In the spring of 2017 Bill Gee led three trips into Carroll Cave. Joshua Mouser was working on a masters project at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, doing eDNA data collection and analysis. He has completed his thesis paper and earned his Master of Science degree.
The complete paper is attached below as a PDF file. It is 130 pages of pretty dense reading!
Trip report
Carroll work day September 7, 2019
Participants (riding with Rick)
Rick Hines
Jim Cooley*
Julie Swetnam*
Shannon Robinson*
Jay Kennedy*
Nick Kennedy*
Jamie Euliss
Rita Worden
Martin Carmichael
Jeff Page
Randy Bruegger
Greg Fry
Summary:
We finished anchoring the demo/practice cable to the silo floor and finished the installation of a waterproof LED light in the basement that was started on the prior work day. We got started on the installation of a new LED fixture in the silo. We repaired the roof of the school by replacing the torn section of the rubber roofing with a new 11’ by 12’ section of EPDM rubber. Jamie delivered a plaque made to honor Chris Danuser, Greg Fry and Ron Jaeger. We moved the picnic table and a steel wood rack to the Silo. The big effort was prepping the sky crapper for a move across the road to our land north of the silo. After cross bracing the sky crapper Greg Fry picked it up with his tractor and moved it to its new home. As we finished cleaning up and loading up Jay led Nick down the ladder for his first view of Carroll Cave.
The 2019 annual members meeting of the Carroll Cave Conservancy took place on 27 July 2019 at the Mid-County Fire Protection District station in Camdenton, Missouri. The meeting was called to order at 13:05 by President Rick Hines.
CCC 2019 Annual MeetingDownloadThe current officers and members of the board of directors were introduced. They are:
President – Rick Hines
Vice President – Jack Peters (not present)
Secretary – Bill Gee
Treasurer and membership – Jeff Page
The Carroll Cave Conservancy will be conducting our annual public Carroll Cave Tours on Saturday September 28. Please let us know if you or your friends and relatives are interested in a trip. Contact Rick Hines (rickhines@aol.com) with questions or to sign up for a trip. Participants must sign a liability release and be able to climb a 120 foot vertical ladder.
Trip report by Tony Schmitt
Participants:
Dan Lamping
Joe Sikorski
Derik Holtmann
Josh Hafner
Jeremy Weih
Josh, Derik and I arrived at the backdoor entrance around 3:45pm. We immediately started rigging the hole.
Recently we have started rigging the hole a little different. Concern over the strength of the welds on the wall of the silo has lead us to start rigging with a figure eight on a bight with carabiner to the stainless hasp under the rescue hole. We then tie a butterfly with a large loop to the old eyelets welded to the wall. This allows for the rope to fall basically down the center of the shaft. We rappel in and climb out using our Croll on our frog systems as a safety while climbing the ladder. On camp trips such as these, we rig a pulley for hauling camp packs out at the end of a trip. We use a truck to slowly pull the camp packs up the hole. This works out very well, and is tremendously better than trying to haul heavy camp packs after several days under.
