Jim Jacobs
Ah, revenge is SWEET! His moans were music to my ears!
Many of you were around in the early days of the NNG. At that time, Marty and I were just beginning to break the grandkids into caving, starting with T.J., who was then 7 1/2 yrs. old. We took him to Buckner's Cave, and had a fine time. Of course, he could just cruise through passages that gave us "adult-sized" people trouble. As a matter of fact, starting the same time, he beat us out of the crawlway by a good ten minutes. He could nearly run in a stoop, while we were crawling. I told him then that his time would come!
We're now breaking in the fourth and youngest of the boys, and they're cavers all. And we all went to Buckner's on Saturday, Sept. 13. But T.J. is now nearly six feet tall. He had to grunt and groan and drag himself through some tight places.
I laughed! And reminded him of my prophetic words. He was not amused. Especially since little Jimmy and even
smaller Ryan were just cruising through the passages that were making T.J. grunt and groan. It's the way of the
world!
Lara Storm
Hosted by the Greater Cincinnati Grotto at Great Saltpetre Cave Preserve, July 11-13 1997.
After six hours of driving, and losing an hour in the conversion to eastern time, I made my way down a very windy road to the Great Saltpetre Cave Preserve. I passed by registration and picked up my K-O-R packet on the way down into the valley that was the campground. The first order of business was to set up the tent. The hot Kentucky sun wrung sweat out of me as though I were a wet towel. After I had my tent set up, I moseyed over to the pavilion to sign up for some cave trips; I hadn't been caving since before convention, so I was getting pretty eager to get underground. There were several sign-up sheets for different caves with different difficulties. I signed up for one described as Hard-- 5-6 hours for Saturday, and I signed up for a moderate trip that was going to be led by an Ohio friend of mine on Sunday morning.
Next, since I was interested in getting some ascending gear, I made my way over to the row of vendors that was slowly forming as more and more people arrived. At the On Rope 1, Inc. booth a woman was asking the vendor about the ropewalker system and trying on a chest harness. I listened to their conversation and waited for my turn. I told the vendor that I was interested in the frog system, but I wasn't sure what questions to ask him. I ran to my vehicle and got my seat harness from the trunk so I could try on the ascending gear. Later the vendor, the other customer, and I went over to the climbing tower that was in the campground so that we could try out the gear. The vendor got the system adjusted for me so that I could get the maximum distance out of it, I tried the moves a couple of times, and then I decided to have him hold it for me and mail it to me later after I sent him the money.
Looking for something else to do, I went and found the Ohio cavers who had invited me to K-O-R in the first place. We chatted for a while and then they asked me if I had been to GSP yet. Finally I realized that they were referring to the cave after which the campground was named-- Great Saltpetre Cave. Up the hill from the campground is the entrance to the cave which, along with the campground, is owned by the Greater Cincinnati Grotto (GCG). Proud of the cave owned by their grotto, my friends had urged me to go take a look. GSP is, in some respects, partially commercial. There were lights already on in some parts of the cave, so there wasn't any need to get fully suited up to take a short jaunt through the cave. On the other hand, we were welcome to get all suited up and poke around in the little unlit leads and other unlit passages.
At 8 p.m. (eastern time) the howdy party started up at the pavilion. I hung around with my friends, met a few new people, and tried out the crawling box the GCG had constructed. The box was a fairly elaborate contraption. It was square and about four or five feet high. On each end of the box there were small entrance and exit holes cut in the wood, and within the box, parallel to the entrance and the exit ends of the box, there were other slabs of wood inserted that also contained oddly shaped holes. The spaces in between the slabs of wood varied as did the shapes of the holes. People who decided to try the box would enter through a hole on one end of the box and slowly make their way through holes in all the other slabs within the box until finally they would exit on the other end. Participants were not supposed to raise their body above the top of the box, which was sometimes a difficult task to accomplish. I navigated the box once and got a pretty painful bruise-- a bruise worse than most of the ones I typically get in the cave.
Later that night I went in GSP with one of my Ohio friends and did a more thorough trip than I had done earlier that day. We checked out a couple of holes in a place called the Russian Dome, considered a couple of crawlways that branched off the larger passages, and then he took me to the beginning of a crawlway known as Utter Drag. Supposedly the crawlway goes for 300 feet until it opens up into a room they call Utter Surprise. While part of the crawlway is supposed to be large enough to have your elbows out to your sides, near the end you have to keep one arm to your side and the other to the front to push your pack ahead as you go along. Part of Utter Drag is a successful dig that actually lead somewhere (Utter Surprise). The room beyond the crawlway doesn't go anywhere. On the way out my friend and I took a detour to the entrance through a passage known as Fat Man's Misery.
The next morning I woke up to the beeping of the alarm on my watch. It was seven and I needed to get up to prepare for the trip I was taking into Humongous Pit Canyon Cave. Despite the fact that I hadn't gotten to bed until after 3 a.m., I somehow managed to get out of bed and get ready for the cave trip. A short drive on the windy road took us to the trail that led to Humongous Pit Canyon Cave. Arriving at the cave, we soon realized why it had been given that name; the entrance was a Humongous Pit, and the majority of the passages were large canyons. The trip wasn't really difficult except for the fact that there was a lot of up and down maneuvering. We did a lot of chimneying and climbing, and the next day-- not surprisingly-- I was sore. That evening there was a banquet and a presentation inside the GCG-owned cave (Great Saltpetre). Rick Olsen gave the talk about the Origin and Regeneration of Nitrates in Mammoth Cave Sediment. In other words, he told us about information he had researched on saltpetre mining, and he explained the results of an experiment that he conducted on the subject. Olsen's question was whether nitrates in the cave would be formed again after the cave had already been mined for saltpetre. In his experiment, Rick took on aspects of the question such as how the nitrates reformed, in what quantity they reformed, and from what sources they reformed. It was a very interesting and informative talk. After the presentation there was more socializing, but this time I went to bed early knowing that I was going to be taking one more trip the next day.
Sunday morning came soon enough. Before I knew it I was hitching a ride over to the cave we were going to be going into, Highwater Cave. A short hike along a stream led us to the cave. To enter, we did a short crawl over gravel. Because Highwater is such a small cave (in size and length), the trip was interesting. Many of the crawls we did were to someplace and back. The major method of travel was crawling, but there were a few areas in the cave where there were 15 to 20 foot canyons. Back into one of these canyons there was an underlying, connecting passage that crossed under (and partially through) that bottom of one of the tightening canyons. Coming out from underneath one side of the canyon and ducking underneath the other, the foot-high passage slanted farther downward into the rock. The other end of the passage was the upstream end and was, therefore, smaller (something I learned in the Speleology course and observed on the Highwater trip). I took my helmet off and held my carbide light in my hand as I started into the slanting passage head first. The floor of the crawlway was partially covered with medium-sized stones, and they rolled under me as I slid down into the passage, which I later termed, "the jutty outty hurty painful crawlway passage." I passed the slanted part of the passage into a flatter section. The crawlway was obviously well cut by the water which left razor sharp protrusions that poked and clawed at my clothes and my skin. One such protrusion, about seven inches high and eight or so inches long, stuck straight up out of the floor threatening to slash my left arm. Fortunately, injury due to this shark fin shaped obstacle was easily avoidable. Thinking back to the Speleology course, I reasoned that the passage was very likely to open up due to the fact that I was travelling in the direction that used to be downstream. To my delight, about a body length into the passage I came upon a small circular pit about ten feet deep. My head stuck out over the top of the pit as I looked down into it. Around a corner, a taller canyon exited from the pit, but I couldn't see if it was large enough for me to fit into. At the top of the pit with no way to get into the pit feet first, I decided to go back and join the others. Then came the tricky part-- going backwards, up, and out of the crawlway. In the end, I had to have help from one of the cavers who was waiting patiently outside of the passage. I was free of the crawlway, but one of the other things that Brucker taught us in the Speleology course was that we should always go to the very end of a passage so that you know for sure that it ends; otherwise, it could be a long time before you find out if it's worth your time to go back.
Happy to have gotten to do some great caving trips at Karst-O-Rama, I changed into clean clothes, folded up the tent, and hit the road. It was a long drive home, but it was worth it. (Look for the Karst-O-Rama date in the NSS News list of events for next year!!!!!)
John R. Marquart
Illinois and the Near Normal Grotto are getting more and more into the news for bat conservation. First, the Near Normal Grotto played a major role in gating Illinois' largest bat hibernaculum at the Blackball Mine in LaSalle County, Illinois with lots of media coverage, including a feature full-color article in the Chicago Tribune. Then, our grotto was recognized as Outstanding Volunteer for 1996 by Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) in a ceremony held at the 1996 Illinois State Fair. Next, the 26th Annual North American Symposium on Bat Research was held in Bloomington, Illinois in October 1996 and our grotto sponsored the Symposium Field Trip to take some of the world's bat experts to the Blackball Mine to see our handiwork. Now, for the first time, a major workshop on bat conservation has been held in Illinois. The Midwest Bat Conservation and Management Workshop sponsored by Bat Conservation International (BCI), USDA-Forest Service - Shawnee National Forest, and Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) was held in Muddy, Illinois on August 12-14, 1997. Our grotto again contributed and has drawn the positive attention of more bat specialists and others who work in conservation in general.
I was very pleased when Dan Taylor, of BCI, announced the workshop to our grotto and invited us to attend and participate. It was unfortunate that the timing was poor for many of our members, since it overlapped with the date already set for the Mammoth Cave National Park - Cave Restoration Field Camp. Many of our grotto members were, of course, going on the field camp and had to miss the bat workshop. For me, however, the timing was good, since I was free of my teaching duties for a while. I had finished teaching summer classes at the University of Illinois and Eastern Illinois University hadn't started fall classes yet. I welcomed the invitations from Dan Taylor and Sherly Ducummon, both of BCI, to participate in the workshop as one of the instructors. My role was to tell the participants about how volunteer groups (especially cavers like us) can work very well with governmental agencies (like IDNR) and private conservation organizations (like BCI) to constructively accomplish much needed conservation projects. The Blackball Mine project supplied the background material for my presentation in which I showed slides of the project and explained the historic significance of the mines, as well as their significance in early studies of the Indiana bat (dating to the 1950s).
I will give you a brief run down on a few of the workshop happenings. I had never heard of Muddy, Illinois (have you?). Well, it is sort of a suburb of Harrisburg in southeastern Illinois. Muddy is a one street wide strip along U.S. 45 and once served as the night club area for Harrisburg. That was in the heyday of mining in southern Illinois (mostly coal, Fluorspar, and silica). Now the mines are mostly closed down and the miners gone, so the strip was more of a ghost town, except for one strip joint that hung on and a few surviving businesses. It seemed like a strange place to hold a major conservation workshop. The connection was its proximity to Shawnee National Fores and probably that the local businesses gave good rates to attract the workshop there. The workshop was held in the banquet room of the Days Inn in Muddy, which had seen better days (pun intended). The bar and dining room hadn't operated since goodness knows when, but at least the pool was full so we could cool off from the steamy summer weather. I will forgive the accommodations though since the workshop was excellent. Leading experts from all over presented excellent lessons on such things as mine and cave safety (Dr. Scott Altenbach from the University of New Mexico), lots of information on bats (Dr. Michael Harvey from Tennessee Tech), the "Revised Recovery Plan for the Indiana Bat" (Robert Currie from U.S. FISH and Wildlife), gating techniques (Roy Powers), and lots more. I particularly found Scott Altenbach's discussion of "bad air" in mines and caves very informative from a caver's point of view. Bob Currie's discussion of the Indiana bat was particularly pertinent to us grotto members, since our work at the Blackball Mine is largely aimed at preserving this Federally Endangered species. Bob sited that four bats that reside in the Eastern and Midwestern US are listed as endangered. They are the Gray bat, the Virginia Long-Eared, the Ozark Long- Eared, and the Indiana bat. Of these, he said all are doing all right except for the Indiana bat. One factor is that the first three live in caves (or mines) year-round and protecting the entrance seems to protect them all year. The Indiana bat is different in that it hibernates in caves and mines, but lives outdoors during summer months. This is especially true of the females who have maternal colonies under loose bark of trees or in hollowed out trees. Bob said that the Gray bat is doing so well that he favors unlisting it as endangered. The Indiana bat is another story, unfortunately. He fears that it will die out within a decade or so if past trends continue. The statistics are frightening. According to Bob the populations amounted to about 80 million in 1960 and dropped to 600 thousand by 1980 (20 years later), and then to 350 thousand in 1995 (another 15 years). He sketched a curve showing population decline which went on to near zero in the not too distant future. I did a little of my own statistics with these data and found that the rate of loss seems to follow what is called a second-order rate law, That is that the rate of loss (R) is equal to a constant (k) times the square of the current population (P). In terms of an equation that gives R = k(P)(P). Using Bob's data, I find k to be about 0.000000082 with R being the number loss in bat population per year. This equation agrees fairly well with the data and gives the following table for bat population and loss by year as follows:
I don't claim that this relationship is really accurate, but it does show that the declining population of Indiana bats is continuing. No one really understands why. The major hibernacula are protected and it seems that the problems lies in the summer habitat. Is it loss of usable habitat, poisoning by pesticides, or what? No one knows and it is a point for serious scientific study. The clue may be in state-by-state comparisons. The largest populations of Indiana bats are in Indiana (about 150,000), Missouri (about 150,000), and Kentucky (about 50,000). In Indiana, the populations are showing a steady increase, but in Missouri and Kentucky there are large losses that offset the gain. What is the difference? Again, no one knows. The caves and mines which contain Indiana bats are largely protected in all states, but there is an obvious difference in other factors, but what?
On the positive side, I learned from Bill Glass (IDNR) that our work in gating the Blackball Mine is seeming to pay off. Of the 25,000 bats that annually hibernate at the mine, the Indiana bat population is small compared to the counts in Indiana, Missouri, and Kentucky, but still among the largest in Illinois. Below are biannual counts of Indiana bats taken at the Blackball Mine since 1987.
We gated the mine in summer 1996 and the population hibernating there this winter has increased to 943, which is
the highest population counted since investigations began in the 1950s. Previous counts have never exceeded about
650 before and had fallen as low as about 20 in the early 1980s. The State of Illinois obtained the land and designated
it as a Nature Preserve in 1984, which helped with a significant upswing in populations, but the big jump in numbers
has occured in the one winter since we gated the mine. If the current trend continues, Illinois may yet become
a state having a major population of Indiana bats. Let's hope so. If so, we were critical in helping it along.
Finally, I will mention the very worthwhile field trip for the workshop. We traveled to the extreme southern tip of Illinois to see the Unimen Mine. It was gated last summer right after the Blackball Mine and also contains Indiana bats. We visited the mine shortly before sunset and set up nets to catch bats flying out of the entrances. We used light intensifiers to see them in the dark and bat detectors to eavesdrop on their echo location calls. Mist nets caught the most bats by entangling them. Only the bat experts, who had rabies shots, were allowed to untangle and handle the caught bats (several Indiana bats, a Big Brown bat, and a Northern Long-Eared bat), but we all got a good look at them. A harp trap was also set up. It looks like a musical harp with vertical strings of fishing line running downward. The strings ran in two parallel layers. The second layer was offset from the first so that a bat flying between strings on the first layer had to flip its wings vertical relative to the ground to get between strings. The second set of strings then was right in front of the bat and it didn't have time to reorient to clear them. The bat would run into these stings and fall down between the layers of stings into a catch bag (that's why it is called a trap rather than a net).
In short, I really enjoyed the workshop and learned a lot. Other participants (and instructors too) learned a lot about why they should seek the help of cavers, like us, and how much the Blackball Mine project serves as a positive example of people working constructively together. In his talk, Bob Currie gave cavers, in general, the highest recommendation as hard-working, conservation-oriented volunteers and used the Blackball Mine project and the Near Normal Grotto as proof that it works. That is encouraging coming from the person from U.S. Fish and Wildlife who is their primary expert on the recovery of the Indiana bat. I was proud to have been able to represent a group like ours. We are such a new grotto, but have done much in that short time. I am convinced that we have just begun and that our conservation efforts for the future will exceed those of the past. BCI has expressed its interest in our continued collaboration with them on bat conservation projects. One project that was expressed by Bill Glass is the gating the Zimmerman Mine which has a large bat population. Indiana bats have been counted there in the past, but they have apparently fled from the disturbances. If it is gated, it will protect the bats that currently hibernate there and perhaps Indianas will return. With its many entrances, that will be some kind of project! Get ready for more hard, but needed and appreciated work.
|
Year |
Population |
Rate of loss per year |
|
1960 |
8,000,000 |
------- |
|
1980 |
600,000 |
29,000 |
|
1995 |
350,000 |
10,000 |
|
2000 |
300,000(est.) |
7,400(est.) |
|
Year |
Population |
Change |
%Change |
|
1987 |
291 |
---- |
---- |
|
1989 |
445 |
+154 |
+53% |
|
1991 |
621 |
+176 |
+40% |
|
1993 |
655 |
+34 |
+5% |
|
1995 |
532 |
-123 |
-19% |
|
1997 |
943 |
+288 |
+44% |