room. They exited without crawling back up the mud mountain.
After the break, the officers described their duties, and elections were held. We welcome the newly elected board: Howard Holgate (Chair), Ken Walsh (Vice Chair), Bryce Schroeder (Editor/Webmaster), Mark Little (Treasurer), and the empty seat (Secretary). Anyone wishing to run for Secretary should contact one of the officers.
Upcoming trips include:
January 29—Smyth County survey (Ken)
February 6 – 3D viewing of The Sanctum at Crossroads Cinema (4:30 PM and dinner afterwards)
February 19-20—Copenhaver’s Cave--leave on Saturday morning (Dave?, Mike, Lisa, and Ken)
May 1—Spring VAR
July—Convention in Glenwood Springs
Ken Walsh shared the program “Caving with CRF in the Ozarks” where he explained what the Cave Research Foundation is and then shared vacation slides.
The After-the-Meeting Meeting was held at Armadillo Grill.
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