September 15 News

Cave & Karst Science
October 5-9, 2015—The 14th Multidisciplinary
Conference on Sinkholes and the Engineering
and Environmental Impacts of Karst (also known
as the Sinkhole Conference) will be held in
Rochester, MN. This conference is co-hosted by
the National Cave and Karst Research Institute
and the Minnesota Ground Water Association.
More information and registration can be found
at www.sinkholeconference.com
Send items for the calendar to davebunnell@
comcast.net at least 6 weeks before desired month of
publication (i.e., by March 15 for the May issue).

2

NSS  News, September 2015

Speleogenesis Commission of the International
Union of Speleology. More information and
updates on registration at www.deepkarst.org

Foreign
August 13–20, 2016—European Federation
meeting in Ingleton, UK
July 23-29, 2017—17th International Congress
of Speleology, Sydney, Australia. Contact
[email protected]

Adam Haydock

September 3-7, 2015—The annual Old Timers
Reunion, Dailey, WV. For more information visit
www.otr.org
September 4-7, 2015—Rocky Mountain
Regional/Black Hills Caver Classic at Cavern
Wells, Host Springs, South Dakota. Contact:
Steve Baldwin [email protected] / 605673-1571
September 4-7, 2015—Sewanee Mountain Cave
Fest hosted by the Sewanee Mountain Grotto
in the heart of TAG. Amenities include a bath
house, hot tub & sauna, and thousands of caves
within an hours drive. There is no registration fee;
however we do ask that attendees donate an item
to the Saturday night auction and bring a dish
for the potluck dinner. The campground charges
$5/person for the entire weekend. We will have
led cave trips, a bat float to Nickajack Cave, a
potluck dinner, and of course our auction. For
more information email rowland7840@bellsouth.
net.
October 8th -11, 2015 - 38th Annual TAG Fall
Cave-In hosted by the Dogwood City Grotto on
Lookout Mtn. Near Menlo, GA. Visit tagfallcavein.
org for more information. Vendors contact Darrien
Dopp at 770.301.8228 or kvcrawler@yahoo.
com. You must be an NSS Member or quest to
register. No dogs, no generators, no air horns,
no off-highway vehicles, NO BOMBS.
October 9-11, 2015—Western Regional
gathering, Twentynine Palms, CA info:www.
westernregional2015.org/
October 15-18, 2015— Texas Cavers Reunion
at Paradise Canyon in Rio Medina, TX. Contact
[email protected] for more details.
October 15-17, 2015—Timpanogos Cave
Restoration Camp. Timpanogos Cave National
Monument invites volunteers to assist in three
days of restoration projects in this nationally
significant cave system. Work among abundant
helictites and colorful formations to help restore
natural conditions along the public tour route.
Free camping is available. For more information
contact Andy Armstrong 801-692-5049, andy_
[email protected]. Follow us on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/timpanogoscavenps.
October 19-23, 2015—The 21st National Cave
and Karst Management Symposium, Cave
City, Kentucky. For more information: www.
cave-research.org/NCKMS2015/ or contact Pat
Kambesis [email protected]
February 6-12, 2016—17th International
Vulcanspeleology Symposium, Ocean View,
Hawaii, U.S.A. Info: www.cavepics.com/IVS17
July 17-23, 2016— NSS 75th Anniversary
Convention - Ely, NV. Contact nss75th@caves.
org for more info. http://nss2016.caves.org

October 20-23, 2015—2nd International
Planetary Caves Conference, 20-23 October
2015, Flagstaff, AZ. Info: www.hou.usra.edu/
meetings/2ndcaves2015 or contact conference
organizer Jut Wynne: [email protected]
April 11-14, 2016—International conference
on the origins, resources, and management of
hypogene karst, Deep Karst in Carlsbad, NM.
Deep Karst 2016 is being organized by the
National Cave and Karst Research Institute in
cooperation with the Karst Hydrogeology and

Two views from Cueva Sorbetos, one of the many Puerto Rican caves deserving of preservation
efforts as presented in one of this month’s feature articles beginning on page 20. More of Adam
Haydock’s photos are featured on pages 18-19, in this issue’s Photographer Spotlight. He is
also the caver in these two photos.

Adam Haydock

USA

NSS News

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Mammoth Cave: End of an era, the Snowball Dining Room.......... 4

11310 Whisper Dawn
San Antonio, TX 78230
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Touring the Caves and Karst of Vietnam........................................ 6

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September 2015
Volume 73 Number 9

2250 Shady Creek Trail
Birmingham, AL 35216
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Please contact the office for address changes or back issues.

Jonathon Lewis

Jim Patera with Dave Bunnell

Historic Old Show Cave Postcards............................................... 16
Gary K. Soule

Puerto Rico Speleological Preservation and the ......................... 20
Importance of Sustainable Clean-up Efforts
Adam Haydock and Carlos Artiguez

National Cave and Karst Management Symposium 2015........... 31

NSS NEWS EDITOR
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Angels Camp, CA 95222

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Photographer Spotlight................ 18
Reading.......................................... 25
Cave Chronicles............................ 26
News and Notes............................. 27
Letters............................................ 29

Underground Update..................... 30
Underground Online...................... 28
Society News................................. 30
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Copyright ©2015
by the National Speleological Society, Inc.

Front cover:
Sculpted rock in Cueva Zumbo, part of the Rio Entandado Cave Sytem in Puerto
Rico. Photo by Adam Haydock.
Back cover: Images from Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, Vietnam
(photos by Dave Bunnell):
Left: Formations in Paradise Cave, the newest show cave in the park
Right: Entrance to Dark Cave, a semi-developed cave
Bottom: Phyllis Boneau with formations beyond the tour route in Paradise Cave
Department of Corrections

The caver on the cover of our August issue was mistakenly identified as Jose Gomez,
but is in fact Jose Morales, the organizer of the two expeditions covered in that issue.
Additionally, after we went to press the Photo Salon competition results were
finalized and the back cover shot by Kasia Biernacka not only received a Merit Award,
it also tied for second runner up in the overall competition.

It’s been six months since I last made a plea for new articles, back in March. It’s
time to make that plea again for more feature articles, with a special emphasis on
things that could garner the description of “news” to cavers. I know this issue has
basically a trip report as its main feature but its more of a travel magazine piece to
an outstanding example of something, in this case caves and karst in Vietnam. In
the March issue just mentioned, we focused on caves and karst of Laos, a most
excellent, trip in a lifetime excursion engineered by Dwight and Mary Deal. This
issue continues the saga and is being deployed from my Plan B queue of material
from my own adventures that can fill what would otherwise be nonexistent pages.
I hope you’ll agree that this one is better than filler, because any caver ought to be
interested in visiting a place with such awesome karst and what is now the largest
cave in the world, Son Doong. Stay tuned next year as 3 of us journey back to
Phang Nha to have the privilege to photograph it for the NSS News.
Dave Bunnell
NSS  News, September 2015

3

Mammoth Cave: End of an era, the Snowball Dining Room

Some of the larger and more intact gypsum flowers near the lunchroom. These are high and
well out of reach of visitors

Historically within Snowball was a lunch
line, operated by staff from the Mammoth
Cave Hotel, which offered a box lunch, hot
soup, coffee, soft drinks, and candy bars.
(The food cost was not included in the tour
price.) After the meal break the group then
either retraced their steps to the surface,
or if on the Grand Avenue Tour continued
towards the Frozen Niagara entrance. Noted
as well is the elusive wild cave tour, whose
route has varied over the years, but very typically has made its way at some point in the
tour through Snowball for a rest, restroom
and lunch break. This is the most difficult of
commercial trips available at MaCa, traversing five-and-a-half miles of cave, often by
belly crawl, in about six hours.
Many a meal have been enjoyed here
by the members of restoration camps over

the years. With advanced notice staff would
have ample sandwiches and hot vegetable
soup available for purchase. After a long
morning in the cave that soup could warm
the soul, carrying you through the remainder
of the day.
The Snowball Room gets its name
from the large blisters of gypsum covering
the ceiling. Tourists have visited the area
for generations, at the end of a long tubular
chamber. In recent years they have enjoyed
the glistening walls with white gypsum that
has crystallized below the limestone surface.
This is because Restoration Camp workers
focused cleaning the ceiling during the 1993
weeklong camp, using a mild bleach solution. This was referred to as the “Sootball
Cleaning Project” because of the darkened
condition of the ceiling.
Dave Bunnell

When was the last time you visited the
Snowball “Dining” Room, 267 feet below
the surface of Mammoth Cave National
Park? An excursion into Mammoth Cave is
not complete without descending the 200
steps into the Carmichael Entrance, then
traveling the mile down Cleaveland Avenue
to arrive at one of the most unique attractions found beneath the surface of the earth.
Cavers who have participated in restoration camps in the past will be quite familiar
with this route to Snowball, having traveled
it numerous times to reach projects deep
within this portion of the cave system. One of
the first projects in this area was in 1990 on
Cleaveland Avenue starting just beyond the
Snowball dining room and working toward
the Carmichael Entrance. On the left side of
the passage was a pile of broken limestone
that had been stacked there when the elevator entrance was created. This rock supply
was about five feet high, six to eight feet
deep and 50 to 100 feet long. The project
was to load these rocks in wheelbarrows and
use them to line the trail from the Snowball
Dining room as far down the passage as
possible. This was done to outline the trail
to encourage tourists to stay on the trail and
away from gypsum formations on the walls.
Park officials have offered different tours
that have passed through this area over the
years; some as experiments, others which
have been offered for years and enjoyed by
generations of visitors. Most excursions to
Snowball begin via the Carmichael Entrance
and Cleaveland Avenue, two miles roundtrip
if only visiting the room and turning around.
People often remember the Snowball Room
from previous visits, but they don’t always
want to walk the four-mile Grand Avenue
tour just to see it. This is especially true
for the modern visitor to MaCa (Mammoth
Cave), who quickly travels to the park for a
visit that may only last a few hours.

Dave Bunnell

Jonathon Lewis

Old hand-tinted postcard of the Snowball Dining Room

4

NSS  News, September 2015

Dining Room area in 2013 during a WKU Photo Class trip

Dave Bunnell

Matt McClintock
Dining Room food serving infrastucture

Arched ceilings of Cleaveland Avenue are encrusted with gypsum.

For those visitors whose tour continues
through the Snowball Dining Room, they
lead on through Boone Avenue, a subterranean river chasm so narrow you can reach
out and touch both walls. The tour ends at
Frozen Niagara, a cataract of flowstone in
a rare area of calcite decoration in the tour
regions of the cave. [Ed: because the sandstone cap that overlies much of the cave has
been eroded away from above on this edge of
the escarpment. ] They then exit the appropriately named Frozen Niagara entrance.
As mentioned earlier the number of visitors inclined to join in on these longer, more
difficult trips continues to decline. Today’s
visitor is more likely to purchase tickets for
the Frozen Niagara or Discovery tours, which
are more compact in their travels and focus.
With time being a constraint for many in this
fast-paced world, one is quickly back on the
road in just a few hours, off to their next
destination. Long gone are the days where
a visitor would make the challenging journey
to the park as a destination, not merely an
attraction along the way. Due to these and
other factors 2014 saw the end of the use of
the Snowball Room as a dining destination.
No longer can one purchase a box lunch or
enjoy a cup of that hot vegetable soup.
The park is beginning to remove the

items that established this part of the cave as
an “oasis in the dessert”, a mecca for adventurers to gather and share stories and enjoy
a meal together. The May 2015 weekend
restoration volunteers removed a significant
amount of the tables from the area, leaving
only a few for the Wild Cave tour. Soon
will be gone the concessionaire hardware,
replaced with an empty void that will remain
for the many who have such fond memories
of this place. Those on the Grand Avenue
tour will get an opportunity to pass by; as
well those with the Wild Cave Trips who will
perhaps stop and rest. But gone will be the
era that was enjoyed by so many.
We say goodbye and walk away from
our friend the Snowball Dining Room;
Now returning back up Cleaveland Avenue
and soon enough encountering the steps.
Looking up we can see a speck of sunlight
ahead. This is the hard part – after walking
the two miles roundtrip, you have to climb
the 200 steps you had forgot about. Soon
enough we are off and away, our journey a
memory. Just as have the boats and bridge
in the Echo River soon this part of mammoth
and its story now closed will be left to the
history books. The hundreds of volunteers
that have made possible the Mammoth Cave
Restoration Group will miss you.
Dave Bunnell

Matt McClintock

A study conducted by Ozark
Underground Laboratories had determined
the cause was mainly a fungus growing on
the gypsum snowballs. Testing showed the
least harmful and most successful method of
removal was spraying the ceiling with normal
household bleach followed a few hours later
with a clean water rinse. All the tables were
removed and plastic put down. The area was
sectioned off with tape, each area numbered;
sprayed a numbered area, time noted when
finished and 24 hours later sprayed the ceiling with clean water.  
Those involved with this process
remember it quite well to this day, receiving
bleach burns thru the Tyvek suits provided.
Unfortunately the suits weren’t the right kind
for the job, the bleach absorbing thru the
stitches and on to their clothing. In the end
however, the job got finished through both
the efforts of the volunteers and park staff, a
project that’s to this day appreciated with the
beauty much more visible due to their work.

Cleaveland Avenue

Ken DeJonge in storage room off the main
chamber

NSS  News, September 2015

5

Dave Bunnell
Panorama of karst pinnacles viewed from the Hang Sung Sot entrance in northern Ha Long Bay

Touring the Caves and Karst of Vietnam
Jim Patera with Dave Bunnell

[Ed: In the March issue I presented an
article about the Laos portion of Dwight
and Mary Deal’s most excellent Cave and
Karst Tour; Jim continues the narrative
here into Vietnam and I have filled in a bit
of detail and included some photo essays
particular to each segment. Because his
article was a companion to mine, it starts
with Day 10 as we crossed into Vietnam...]
Day 10:Laos/ Vietnamese Border
Crossing into Vietnam
I will admit that being a Vietnamera veteran, I felt a bit uneasy heading to
Vietnam. Those feelings hit a high when
we entered the building at the border and
I saw it was staffed with many uniformed
Vietnamese officers. Emotions of fight or
flight filled my thoughts as I chose to try to
sit calmly as we waited for our ‘pre-approved’
visas to be cleared.
After a long wait, I watched as the one
officer working with our guides, held up one
of our passports, made a quick call, then
disappeared down the hall with the passport. Shortly one of our guides came over
and quietly advised me that there appeared
to be a problem with my passport.... A few
minutes later, about a half dozen uniformed
officers came down the hall with the first
officer and headed for the spot where our
guides were waiting. That was when all the
electrical power in the building went out. I
started to think about fleeing back to the
Laotian border.
A couple of hours later, the power
came back on, visas were OK’d, and just
after sunset we were on our way. We were
officially in Vietnam and on our way to
Phong Nha.
6

NSS  News, September 2015

Day 11: Phong Nha-Ke Bang NP
Our first day at Phong Nha started with
a bus ride to Phong Nha-Ke Bang National
Park (PNKBNP), which is a UNESCO World
Heritage Site. Along the way we stopped
at Zin Zin Pass overlook on the now paved
and historically famous Ho Chi Min Trail.
Later, we stopped for lunch along a beautiful
stream. After lunch, we climbed aboard two
junks for our afternoon boat ride to semideveloped Black Cave and Phong Nha Cave.
Black Cave got its name because of the
black rock surrounding the cave entrance
which looked like it could have been a lava
from an early volcanic flow. We got to the
entrance about the same time it started to
rain. Inside the cave was an elevated walkway
that went a hundred or so feet back into the
cave, ending with the beginnings of large
mounds of streambank mud. Some of the
group took the option to swim a bit farther
into the cave. I decided to stay dry and take
a few pictures. That was when taking my 3rd
or 4th picture, one of my strobes fired with
a incredibly bright flash and I began to smell
smoke. Scratch one strobe.
After an hour or so exploring Black
Cave we climbed back onboard the junks
and in a light rain headed on to the more
developed Phong Nha cave.
Above the cave entrance were the signs
of rocket blasts made when the US military
helicopters tried to destroy the cave’s store of
weapons during the Vietnam (or as they call
it here, the American) war. There was also a
pontoon for crossing the river here that was
hidden in the cave and brought out at night.
Fortunately the cave was much larger then
the US military had thought so almost no
harm came to any of the wonderful forma-

tions deep inside the cave.
The entrance was located at water level,
making it possible for us to boat a long way
back into the cave. After about 10 minutes,
our boat landed at a mud bank and we got
out to have a look at the well-lighted, rather
large formations that lined the upper fossil
passage. The path was dry, mostly level with
enough commercial lighting that I could grab
a couple of cave pictures. For me it was just
one more incredible cave I was able to visit
on our karst tour. Another ‘once in a lifetime’
cave trip.
Later that evening, after a wonderful
dinner at the Phong Nha Farmstay, we
headed into town for a caving slide show
given by Howard Limbert, who has spent
years exploring the area caves, including the
now-famous Son Doong .
Day 12: Phong Nha Ke Bang NP
Every day of our trip was special, but
this day was one of those very, very, very
special days. Our tour group was scheduled
to see the off-trail sections of the recently
developed, Thien Duong (Paradise) cave. It
was not the longest cave in the world, nor
the deepest, nor did it have the biggest room
or largest formations, but we were told that
if someone were to add up the total volume
of the whole cave system, it would beat all
other caves in its Bigness. One word I could
have used to describe it would have been
HUGE! There are two main systems in the
park, Hang Vom (of which Paradise is part),
about 36 km in length, and the Phong Nha
system, which includes Son Doong, and with
over 62 km surveyed in its various segments.
The caving day in Paradise began with
us adding our cave lights to our day packs,

Entrance signage to Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park on the karst

Monuments to such great beauty can only
be found in caves.
Stalagmites grew to heights of 60 feet
or more. Halfway along the tourist route trail
was one old stalagmite that had fallen on its
side many millennia ago. On top of that fallen
giant was growing a massive new stalagmite.
I’d say an easy estimate of the size would be
20 plus feet in diameter for the fallen one.
The top stalagmite was only a slightly smaller
enormous stalagmite.
The tourist path went on for about one
kilometer before it came to the end of the
developed section of the cave. But we were a
lucky bunch of cavers. Our fantastic Focused
Tour guides had some special connections
and got permission for our group to go far
beyond the constructed path, permission to
go ‘off trail.’ Hopefully, we would be able
to go six kilometers farther to a 240 meter
skylight called “Where Daylight Beacons.”
We climbed off the elevated pathway,
down a few short stairs, onto familiar cave
mud. The mud covered the floor from wallto-wall, looking like it had formed at the
bottom of a lake. As we walked around a

large formation that almost blocked the
entire passage, we left the developed cave
behind.
As we walked along the passage I
would occasionally look up to try and light
the cave ceiling, which was perhaps up to
40-50 meters overhead. In many areas the
walls were covered with massive flowstone
formations that stretched on for hundreds
of meters. Every so often we’d encounter a
flowstone formation so large that it would
almost block the entire passage, leaving
only a small opening for us to pass through.
I was amazed at the huge size of everything
in Paradise Cave and how lucky I was to be
able to see part of it.
Our trip continued on with the ceiling
slowly lowering to a point were we needed
to start crawling on hands and knees. A bit
farther on our path ended on a mud stream
bank with us looking into a flooded passage.
In a drier season we could have used a small
boat to cross the low passage to get to the
big skylight entrance, but alas, it was sumped
here and this became our turnaround point.
Returning back to the huge passage

Entrance to Phang Nha Cave showing scars on cliff from aerial
assaults during the Vietnam war

Jim Patera

Jim Patera

throwing them into the van. After a short
drive we arrived at the entrance gate to the
cave. It was so new and modern it looked
like a gate into Disneyland.
On the other side of the gate and up
the trail, we hopped into little golf carts.
We drove along the narrow jungle path
to the base of stairs that climbed up to a
great rock fall. That’s when the Disney ride
ended. There were 524 stairs up to the cave
entrance at the top of the breakdown. Of
course once into the cave, we would need
to climb down the same 570 meters to the
cave floor.
Once inside the cave I was in awe at
the size of the cave passage and the formations that filled it. The ceiling would have
measured a hundred feet, the walls likewise.
The formations were equal in grandeur to
those in Carlsbad.
The formations along the walls looked
like they originated thousands of years ago,
as little seeps that made their way into the
passage along fractures in the walls. There
were also massive stalactites and stalagmites
that grew in the middle of the passage.

Dave Bunnell

Dave Bunnell
Overlook in PNKBNP towards karst containing Hang Son Doong

Boat dock inside Phang Nha Cave

NSS  News, September 2015

7

Caves at Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park
Photos by Dave Bunnell except as noted

Black Cave
Paradise Cave, developed section, below, above, and right

Phong Nha Cave

Phong Nha Cave

8

NSS  News, September 2015

Paradise Cave, undeveloped section, above and 3
Worthington in upper right

Jim Patera
on right. Judy Fisher in red and Tasha Michelson

NSS  News, September 2015

9

Waltham (2005) denotes
several types of caves
found in both fengcong
cone karst and fenglin
karst towers (the latter
being the more isolated
towers). Below is an
example of a foot cave,
possibly modified by
wave action. Caves such
as those on the facing
page, lower left, have
certainly been modified
by wave action but were
originally formed by
dissolution.
Cave types in Ha Long Bay(from Waltham, 2005, used by permission)

Jim Patera

we found our boxed lunches waiting for us.
They were carried with us into the cave on
the back of a young Vietnamese who wore
only sandals and had NO light. Several of
our group offered him our extra lights. With
a big smile on his face he said no.
After lunch we headed back to the main
tourist part of the cave, stopping occasionally
at a gargantuan formation for Dave to take
a picture. Over the next hour or so, I walked
slowly along the elevated tourist path totally
amazed at the cave’s grandeur. Whoever
was responsible for lighting the cave sure
did an excellent job. I eventually returned
to the entrance and the 524 stairs leading
back down to the valley floor and our waiting
vans. And so ended another incredible day
and one more ‘trip of a lifetime’.
Day 13: Transfer from Phong Nha to
Hanoi
The following day we headed off to the
city of Ha Noi, the first stop on our way to
Cat Ba Island in Ha Long Bay. The name Ha
Long Bay loosely translates into ‘descending dragon bay’ and is a UNESCO World
Heritage Site.
Day 14: Cat Ba Island and Ha Long
Bay - Transport to the Bay
Leaving Ha Noi on the bus, we rode
up to the port of Hai Pong where we transferred to a high speed ferry to Cat Ba Island.
Landing at the main port on Cat Ba Island
we transferred to another bus. From there it
was a short ride to a small fishing port. We
then climbed onboard a junk for the remaining voyage to remote beachside cabins in the
southern part of the bay that would be our
base camp. From there we’d spend the next
four days touring a few of the many unique
karst features Ha Long Bay had to offer.
Day 15-16: Ha Long Bay—More Karst
and Caves
Once we were settled in on Cat Ba
Island, we spent the next four days touring
the bay on wonderful little junks. Occasionally
we would climb off the junk into kayaks to
paddle through another one of the area’s
many sea caves. Many of the caves that were
selected for our exploration had passages
that bored through the limestone karst into
lovely and very isolated blue lagoons, likely
flooded sinkholes. (Waltham, 2003). A
highlight of the southern karst was certainly
Dau Be island (see the page devoted to this).
In addition to kayaking into a few of the
many sea caves, we also journeyed to the
more touristed northern part of the bay to
visit two commercialized caves, Thien Cung
Grotto and Hang Sung Sot. The developers
of both of these caves had chosen to light
them with bright colored lights, which we
were told was the ‘Chinese way’ of cave
10

NSS  News, September 2015

There is no shortage of caves to be explored in Ha Long Bay’s flooded cone karst

Islands of flooded tower karst in Ha Long Bay (from Waltham, 2005, used by permission).

Jim Patera
Dave Bunnell
Isolated karst tower

Dave Bunnell

Jim Patera

Dave Bunnell

Jim Patera

Ha Long Bay: Karst & Caves

Above and below: Views from high points on Cat Ba Island

Jim Patera

Jim Patera

View through the cave viewed on the facing page.

NSS  News, September 2015

11

Ha Long Bay: Phreatic Show Caves
Photos: Dave Bunnell

Map of Hang Sung Sot
(from Waltham, 2005,
used by permission)

Photos,clockwise from
upper right:
1. Dong Thien Cung
2. Dong Thien Cung
3. Huge scallops in Hang
Sung Sot
4. Scalloped ceilings in
Hang Sung Sot
5.Hang Sung Sot entrance

12

NSS  News, September 2015

Ha Long Bay: Dau Be Island
Photos: Dave Bunnell

Map of Dau Be island in the southern part of Ha Long Bay. The
6 enclosed lagoons labeled “hong” are presumed to be former
dolines. The lagoons are connected via water-floored caves whose
ceiling height varies with tide levels. (from Waltham, 2005, used by
permission)

NSS  News, September 2015

13

Final 3 Days in Vietnam
After the organized trip ended, Dave
and I stayed in Vietnam an additional three
days. We spent those days on a private tour
exploring some of the karstic sights south
of Ha Noi.
The first day we were driven in a private
car to the small town of Tam Coc, where we
spent the afternoon floating along a small
stream in a little sampan. The sampan was
propelled by a woman who used her feet to
row us past several flooded rice fields and
though several small caves at the base of
karst pinnacles. (Ironically, Waltham calls
these type of caves “foot caves” in his paper).
On the second day, we traveled to
Cuc Phuong National Park, Vietnam’s first
national park and the country’s largest nature
reserve. There we got to visit a small cave,
which was discovered to contain remains of
early habitation dating back 7,500 years.
14

NSS  News, September 2015

Jim Patera in a cave at Cuc Phuong NP

The cave wasn’t all that interesting, but the
hike through the jungle sure was neat. Also
at Cuc Phuong NP we had the opportunity
to visit the Endangered Primate Rescue
Centre and the Turtle Rescue Center located
in the park.
On our final day exploring the area
south of Ha Noi, we drove to the Perfume
Pagoda, a large area with several elegant
Buddhist temples. Since there were no roads
to the pagodas, we were again rowed in a
sampan on Yen Stream to a steep trail which
led up the hillside to the Buddhist temples.
As we climbed, we eventually passed the
first two pagodas and finally arrived at
the Perfume Pagoda, highest of the three
temples, and located in a large cave chamber
high on the mountain, called Huong Tich.
Having done the long walk up, we opted to
take the other route down, a cable car ride
over the tower karst. Of course, we could
have done it the other way around, but what
fun would that be?
With our return to Ha Noi, we spent
one more day touring the city and eating

fine food. The trip ended with the required
long overnight flight back to the states. It
was a remarkable flight that had us riding
a jet stream that at one time propelled us
with ground speeds of over 750 mph. And
so ended my tour of Laos & Vietnam caves
and karst, a truly once-in-a- lifetime trip.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dwight and Mary Deal for
leading such a great trip and our fellow travelers who were so helpful in their assistance
with the cave photography. Focused Tours
may feature excursions to this area in the
future but no dates have been set. There
are also many caves in PNKBNP that can
be visited via adventure tours run by local
operators, including the now-famous Hang
Son Doong, aka “the world’s largest cave.”
References
Waltham, 2005. Karst and Caves of Ha
Long Bay. In Speleogenesis of Karst
Aquifers, available at www.speleogenesis.info
Dave Bunnell

lighting. In both of the caves we found
multicolor-lit formations filling the passage.
The wonderful bright colors sure did change
the view of the caves. Although my eyes
enjoyed the play of colors, I found all the
different the colors distracting, which made it
difficult to pick out the individual formations.
In Hang Sung Sot cave, the second
commercial cave we visited that day, we
found the walls and ceiling covered with
surprisingly large deep scallops, some a
foot or more in size. I was told that the large
size was only possible because they were
formed by very slow flowing water, perhaps
only a couple of inches per week. Faster
water movement, I was told, would create
smaller scallops; slower flow would create
larger scallops with both extremes leading
to none at all.
After four fantastic days touring Ha
Long Bay and some of the caves of Cat Ba
Island, we headed back to Ha Noi (again by
junk, bus, boat, bus) where we spent the last
day of our Focused Karst tour seeing more
of the old city and sampling several more
delightful Vietnamese meals.

Dave Bunnell

Dave Bunnell
The Perfume Pagoda in Huong Tich

One of the many low but wide foot caves cutting through a karst tower

I am pleased to announce that the
National Speleological Society – Youth
Group Liaison Committee has a new
Regional Coordinator for the Northeast
Regional Organization. Please welcome
Carlos Peña to this position.
Carlos brings with him not only his
caving experience, but plenty of experience

in environmental sciences as well as working
with children and teens.
For more information about Carlos,
please visit his Web site at http://caves.
org/youth/nro_rc.shtml. For more information about the NSS Youth Group Liaison
Committee, visit us at http://caves.org/
youth/nro_rc.shtml.

Jay in El Capitan Cave, Prince of Wales Island,
Alaska 1989

Julius (Jay) Rockwell, PhD
1918-2015
NSS # 11308 RL (FE)
Jay died on April 16, 2015 in
Anchorage, Alaska with his children at his
side. For Alaska cavers he was our organizer
and leader. He started organizing the group
that would become the Glacier Grotto in
the early 1970s when there were mostly
just rumors of caves in Alaska. The first
few years most of the caving trips in Alaska
were glacier caves. But slowly other areas
were explored like the large limestone and
marble areas of the Wrangel St. Elias range,
the Southeast Alaska islands, and the lava
tubes of Western Alaska. Jay was tireless in
documenting, organizing, and leading for
more than three decades. In recent years
the Glacier Grotto has been dormant but
the explorations and documents changed the
history in Alaska with many new discoveries in Geology, Archeology, Paleobiology
and Biology. Hundreds of caves have been
mapped and documented. Alaska still has
many limestone mountain ranges that no
caver has yet visited.
Jay also played host to many people
traveling to Alaska that were interested in
caving and climbing. He volunteered his
home as a base of operations and would
often talk one of the local Grotto members
into acting as guide.
I caved with Jay for more than 30 years.
I knew he was a Naval Officer and I knew
he was a Naval Reserve Scientist (where the
Navy takes science questions), but many
years ago I read a Veterans Day article in the
Anchorage Daily News which featured Jay
as a survivor of the USS Lexington which

sank in the Coral Sea. Jay had been the
fire control officer but all fire fighting ability
was destroyed in the first Japanese attack
on the aircraft carrier. Jay concentrated on
trying to save his shipmates. He received
a Commendation Medal for Leadership in
Battle. Jay was a great story teller but he
never talked about War World II unless he
was asked.
Jay was born in Taunton, Massachusetts.
He received a BS in Zoology in 1939 at
University of Michigan. He joined the Navy
before WW II and was stationed in Pearl
Harbor. He served as Engineering Officer on
the Aircraft carrier USS Lexington, which left
Pearl Harbor two days before the Japanese
attack. He received his PhD in Fisheries
Biology from the University of Washington
and conducted research in Alaska and the
Pacific Northwest.
Jay became active in caving while working for the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries
in Washington, DC. One of his first caving
trips was Sinnit Cave in Pendleton County
WV. I grew up near Sinnit cave, we shared
a common bond with our first caves and
time period. Jay was transferred to Alaska in
1970 to the Alaska Pipeline office where his
work was instrumental in designing river and
stream crossings to allow fish migration for
the Alaska oil pipeline. Jay’s work changed
how construction was done in Alaska and has
helped insure salmon and other fish would
continue to be a resource in Alaska.
After Jay retired from the Alaska
Pipeline Office he became a professor of
Biology at Alaska Pacific University and also
founder and Chairman of the Anchorage
Waterways Council. They were trying to
clean up the streams and rivers within the
City of Anchorage so that salmon could live
and spawn (a great success story). Many of
the streams and rivers in Anchorage had
been channeled and had become waste
dumps. Today many of these streams
support good salmon runs. Jay’s work as
Chairman of Anchorage Waterways Council
was rewarded as only Orwellian politics can
accomplish...he made the Smart Growth
“Enemies of Alaska” list. This list was a
campaign ploy by an Alaska US Senator who
was running and won the Alaskan Governor
race. The Enemies’ of Alaska list was a
benchmark of who were the most effective
leaders in Alaska environmental protection.
Jay was an active caver until in his 80s.
Jay told great stories and he is part of some
great stories. Years ago, one night after
midnight in August, I received a call from
Jay’s wife Liz that he and his son Tad had
not returned from a caving trip to Byron

Glacier Cave, an hour south of Anchorage.
I said I would check on him. It was a three
hour trip from my home so I arrived at the
glacier after 3 am. I found Jay and Tad on
the glacier. Alaska has nearly 24 hours of
daylight in summer and near dusk ice worms
move up in the ice to feed on the glacier
surface algae. Jay noticed the ice worms
as he and Tad were descending the glacier.
The glacier surface was covered with them.
Jay was so excited by his biological find that
he lost track of time and it was hard to get
him to leave his discovery. In later years
Glacier Grotto members found ice worms in
the walls of the ice within the Glacier caves
during winter months. This may be the first
documentary of ice worms in winter.
Around 1979 on a clear beautiful day
in November, Jay, a mountaineer friend,
and I explored Eklutna Glacier Cave. It was
-30 degrees F. We had little snow and the
twelve mile traverse around Eklutna Lake
was beautiful with a thin surface fog over
the water and large ice crystals hanging from
the brush and trees. Upon reaching Eklutna
Glacier we found the stream exit at the
terminus of the Glacier blocked so we had to
repel into a moulin to reach the Glacier cave
well decorated with ice crystals which looked
like large snow flakes. We had planned on
getting back by 6 pm, a few hours after dark,
but we took longer than expected. When
we reached the Glenn Highway instead of
heading back to Anchorage we stopped to
get supper at the Eklutna Roadhouse. At
the Roadhouse they had a large number of
cars in the parking lot including Alaska State
Troopers and search and rescue. Jay’s wife
Liz had reported us missing and they were
just organizing a search. It took us a bit to
convince them that we were the people they
were looking for.
Without Jay Rockwell’s leadership and
skills I doubt that Alaska cavers would have
organized to any degree. He played a central
role in his work in fisheries and making sure
that fish could reach their spawning areas.
Fish are a large part of the Alaska economy
and diet. According to Marcel LaPerriere, a
caver in Southeast Alaska, Jay said the best
way to win the battle for the environment is
to outlive your opponents. Jay made our lives
richer and he will be greatly missed.
Submitted by Harvey Bowers
NSS 12088 RL

NSS  News, September 2015

15

Historic Old Show Cave Postcards f

Lefthand column, top to bottom: Baker Caverns, Pennsylvania; Indian Cave, Indiana; Timmens Cave, (U

Blue Grottoes of Virginia, (Melrose Caverns,) Virginia

Crystal River Cave, Arkansas

Indian Cave, Kentucky

Smittle Cave, Missouri

16

NSS  News, September 2015

Colossal Cave, Kentucky

Diamond Cave, Arkansas

Jewel Cave, Tennessee

Staunton Cavern, Virginia

from the archives of Gary K. Soule

Union Park Cave,) Iowa

Right:
Wonderland
Cave,
Kentucky

Crystal Cave, (Bethlehem Cave,) South Dakota

Floyd Collins’ Crystal Cave, Kentucky

Massanutten Caverns, Virginia

Truitt’s Cave, Missouri

Great Onyx Cave, Kentucky

Old Spanish Cave, Missouri

Wonderland Cave, Arkansas

NSS  News, September 2015

17

Stream passage in Cueva Juan Nieves, part of the Rio Encantado System

Crystals in Ellison’s Cave, GA

Observatory Cave, above the Tanama River near the Arecibo radio telescope
Right: Helictites, in Thornhill Cave, KY and below,borehole in Torode Pit, AL

18

NSS  News, September 2015

Stream passage in River Cave, Indiana

Photographer
Spotlight
Adam Haydock
Chicago, Illinois

For more of Adam’s photos and the stories
behind them please visit:
www.adamhaydock.blogspot.com
http://adamhaydock2000.wix.com/even-further
www.flickriver.com/photos/exploration-worldwide/
sets/

Sea cave on Sand Island, part of Apostle Islands NP, Wisconsin

Gours in Rocky River Cave, TN

Conley Hole in Tennessee

The North Pole, an epsomite
formation in Ellison’s Cave, Ga

Sunbeam streaming into an Alabama pit.

NSS  News, September 2015

19

Adam Haydock

Right: Entrance to Cueva Evaporada

Adam Haydock and Carlos Artiguez

F

lying out of Chicago in the early
morning subzero temperature in
January has always been quite the
charming climate change that is pleasantly
realized once the plane lands in the humid
85 degree weather of Luis Munoz Marin
International Airport in San Juan, Puerto
Rico. For the past five years, I have been
migrating down to the 18th parallel to visit
friends and enjoy some fantastic multi-day
rain forest treks, Class C canyon routes,
remote island coral reefs, and some absolutely fascinating cave systems. There are a
number of pockets where hundreds of caves
can be found like in the fragments of the
southwestern Lares limestone strata, but the
majority of the caves are in the North and
Northwest central karst belt of the mogote
mountains.
After visiting over 30 beautiful cave
systems in Puerto Rico, I have found that a
lot of them have large trunk passage but the
length of most of these caves are generally
not as extensive as they might have been in
the ancient past, with the exception of a few
like Cueva Cucuracha, Cueva Del Humo, and
Sistema Del Rio Encantado.
The geological development of Puerto
Rico is quite interesting since the island
itself came from elevated lava beds rising
out of the western coast of South America
during the Jurassic period. Tectonic action
moved Puerto Rico in-between North and
South America before the Americas were
connected. “Recent Plate compression
has arched the island, exposing Plutonic
and Metamorphic rocks which likely has
contributed to much of the jointing in the
carbonate rock. Evidence of basalt and even
pahoehoe deposits have been observed but
Late Cretaceous and tertiary carbonates
are the dominant cave and karst formers.”
(Miller, Palmer, & Palmer, 2009, p. 332).
The earliest known evidence of prehistoric civilization that can be found in Puerto
Rico is the inscribed petroglyphs from the
Taino. These petroglyphs decorate a number
of caves including some of the caves that are
located in more populated areas that cavers
today are attempting to clean up and protect,
e.g. Cueva Del Indio and Cueva Aguas
Buenas. Taino petroglyphs can also be found
in the El Yunque South District on the Rio
Blanco river, back toward the west around
the Tanama River, as far west off of Puerto
Rico on the island of Mona, Dominician
Republic, and Haiti, among other locations.
There are other artifacts near the Tanama
River that include a burial site and a sacred
property of land that was used by the Taino
as a place of gathering as well as multiple
20

NSS  News, September 2015

Puerto
Rico
Speleological
Preservation
Puerto
Rico
Speleological
Preservation
andand
the
the
Importance
of
Sustainable
Clean-up
EfImportance of Sustainable Clean-up Efforts
cave fragments located right off the Rio
Tanama with Taino petroglyphs.
Historically, a lot of the residents in
Puerto Rico have been collecting resources
from the caves including guano, water, and
materials for some housing purposes including the use of the caves’ cool temperatures
for storage and refuge. During the 1950s,
explorers started to visit the cave systems in
the Rio Camuy region including Cueva Del
Humo, which gave explorers a good introduction as to how large some of these cave
systems might actually be; It sure gave me
that impression when I was there. “From
the 1960s through the 1970s the Camuy
Cave System was explored using rafts until
Graham Nelson and Norman Veve used
flotation vests to increase mobility and push
deeper into passages where others have
stopped on previous expeditions” (Gurnee,
& Gurnee, 1974). Norman Veve is one of
the major contributors to the exploration of
Puerto Rico’s cave systems with regard to
surveying, supporting multi-day expeditions
into the Camuy, and taking a particular
interest in protecting these cave systems.
Veve also spearheaded the exploration of
the Cueva Humo-Cueva Angeles connection,
mapping Aguas Buenas, the exploration of
other large cave fragments including Cueva
Del Evaporada, and a multi-day trip down
the Tanama River with U.S. Geological
Survey employees that rendered the initial
mapping and exploration of multiple caves
along the Tanama River. Veve also became
one of founders of a local San Juan Grotto
and saw the need to continue to develop a
structured caving organization called SEPRI,
which is still active today.
S.E.P.R.I. (Socialad spelelogolica de
Puerto Rico) is one of the leading caving
organizations that specialize in survey, cave
rescue, conservation, and cave preservation
in Puerto Rico. In the 1980s and 90s, exploration continued and major contributions

went into to the master survey of the Rio
Camuy cave system. More explorers started
to take notice to Puerto Rico including cave
divers like Wes Skiles, who had an impact on
some of the cave and cave diving exploration
including a push through Aguas Frias into
Cueva Juan Nieves and other dive operations in Sistema Del Rio Encantado which
also includes Cueva Escalera and Cueva
Yuyu. “At the end of a Valley in Florida
Puerto Rico, on the northside of a mogote,
you will be able to find a crack named over
10 years ago by the locals as “La Raja
De Wesley” (Wesley’s Crack) a large deep
fissure undoubtedly known by the locals and
later named decades ago by cavers for Wes
Skiles”. (Miller, 2010, p.8)
Overall, The Rio Camuy Cave System
has been researched and mapped for
decades and some sections of the cave,
including Tres Pueblos, Clara, and Spiral,
have become more of a commercialized
attraction for tourists through the development of Parque Cavernas Rio Camuy. Some
sections of this park are maintained better
than others but among other research interests, the intent to protect and maintain these
beautiful features is present along with the
opportunity to support the local economy.
Today, explorations have been ongoing
in other cave systems all over Puerto Rico
from ridgeline trips, to survey/re-survey, and
sump dive projects. Multiple recent expeditions have been successfully connecting caves
in the Rio Encantado system including a
connection between Escalera and Zumbo,
(NSS News, August 2015). Another push
that Tom Miller, Kassia Thormahlen, and I
made was into Cueva Del Falso Tributario,
which is in a valley that very well might be
right over the last unknown section of the
Rio Camuy Cave System where the river
drops back underground. This discovery trip
rendered a promising return trip that uncovered more borehole passage, multi-drop

Maneuvering the culvert

Zumbo have a very different dynamic where
the force of warm water and gravity influence a mosaic of dynamic water-sculptured
passage in exotic ways that were beyond
my imagination. It was almost like visiting
another planet when we passed through this
waterpark of a cave.
There have been other trips that I have
been on where I met up with local cavers
including some of Tom’s students and
accompanied them on their research studies. One trip, I joined Rolf Vieten and Flora
Sperberg as they collected data in Cueva
Larga and Cueva Dos Ojos that were used
to monitor cave conditions with the purpose
to understand paleoclimate dating and other
speleothem studies.
I also had the pleasure to meet up with
Carlos Artiguez on multiple occasions to
not only enjoy some of his favorite caves
with him like Cueva Perdida, but also to
learn more about how he has been playing
a considerable role in cave preservation to

Taino petroglyphs in Cueva del Indio

Adam Haydock

Adam Haydock

vertical pitches, and more leads to pursue.
Julie Dutil, a dry caver and a cave diver, has
been connecting submerged cave passages
in Puerto Rico including a significant connection in Sistema Del Inferrilo. Her party was
able to connect two cave tributaries to one
another, Ponor 2 and Ponor 3. Julie has also
worked on Sistema Del Rio Encantado, Dos
Chorros, and a few other successful sump
dives in her attempt to connect caves and
find continuing dry passage. One recent dive
was performed in Cueva Guzman near The
Camuy Cave System, where she was able
to push a sump and found walking passage
that kept going. A return trip has already
been planned with the goal to connect
Cueva Guzman to the rest of the Camuy
Cave System.
Tom Miller, A geology professor at
the University of Puerto Rico in Mayguez,
has been exploring caves in Puerto Rico
and all over Central America for over three
decades. To this day, Tom has been taking

Carlos Artiguez

Carlos Artiguez
Surface river near Aguas Buenas

an active role in the pursuit of surveying the
final mysteries of the Camuy System including the section where the river goes back
underground and resurges northbound on
its path to the Atlantic Ocean. Along with
finishing other survey projects and remapping caves, Tom continues to discover new
cave fragments in Puerto Rico with his
group of cavers, (some of which are his
students) that spearhead projects to further
understand Central American Speleogenesis.
One of Tom’s students is using paleoclimate
dating methods to measure historic climate
patterns in the attempt to predict future
climate patterns.
Throughout the years of visiting Puerto
Rico, I got to meet some good friends and
had some great interactions with private
cave landowners, farmers, local cavers, and
people that find Puerto Rico to be enchanting and a valuable natural resource. I met
up with a few members from SEPRI along
with my friends Carlos Artiguez “Bro”, Julie
Dutil, Tom Miller, Jeff and Katrina Kruse to
visit some caves, which is where I fell in love
with Puerto Rico and started to realize the
enchanting beauty that these cave systems
hold.
One of my favorites is called Cueva
Sorbetos “Cave Straws” and upon entering
this cave, it appears to be a typical solutional
cave within the first 100 feet until you realize the long white soda straws that stretch
down the ceiling by the thousands! Some
of these straws are over two feet in length!
Some other caves like Cueva Del Evaporada,
have large walking borehole passage and
enormous entrances that took us almost a
half hour just to get down into and out of the
light zone. The sun illuminates the mosscovered formations and the hanging gardens
of flora above while fog would breathe out
of the cave entrance with an eerie cast that
the sun beams threw as they pierced into the
darkness. Other cave systems like Cueva

Carlos in Cueva Perdida

NSS  News, September 2015

21

Carlos Artiguez

help maintain these beautiful cave systems
with cleanup efforts, projects, and outreach
initiatives that increase cave and karst watershed awareness. Carlos explained to me that
“The rivers are what a lot of the farmers and locals rely on as a primary source
of water and the historic significance that
some of these caves hold with regard to the
Taino as well as some of the resources that
the caves have provided the local communities are important to protect since they
have been threatened by pollution and
the discard of waste from decades of trash
accumulation. The trash and garbage is
evident in a lot of the cave systems due to
surface water flowing into the cave systems
that bring garbage including refrigerators
into the caves.”
I witnessed the whole “appliances in
the cave carried in by water” thing in Ponor
3 where flood stage water levels wedged
refrigerators and washers into the ceiling’s
top shelf! You can’t miss them; they stood
out like a cat playing a piano on a Facebook
video.
Overall, it is evident that pollution can
create a pestilence of disease and contaminate the watersheds and potentially destroy
valuable artifacts in and outside of these
caves. Carlos explained to me that it has not

Dry entrance to Aguas Buenas

22

NSS  News, September 2015

from Carlos Artiguez

Sometimes the problem is bigger than
what we can handle with a small group of
people with trash bags. This is especially
true when we come across large clandestine garbage dumps on remote roadways or
dry beds that lead into cave systems, this
can be a real challenge because dealing
with government agencies to resolve the
problem is not always that easy! Puerto
Rico is blessed with so many beautiful
cave systems, and new caves are still being
discovered. Fortunately, many of these
caves are in remote areas and not easy
to reach, which helps to protect them,
but there are caves near public areas that
need help, including large areas of land
that surround the caves. We need to take
immediate steps to resolve this problem
with collaborating between cavers and
government agencies and now we are
finally at the beginning stages of facing
this challenge!
l have always thought that cave
conservation meant that we not only
need to protect the caves, but we also need
to protect the waterways that go into the
cave as well as the land that surrounds
the caves. I cave because I want to connect
with nature and that connection begins
while hiking through the forest, climbing
the hills, and crossing the rivers leading to
these beautiful karst features. That blissful state can be lost when we come across
contamination. We feel better when everyone starts filling their plastic bags with the
trash both inside and outside the cave.
After listening to a talk at a SERPI
meeting (The Puerto Rico Speleological
Society) by a representative of La Junta
de Calidad.Ambiental (The Committee
of Environmental Quality) which is sort
of like a local EPA, I realized that expert
analysis and statistics were presented as to

Carlos Artiguez

Carlos Artiguez
Aguas Buenas

been easy for him to work with government
agencies on waste management with regard
to the clean-up projects that not only sustain
a clean environment but the action to initiate
these projects has also been a difficult task
to accomplish.
Carlos has been reaching out to various organizations and taking the initiative
to educate the locals on maintaining a clean
environment as well as contacting government agencies to help keep Puerto Rico’s
rain forests and cave systems as pristine as
possible. This conversation happened back
in 2014 and a year later, Carlos is starting
to see some active support. I asked Carlos
to contribute to this article so he can give
his own perspective on his cave clean-up
efforts and continue to shine some light on
the problem.
Resurgence entrance to Aguas Buenas

why clandestine garbage dumps exist but
no solutions for cleanup and prevention
were discussed.
Previously I had registered a complaint
with this agency condemning the existence
of garbage dumps on road 112 from Moca
to Isabela, after a tour with Jeff Kruse, a
former resident. There were several caves
in the area including one cave where water
is extracted and used for human consumption. I contacted a local newspaper and a
news report was published....which I hoped
would help the municipal government and
the Committee for Environmental Quality
to work together toward a viable solution
of the clandestine garbage dump problem
in this area. I would call periodically to
monitor the progress, and the case worker
would inform me of key meetings in which
a plan has emerged to enact a thorough
cleanup of the area by both of the Moca
and Isabela municipal governments. What
I was able to see that was missing was the
inclusion of community involvement. The
people living in the area were responsible
for the creation of this mess and the people
were the ones who should help take the
time to thoroughly clean it up and prevent
it from ever happening again. One of the
ways this could happen was to motivate
the community to take action so others
would contribute to the clean-up efforts.
These actions led to the creation of The
Cave Conservation Committee.
This committee is dedicated to assist
in the clean-up efforts with multiple strategies that work quite well in remote cave
environments which also include the use of
vertical techniques for hauling garbage out
of caves. Furthermore this group is open
to collaborate with other existing environmental groups especially when manpower
and community involvement can be used.

Adam Haydock

This collaboration would make it possible
to work on a minimum of three projects
simultaneously and continue to another
location when a project is complete.
Well, currently we are still working
with the first three projects. The first three
include the Aguas Buenas Cave system
which is in collaboration with another
small caving group in the area. The Aguas
Buenas Cave is awesome and was my first
encounter with a cave system that had a
garbage problem due to its proximity to a
populated area.
In the many years that I have
lived here and despite the many caves I
have explored, I thought Aguas Buenas
was the only cave with this problem. Also
living in the eastern part of Puerto Rico,
limited my exposure to the garbage problem due to better management and control
of cave environments. It was just that my
cave exploration was mainly in remote
caves where garbage was not an issue but
I have many more caves to explore on the
island and my tour of Road 112 opened
my eyes to the magnitude of the problem
that there are many caves and areas that
need to be added to the list. When you
enter the cave you may be astounded to
see the walls covered with graffiti. Much of
it is old and may be considered historical
but then you will notice the garbage covering the passages. With other like-minded
individuals that have a passion to protect
the cave, The Aguas Buenas conservation
project was developed.
The Aguas Buenas conservation
project consists of three phases: the
cleanup within the cave, the cleanup of
Rio Caguitas (Caguitas River) which is a
tributary that flows through the Aguas
Buenas Cave system, and the removal of
several large heavy PVC tubes that were
used to influence water to travel into the
cave. The heat of the sun and constant
contact with water contributes toward the
gradual leaching of PVC contaminants
that could have a negative effect on the
ecosystem of the cave as well as contribute to the pollution of the Caguitas River
which eventually flows to Carraizo Dam, a
major source of water in Puerto Rico. Even
though the water is treated, it is not treated
enough to remove all contaminants.
As we finished cleaning up the
passages inside the Aguas Buenas Cave
System, we were happy to meet the
members of LA Tribu Contribuye (The
Tribe Contributes) Environmental group,
whom were at the time busy cleaning the
banks of the Caguitas River. This group is
a real enthusiastic bunch of young people
who are passionate about protecting the
environment. The photos they proudly
post on social media of their major cleanup

Cueva Golondrina

efforts are inspiring as they not only show
people helping to keep Puerto Rico beautiful but they also leave homemade signs to
remind you to keep Puerto Rico beautiful.
We must take the garbage with us and
dispose of it properly and also involve the
community surrounding the cleanup areas
in a collaborative effort to clean, maintain,
and help educate them on why maintaining
their land is so important.
La Tribu was featured in the Sunday
Magazine section of our local newspaper where they shared the Conservation
Committee’s vision that talked about how
“they are few, but together we are an army”
There are now other groups that clean up
simultaneously with La Tribu on the same
day at the end of each month, in different
areas around the Island.
Recognizing the need for training and
encouraging initiative and safety, SEPRI’s
Committee for Cave Security offered a
certified course in Cave Safety to which a
large group responded. It is sort of like a
course in the basics of Caving and Rescue.
I found it amazing that the group remained
focused in using this knowledge to further
advance the mission of protecting the
environment where caving and protection
of karst areas is important.
As of this day the The.Aguas Buenas
Cave Cleanup venture continues. Alexer
Valencia, employee of the Local Electric
Energy Power Company, has offered to
help remove the giant PVC tubes with a

special machine that is used to extract
heavy objects in remote areas.
The Aguas Buenas Cave System is
a natural reserve which is unfortunately
threatened by developers who want to
expand construction in the area. We think
that if this collaboration with the Electric
Power Company is successful, the publicity
that this will generate will help create a
more positive public image for the Electric
Power Company and help us focus more
attention on protecting the Aguas.Buenas
natural reserve and other cave systems.
Alexer Valencia is a former SEPRI member
that decided to make a comeback at the
right time!
...and back to Adam:
No doubt, there are cavers in Puerto
Rico that are very passionate about the
speleology, preservation, conservation,
protection, and documentation of the
hundreds of caves on the Island. On my
most recent visit to Puerto Rico, Carlos,
Julie, Tom, Kassia and I went to visit Cueva
Golondrina, which is right next to a side
road near Parques Cavernas De Camuy.
Golondrina is a 90-foot vertical mult-drop pit
with a climb leading into a small formation
room. The cave itself is trending toward
Cueva Cathedral, which is another fragment
just north of Parques Cavernas De Camuy.
Cueva Golondrina has a pile of garbage
and a bunch of tires that appeared to have
been rolled down to the bottom along with
NSS  News, September 2015

23

REFERENCES
Gurnee, R.H., & Gurnee, J., 1974:
Discovery at the Rio Camuy: New York,
Crown Publishers, Inc., 183p.
Miller, T., Palmer, A., & Palmer, M.
(2009). Cave and Karst of the USA . :
National Speleological Society.
Miller, T. (2010, June-December).
The Survey and geology of Cueva Yuyu.
Espeleorevista Puerto Rico, (3).

Adam Haydock
Adam Haydock

Cueva Convento, a fossil segment cave high in the karst

Stream passage in Cueva Juan Nieves, part of the Rio Encantado System

Adam Haydock

Below: White stalagmites and columns in
Cueva Larga

Right: Large passage in Evaporada

24

NSS  News, September 2015

Adam Haydock

dead chickens in bags hanging from a thread
which was a bit interesting to encounter
while rappelling down! At around noon,
the sunlight cast some amazing sunbeams
that illuminated the bell hole ceiling and
the flowstone wall formations. It was quite
impressive and beautiful to say the least. We
surveyed the cave and discussed efforts to
clean up this cave as it has a distinct advantage due to its close proximity to the road so
the clean-up effort should not be too difficult.
Unfortunately, there are many other
caves in Puerto Rico that can use a lot of help
like the clean-up efforts that Carlos has been
involved with but there is just not enough
interest and manpower to initiate the action
required to properly dispose of the garbage
and attempt to reverse the damage that has
been done to some of these wonderful caves.
We hope that with continued outreach and
awareness, more interest and opportunities
will develop around these initiatives to keep
the caves of Puerto Rico and artifacts of the
Taino preserved so future generations can
continue to explore and enjoy this magnificent place as I have found it to be. If you
have any questions about the clean-up efforts
or would like to contribute to a restoration
project, please reach out to me directly. To
learn more about the caves in Puerto Rico
you can stop by my blog or pick up a copy
of “Caves and Karst of the USA” by Arthur
N. Palmer & Margaret V. Palmer in the NSS
bookstore.

THE CAVES OF BURNSVILLE COVE, VIRGINIA:
FIFTY YEARS OF EXPLORATION AND SCIENCE

Edited by William B. White, Springer
International Publishing, 2015. 7.5 by
10 inches, 479 pages; hardbound ISBN
978-3-319-14390-3, $179; e-book ISBN
978-3-319-14391-0, $139.

Burnsville Cove, nestled among the
ridges of the Appalachians, has been one of
the major caving areas in the eastern United
States since the mid-1950s, when Nittany
Grotto cavers began their survey of Breathing
Cave, now over 6 miles long. Other long
caves in the cove are the Butler–Sinking
Creek System, 16.7 miles, the Chestnut
Ridge Cave System, 21 miles, and Helictite
Cave, 7.3 miles. Over ninety other caves
are known. Cavers formed the Butler Cave
Conservation Society, which, along with
some of its members, bought or leased many
of the cave entrances in the area.
This book, one of a “Cave and Karst
Systems of the World” series and “a contribution of the Butler Cave Conservation
Society,” is a somewhat strange one for
Springer, which specializes in expensive
technical books for sale to libraries and
professionals. Over half of it, thirteen chapters, is devoted to cave descriptions and
histories of their exploration, often basically
trip reports, or the BCCS itself. Over one
hundred pages are about the caves of the
Water Sinks area. For much more extensive
coverage of that area, see Phil Lucas’s Caves
and Karst of the Water Sinks Area, available as a free PDF file from lulu.com; search
for “water sinks.” Less than half of the book
is devoted to ten chapters on the geology and
hydrology of the caves and the area. (There

are no chapters on biology.) Of course this
means the book should be mainly of interest
to cavers. The book contains hundreds of
color photos, mostly small, and many cave
maps. A free on-line supplement at http://
extras.springer.com/2015/978-3-31914390-3 contains 80 MB of maps of caves
of Burnsville Cove, including an eleven-sheet
detailed map of Butler Cave that might have
been assembled into a single image, but it
wouldn’t have been easy—I tried.
The question, of course, is how the hell
this important book about caves and caving
fell into the hands of Springer. The editor is
certainly well beyond the point of needing
to pad his academic credentials. Commercial
publication might have bought careful copy
editing, skillful photo preparation, and a
professionally compiled index, but it didn’t.
If a volunteer was found to do the layout,
some organization like the BCCS or the
Virginia Speleological Survey could have
published this book, in a cheaper binding
and perhaps with more compact typesetting
and selective use of color, and sold it at a
substantial markup for forty bucks. But here
we have a $179 Springer book that will, I
suppose, end up in more university libraries
but in almost no cavers’.
Bill Mixon

GLACIATION AND SPELEOGENESIS:
INTERPRETATIONS FROM THE NORTHEASTERN
UNITED STATES

By Max P. Cooper and John E. Mylroie,
Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2015,
142+xv pages, hardbound $99, ebook $70.

John Mylroie’s 1977 dissertation on
caves and karst of the Helderberg Plateau
in Schoharie County, NY has long been a

bible for cave investigators there. Now, he
and his student Max Cooper—who has investigated maze caves in the Northeast—have
produced a book which incorporates the
many findings from ensuing decades, and
which emphasizes the profound effect of
glaciation on cave and karst development.
Not limited to Schoharie County, this book
covers the entire Northeast.
Cave studies began in the Northeast
in the 1950s, with systematic tabulation of
cave and karst features, and initial mapping.
This has continued to the present, as new
caves are discovered and mapped. But in
the 1960s, scientific studies of northeastern
speleogenesis began. Insights from this have
resulted in the discovery of major caves
like Barrack Zourie and Carthusian caves,
Thunder Hole, and Vermonster. Informal
digging groups have ‘followed the water’
(and speleogenetic principles) to open many
new caves.
Some shallow caves were destroyed by
glaciers, and glacial sediment now blocks
many cave passages. But glaciation also
caused many new caves to form, and within
preglacial caves it modified old passages and
created new ones.
There are many ways that glaciation has
had major effects on cave development, and
Glaciation and Speleogenesis discusses them
in detail. The significant effects of glaciation
on the development of non-dissolutional
caves such as talus, fracture, and sea caves
are also covered.
Each of the several karst regions of the
Northeast is treated separately, with selected
caves used as case studies. A few examples
from Norway and the UK are included as
well.
Glaciation and Speleogenesis also has a
geologic history of the Northeast, a summary
of the cave-forming rock units in each karst
region, and discusses the prospects for learning paleoclimatic data from cave deposits.
Aside from the high price, the only
real drawback is with some of the images.
Photos 4.3, 4.5, 4.14, 6.9 and 7.9 are too
dark and maps 2.10 and 9.1 (anorthosite)
have mislabeled colors. Figs. 5.18 and 9.7
are just too small. As for the price, it might
be best for grotto libraries, and groups of
diggers, to share the cost of a volume. But
check Amazon.com for a $74 deal.
Glaciation and Speleogenesis is thorough, well-illustrated and readable, and
belongs in the library of every serious northeastern caver.
Chuck Porter
(Reprinted from the Northeastern Caver,
June 2015 issue, by permission)
NSS  News, September 2015

25

John Cole’s rappel rack
Galen Hekhuis
Vibram boots
Bill Balfour
Kernmantle rope from twisted Goldline.
Jumars.
Chris L. Hall
Swaygo packs. Only cave pack I’ve ever
owned that has proven itself durable,
waterproof, and versatile for all my caving
needs.
Michael Bradford
PVC cave pack material over cordura.
Tim White
A hot girlfriend who caved. I didn’t invent
her, but bringing her to grotto meetings sure
got me invited on a lot more trips.
Dan Lamping
LED lights and rechargeable batteries.
Hans Stein
Digital cameras ended our Sherpa trips of
four cases of photo gear to be carried in
on trips.
Tama Cassidy
DistoX
Tony Canike
Folding Clip board... And already trained
survey team!
Josh Brewer
Synthetic underwear.
Bill Steele
Ballistics nylon caving suit.
Alan Staiman
The John Cole rappel rack! I still have mine,
made by John in his garage. Ah, that lovely
ability to spread or squish together the bars,
to cram the rope between the top of the
rack and itself for a good solid resting stop
while waiting for a photographer to say go,
or figure out what was afflicting my light...
It was such a vast improvement over the
tandem brake bars I started out with.
Sherry Graham
Rotary hammer drill. Totally changed caving
for me
Edmund Tucker
Kernmantel & LEDs.
Steve Silverberg
Petzl Pantin, makes my ascending a lot
easier.
Michael Boyes
26

NSS  News, September 2015

L.E.D.s
Stacy and Amie Mcdrummond

Kelly Smallwood

What invention changed your
caving the most?

Side mount configuration.
Daphne Soares
Lithium ion batteries that have resulted in
better, lighter drills and lights.
Zeb Lilly
Contact lenses.
Jim Washington
Lasik eye surgery. Game-changer.
Scott Linn
Rechargable lithium batteries.
Ron Rutherford
Synthetic underwear with the ability to wick
away body moisture.
Jim Nicholls
A combination of my iPad, internet access
in remote areas, kml files of prospective
features, and Google Earth Pro with it’s
high resolution leaf-off aerial imagery.
Ridgewalking has never been easier.
Kevin Blackwood
High resolution compact waterproof digital
cameras with long lasting batteries and
32MB memory cards.
Stacy Gantt-Blackwood
Gibbs ascenders. Early that year, I exited
Schoolhouse Cave, WY on prussicks, and
two weeks later did Hellhole on my new,
tied, Gibbs rig; I later got it sewed. What a
difference!
Joel M. Sneed
Social media. I was caving for 20 years
before I ever heard of the NSS or organized
caving. When I was introduced to a NSS
caver through Facebook it literally changed
every aspect of my life and opened up a
whole new world for me
Tray Heinke

Caving is truly a gear-intensive sport with
new innovations in clothing, lighting, vertical
gear, packs, and more making our caving trips
more pleasant and productive. Here, Nancy
Holler Aulenbach shows us that caving gear
can be stylish as well as functional...

Self Contained Underwater Breathing
Apperatus
David Obi Jr
Knee pads, bulletproof with copious amounts
of padding.
Mike Furrey
Ebay changed the way I cave for one major
reason: cheap cheap cheap gear.
Glen Crawford
Single rope technique. Yes, this probably
encompasses more than one invention, but
suddenly I was a vertical caver where before
I had been restricted to horizontal caves.
Scott Schmitz

As soon as I can find good caving gloves in
a size small enough to fit my hand, that’ll go
to the top of my list!
Kathryn Louise McClaine

Battery powered Hilti drill, allowing cavers to
go where the air flows no matter how small
the crack... the “New Golden Frontier” of
caving.
Tiny Manke

Cordura....The bulletproof fabric for cave
suits...’nuff said.
Jose Martinez

LIGHT....gets better & better.
Tabbatha Cavendish

Sten Light!
Graham Schindel
LED lights and good rechargeable batteries!
Gotta add microblasting in there too.
Larry Zimmer
LED headlamps were the most significant
invention for me, followed by waterproof,
shockproof digital cameras.
Amos Mincin

SDS plus drill.
Henry Rockliff
The Internet.
Jansen Cardy
Emily says disto.
Mike Warner
G.P.S. - Makes finding those small holes on
the remote hillsides of TAG much easier!
Scott Fee

LED lights! I caved for 10 years with carbide.
LED lights save time, energy, and are so
much cleaner and easier to use, especially
on long trips.
Cheryl Rudolph
The Pee Thru Valve changed the size of my
bladder.
Buford Pruitt
Gibbs ascenders.
Dean Osgood
Those little plastic clips that help keep lights
on a helmet.
Steve Millett
Kernmantle rope. I’m old enough to have
done free drops on Goldline. How do you
spell “D-I-Z-Z-Y”?
Duane Couchot-Vore
The development of the cavelamps! What
an evolution from Petzl Zoom to Scurion!
Lisette de Graauw
Polypro! In Roppel Cave we came to realize
how many leads that had been classified as
Wetsuit (and thus usually not done) were
perfectly fine leads with the right polypro
including a good balaclava. Or the fact that
you could swim through passages without
wetsuits on the way to leads, and steam off

A New Junior Ranger Program Junior Cave Scientist
A new Junior Cave Scientist Booklet
is now available online and in hardcopy for
distribution to staff, partners, visitors, and for
classroom activities. The Geologic Resources
Division has produced a fun and fact-filled
booklet with photos, learning activities, cave
information, and a look at the key scientific

and then be happy once you were out of
the water.
James Wells

The Internet, email, facebook, online caving
communities.
Troy Fuqua

CH3NO2 & NH4NO3.

pStyle (and not having to remove vert gear to
pee!). Also LED lights. As a kid I remember
changing batteries and bulbs constantly, so
the LEDs are a nice change.
Sarah Truebe

Joel Buckner

I have to say wetsuits, also. The best we could
do back in the day for exploring streams was
wool army pants.
Don Bittle
The pStyle urinary device! I can pee without
having to take off my vertical gear or pull
down my coveralls. That was always such
a hassle! Especially practical while hanging
from a bolt halfway up a dome, during long
aid climbs...
Yvonne Droms
Ascending gear, from Prusik knot to Jumar,
to what’s the latest; and, a secondary
“invention,” would be lighting, from carbide
lamps to electric, to the Diablo System—
Yea!—to the bazillion electric lights from
there on. Problem here is the price also
increased. Bad!
Ernie Coffman
Disto X!
Terri Sprouse

Mini rack so there was a small option besides
Figure 8. I hate the way 8s twist the rope.
Linda Palit
Radio slaves have made my cave photography
faster and less prone to flash failures.
Dave Bunnell

Our next Cave Chronicles topic:
What is your favorite caving
scar and how did you get it?
Please send your story to Philip
Rykwalder by October 15 for publication in our December issue:
[email protected]
If you have already replied on
Facebook, no need to send it separately.

disciplines that study cave
resources. This booklet also discusses karst
landscapes and WhiteNose Syndrome in bats,
a deadly disease that has
killed millions of hibernating bats in the eastern
United States.
To learn more about
this program and to
download an electronic
version of the booklet:
www.nature.nps.
gov/geology/caves/jrcavesci.cfm
To r e c e i v e h a r d
copies of this booklet,
contact: Dale Pate,
303-969-2635 or email:
[email protected]

Right: Sample page from
the 24-page booklet

NSS  News, September 2015

27

June 26, Mark Hodge noted on his
Facebook page on June 26 that he spent ten
days cementing rocks to make steps into his
backyard dig in Cedar Knob Cave, Bath
County, Virginia. He had been hauling out
and getting slimed by sloppy mud, bucket
by bucket, digging almost daily in his own
personal Purgatory. He is now down to solid
rock walls.
June 28, Brett Hemphill posted to
his Facebook page on June 28 about an
“[i]ncredible weekend for underwater cave
exploration in Florida.” The Woodville Karst
Plain Project, Karst Underwater Resources
(KUR), and the Madison Spring Project
explored and surveyed altogether just
under 6000 feet of virgin underwater cave
passage. Hemphill also posted a map of
M2 Blue Cave depicting recently explored
and surveyed passage. Andy Pitkin posted
that same day on the KUR Facebook page
that Charlie Roberson and he added 1626
feet of line to the downstream end using the
Fannell’s Funnel entrance. Approaching the
point where Michael Poucher and Hemphill
turned around in 2010, blue water was
layered on top of dark water from the
Prehistoric Tunnel. About 50 feet before
the old end-of-line was a tunnel contributing
clear water in from the right. They instead
followed the better visibility (50 feet there
versus 10-15 feet in the Prehistoric Tunnel)
downstream, exploring typical M2 borehole
tunnel about 20 feet wide, 10 feet high,
and with black goethite locally common.
They turned around after running out of line
at around 8900 feet of penetration. This
put the total passage length for M2 Blue
at 30,324 feet, making it the 28th longest
underwater cave in the world. In another
post that day, Hemphill wrote that Madison
Blue Spring Cave has a traverse of over
10,000 feet to its Hidden Well entrance, and
M2 Blue has a 10,000-plus foot traverse to
Fennels Funnel, and the two caves are just
over 11,500 feet from each other.
Sylvester “TJ” Muller sent in an article
on NSS-owned Mill Creek Sink Cave
published in the Gainesville (Florida) Sun on
June 22 that developers of property overlying the cave agreed Monday to conduct
water quality monitoring and employ more
stormwater management techniques in the
hope of scuttling a legal challenge from
Alachua County. The developers are being
also sued by the CDS. The tentative agreement was not made in conjunction with
Wal-Mart’s plans to develop that site; in
fact, the company wants a reversion to the
28

NSS  News, September 2015

2006 agreement with the City of Alachua.
However, plaintiffs point out that monitoring for pollution does nothing to stop said
pollution and the Florida Department of
Environmental Protection allows stormwater treatment ponds to be constructed over
documented sinkholes and caves. Indeed, it
is still not clear whether Wal-Mart intends to
place a gasoline station above the sinkhole
that is directly above a high room in the cave.
Muller was quoted as saying, “In my opinion,
the current city council still maintains that
they are completely unaware of any cave
system there.”
Dave Socky noted on his Facebook page
on July 3 that 1730 feet of trunk passage was
mapped the day before in Windy Mouth
Cave with Nick Socky and Amy Skowronski.
They were in the cave for about eight hours,
Socky noting that it was “really nice to sketch
cave that actually had walls, instead of the
usual ‘breakdown’.”
On July 5, Brent Hemphill posted to his
Facebook page that Matt Vinzant, Jonathan
Bernot, and he set a new depth record for
the Suwannee River “Valley” general area
of 250 feet in Suwannee Spring Cave,
Suwannee County, Florida. They laid 1,880
feet of new line and surveyed it, ending the
dive 3,200 feet from the entrance at a highflow side-mount restriction. Matt Vinzant
added some photos at tinyurl.com/ol9mw7e.
The entrance to Suwannee Spring Cave
has three extreme high flow major restrictions and a considerable amount of unstable
breakdown. Last year, Hemphill and Derek
Ferguson explored the first 400 feet of the
cave to a depth of 140 feet. The next dive
took Michael Poucher, Derek Ferguson, and
Hemphill 900 feet in to a depth of 140 feet.
The third dive, by Charlie Roberson and
Poucher, went a distance of 1400 feet and
depth of 127 feet. The next two attempts
were aborted by high flow at the entrance
restriction. They ultimately want to produce
a map available to the general public upon
completion of the project. Jonathan Bernot
posted a short video of the cave on FB on
July 6: tinyurl.com/q8cr5ns.
The Mid-Atlantic Karst Conservancy
(MAKC; at tinyurl.com/nhxjoug ) is asking
for donations toward fixing up the group’s
library, which is an old house. The local code
enforcement officer and MAKC insurance
agent pointed out several deficiencies that
need to be addressed as soon as possible.
Soffits, fascia, and storm gutters are rotted
and literally falling off the building, the roof

should be replaced, and the house need
painting. Donations can be made at tinyurl.
com/qfjc2cb.
Amos Mincin reported on his Facebook
page on July 7 that the Forest Service held
a cleanup on June 27 at Bowden Cave,
Randolph County, West Virginia. The
Philadelphia Grotto, Central New Jersey
Grotto, and Monongahela Grotto spent
about three hours primarily wire-brushing
graffiti off walls but also picking up trash.
John Tudek organized the event, along with
Brian Louden, Steve Gadd, and others. The
cave has been closed since WNS arrived in
the area, but that has not stopped vandals
and local spelunkers: tinyurl.com/qyp6h7f.
On the NSS Survey and Cartography
Section Facebook page, Jason Richards on
July 6 posted a map of Snail Shell Cave,
Rutherford County, Tennessee, upstream
from Sump 1 (tinyurl.com/psrcsbu).
Exploration continues. You can message
him if you want a link to the full-sized version.
Sylvester “TJ” Muller posted a public
thank-you on his June 15 Facebook page
to Steve Boyer and others who constructed
changing rooms at the NSS-owned and
CDS-managed Cow Springs Cave property in Suwannee County, Florida. It was a
two-day effort involving the creative use of
scuba tanks (probably with cave-diver fills) to
power air tools. Other participants included
Hally Baroody, Jeff Reeves, RB Havens, Rick
Robinson, Sean McCarthy, MichaelAngelo
Gagliardi, Zelda Gagliardi, Forrest Wilson,
and a bunch of Boyers (Steve, Marylin,
and Andrew). Also, the assistance of Cathy
Lesh of Dive Outpost and Wayne Kinard of
Amigos Dive Center was noted, and photos
provided by Muller: tinyurl.com/q8y93f3.
Bill Mixon posted to the Texas Caver
listserv on June 16 the news that a new
American-Mexican Cave Studies
Activities Newsletter 38 had been
published. It contains a fold-out and other
maps, almost all photos are in color, and it
can be had by emailing Mixon at his address
in the Members Manual.
After over 25 years of free camping
at “Scottsboro Mountain” in Alabama
TAG country, cavers were sadly informed
by Andy Zellner on Tag-Net that the owner
passed away and her heirs have closed the
site to us. Well, we got our money’s worth!
RIP Mrs. Sheppard.

Entrance chamber of Punkin
Cave in Texas. Note caver in
red, in a short passage from a
second entrance.

A major sewage overflow flooded
Cruze Cave, Knox County, Tennessee, on
July 27. Scott Engel posted to the Smoky
Mountain Grotto Web site on the following
day that the owner was looking for help in
addressing the issue: tinyurl.com/qafvurm.
Kasey Fiske’s listserv Wisconsin caving
newsletter details news of upcoming activities
in the state, including an updated status of
WNS in the state, schedule for ongoing cave
digs in Cherney Maribel Caves County
Park, announcement of free cave tours to
the public, and the skinny on the 14th interdisciplinary biennial Sinkhole Conference in
October. Fiske’s newsletter can be obtained
directly from her (email address in the
Members Manual).
The River City Grotto’s July newsletter
contained a note that the Marion County,
Florida, property containing Briar Cave was
being sold and a shopping center planned
for it. However, the areal extent of the cave
was to be contained within a preserved
green space. Future access had yet to be
determined, and the Florida Speleological
Society (FSS) was monitoring the situation.
Briar Cave is Peninsular Florida’s most
decorated cave, and previous owners allowed
monthly FSS-managed visitations: tinyurl.
com/ngncahs.
Jim “Crash” Kennedy posted to the
TexasCaver listserv on July 5 a three-page
report on the June 26-27 expedition to
Punkin Cave, Edwards County, Texas. The
effort mustered 18 surveyors divided into five
teams, surveying a total of 115.05 meters,
bringing the cave total to 4747.58 meters.
Kennedy’s team (Tone Garot, Walter Potter,
and Allison “Chains” White) got 10 shots
averaging 2.49 meters each and lost a heavy
hammer down a lead. Some lead. They left
two or three more leads. A team composed

of Matt and Saj Zappitello, Gregg Williams,
and Dale Barnard passed up a section labeled
in previous notes as “for really small people”
and instead headed for the AF area where
they mopped up a lead, hammered for an
hour on another lead, in vain, and then
surveyed into another passage to produce a
team total of 35.98 meters. Chris Vreeland,
Matt Zaldivar, Ryan Monjaras, and Jake Kirk
surveyed some leads into a blank spot on the
map, getting another 16.21 meters. William
Quast, Kris Peña, and Kathryn Huchton
mapped another 31.61 meters at the Fifty
Fathoms survey, making a nice loop. There is
still more to do in this area. Graham Schindel
and Ellie and Galen Falgout surveyed a lead
in the West Maze, adding 6.29 meters to
the cave’s length. Matt Turner worked at the
surface on the cabin dig with his jackhammer, assisted a bit by Yaz Avila. There are
hundreds of leads left in the cave. Contact
Kennedy directly at [email protected]
for a copy of the report.

August NSS News
On page 23, Sauta Cave [AL50]. some
small passing history is stated. But, the full
detailed history and reference is in the book,
Sauta Cave, A 200+ Year History. This
book is for sale in the NSS Bookstore, yet,
it is not even mentioned. Surely, a reference
or acknowledgement is in order! (A picture
of the dance hall over the lower entrance is
in this book.) Also, Kelly Kazak, the author,
is not listed in the April 2015 Members
manual. Bill Varnedoe
[Ed: I wasn’t aware of the book so
thanks for pointing it out. As for the
article, on uses of Alabama Caves in
Prohibition, a member submitted it and I
asked the author for permission to reprint
it. So no, she is not a member and its not
a requirement for our publication either].

Caves of Fire: Inside
America’s Lava Tubes
Dave Bunnell
Revised and expanded full color 2nd Edition
at new lower price
NSS Members’ price $13.50
NSSBookstore.org (256)852-1300

NSS  News, September 2015

29

Cave Crawlers Gazette
Central Arizona Grotto
July 2015, Vol. 57, No. 7
An access hole has been drilled into
Grand Canyon Caverns, where a long-term
dig project was being complicated by voltage
sag and generator nuisance. This hole is
intended to provide easy access to electricity,
and was drilled through 75 feet of limestone
to reach Disappointment Dome. A video of
the drill breakthrough can be seen at https://
youtu.be/kCbLWOJrseY
Darkside
Northern Rocky Mountain Grotto
June 2015, No. 27
Cavers in Montana’s Pryor Mountains
have completed the survey of Mystery
(Mystic) Cave, Carbon County. Taking four
days and 110 man-hours, this documentation included 3D photography of some
decorated areas. The final survey revealed
a length of 3,327 feet (1,681 more than
previously reported) and a depth of 154 feet.
A high quality map by Hans Bodenhamer
is included.

30

NSS  News, September 2015

SAG Rag
Shasta Area Grotto
May-June 2015, Vol. 34, No. 3
Bill Broeckel presents maps and descriptions of seven more lava caves in Siskiyou
County, California. Maps of Conjoined
Cave (135 feet), Seventh Sister Cave (59
feet), Back of Beyond Cave (395 feet),
Furthermore Cave (328 feet), Furthermore
Annex (50 feet), Moreover Cave (206 feet),
and Over & Out Cave (35 feet) are printed
separately and on an area map to show their
relation to one another.
TAG Caver
Sewanee Mountain Grotto
Summer 2015, Vol. 6. No. 2
Franklin County, Tennessee’s Coons
Labyrinth Cave has been recently documented by Nancy Lilly, with help from
Sewanee Mountain Grotto. The 2,416-footlong cave is located on the property of
Sewanee University of the South, where
Lilly’s survey was a senior project. A description accompanies the published map, which
won Lilly a blue ribbon at the 2105 NSS
cartography salon.

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National Cave and Karst Management
Symposium 2015
The first National Cave and Karst
Management Symposium was held in 1975
in Albuquerque, New Mexico with the
purpose of providing an opportunity for
members of the cave resource management
community to meet and exchange ideas to
advance effective management of cave and
karst resources. The event was initially held
annually but switched to biennially (every
other year). Over the course of the past 40
years NCKMS has been a venue for practical
synergy regarding cave and karst management issues amongst people from diverse
backgrounds, professions and interests.
The event focuses on resource management
and stewardship techniques, educational
communication, and sustainability. Sessions
typically focus on both show cave and wild
cave resource management.
NCKMS event is overseen by a steering
committee formed in 1990. The NCKMS
Steering Committee selects a host for
each symposium from bids presented and
provides guidance and some seed money for
developing the event. It also offers scholarships to enable event attendance, publishes
symposium Proceedings, and sponsors
other key conferences that address cave and
karst management issues. For example the
NCKMS Steering Committee has sponsored
the biennieal Cave Conservancies Forum.
The 21st National Cave and Karst
Management Symposium (URL: www.caveresearch.org/2015/) will take place October
19-23, 2015 in Cave City, Kentucky in the
heart of the southcentral Kentucky karst.
Since the early 1800s, Cave City has hosted
visitors to Mammoth Cave National Park
which is a World Heritage Site , International
Biosphere Reserve, and the second oldest
tourist attraction in the United States with
53,000 acres of natural preserve and over
400 miles of mapped passageways: the
longest cave system in the world. There are
a variety of lodging options to choose from in
the Cave City/Mammoth Cave Area including hotels, motels, bed and breakfast, cabin
rentals, field station bunkrooms/camping
and general camping.
The event is co-hosted by Cave Research
Foundation, Mammoth Cave National Park
and Western Kentucky University. The
theme for NCKMS 2015 is “Hidden
Landscapes-Hidden Challenges” which
focuses on the impact of human development on karst landscapes. However, all other
topics related to cave and karst management
will also be promoted.
The main venue for symposium sessions,
held on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday of the
Symposium week (October 20, 22, 23,

2015), will be the Cave
City Convention Center
located in Cave City,
Kentucky.
Workshops are held
on the Monday (October
19, 2015) of the symposium week and this year
there are seven outstanding workshops to choose
from that include: 1.
Integrating karst research
and citizen science, 2.
Monitoring methods and
management of karst,
3. Dye Tracing 101, 4.
Managing White Nose
Syndrome in show and wild caves, 5. Cave
restoration and repair workshop, 6. Karst
geophysical techniques, 7. Interpreting karst.
The Wednesday of Symposium week
(October 21, 2015) is typically dedicated
to field trips and there are three to choose
from including: 1. Introduction to the
Karst of Mammoth Cave National Park; 2.
Show Cave Management, Protection and
Interpretation at Mammoth Cave National
Park; 3. Urban Karst with a focus on karst
issues in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
There will also be social events during
the week and an opportunity to interact with
the movers and shakers of the cave management and conservation community, including
representatives from the NSS, the NPS,
USFS, BLM, USFWS, ACCA, TNC, many
state agencies from all over the country,
show cave operators, cave conservancies,
and international cavers.
Pre-registration is currently open until
September 7, 2015. Online registration is
open until September 19, 2015. Late registration will be on site. There are a variety of
lodging options to choose from in the Cave
City/Mammoth Cave Area including hotels,
motels, bed and breakfast, cabin rentals, field
station bunkrooms/camping and general
camping.

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Abstracts for session talks are being
accepted through September 15, 2015.
For more information about
NCKMS2015 go to www.cave-research.
org/NCKMS2015/ or contact Pat Kambesis
([email protected]).
For those interested in a more academic
and practical treatment of cave conservation,
protection and management strategies, there
will be a week-long short course entitled
Cave Management that will be co-taught
by Dr. Rick Toomey and Joel Despain and
sponsored by Mammoth Cave International
Center for Science and Learning and
Western Kentucky University. The course
can be taken for university credit, CEU credit,
or as a workshop. Course dates are October
26-30, 2015. For more information contact
Dr. Leslie North ([email protected])
Pat Kambesis
The Executive Search Committee
is looking for candidates to run for NSS
Secretary Treasurer. If you are interested in running or can suggest a good
candidate, please send a note to the
committee at [email protected] or
call the chair at 410-792-0742 in the
eastern time zone.

Now available! The Geology of Binkley
Cave System. 111 pages both softbound and
hardcover. Purchase at IndianaCaverns.com

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NSS  News, September 2015

31

September 2015