Meeting Minutes January 2022

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Cascade Grotto Meeting (virtual-only)
January 20, 2022

Future meetings:

  • Daryl suggested thursday for business meetings, friday for in-person
  • Will suggested a bluetooth microphone for meetings would be a good investment
    • we can easily present/record meetings

Gear:

  • Daryl: inner mountain outfitters can give us a 20% discount on vertical gear for the club
  • Daryl: we never got gear because we were concerned about policy/process:
    • how it’s cleaned/decon’d?
    • who holds it when not in use? i.e. quartermaster
    • what kind of gear would we get?
    • how is it checked out/returned? do we have a deposit?
    • what happens if someone doesn’t return it? late fees after 1 week use?
  • Robert: we might have issues as to who has the grotto vertical gear and it vanishing

Training:

  • Daryl: Eddie Cartaya’s spar training tower in OR could be a good place for us to organize sessions

Liability:

  • Daryl: we always have concerns w/ liability and trying to limit it (re: utah canyoneering suit)
  • Daryl: what helps is that we are recognized as a non-profit (NSS told us this)
    • we are not a 501c but that still gives us legal protection

Elections:

  • elections:
    • chair: eric
    • lauren: vice-chair
    • maurice: secretary
    • talon: treasurer
  • 9 people voted
  • new officers take effect at this meeting

Summer cave ideas:

  • Windy creek cave:
    • Will was there in May, patchy snow was still there
    • Daryl wants to ensure the route is set down before we schedule a grotto trip
      • bolting equipment might be needed
    • campsites can be iffy: if there is snow/high water that’s bad, if dry that is good
      • two campsites:
        • creek camp: flood risks are pretty low as the creeks don’t come from glaciers
        • county line camp: good flat area for tenting
  • Albright cave:
    • we have official permission from the owner now
    • in Riverside, WA (6 hrs from Seattle)
  • Gardner cave:
    • contact staff at state park, offering to clean cave
      • we used to do this more often but lost touch
      • Daryl did this kinda stuff back in Montana
    • in Crawford state park
  • Pend Oreille river:
    • Robert has lots of assorted leads around the river
    • some stuff is public land, some is private land
  • Daryl wants to lead a Papoose trip (July-ish)
  • Will is tentatively thinking Vancouver island for a few day trip

Future trips:

  • fewer but larger trips
    • e.g. a trout lake cave weekend
    • can have more hype, more interest
    • saturday can be beginner trip, sunday can be advanced caves
  • possibly three events like this per year:
    • St Helens, Trout Lake, Cave Ridge, Concrete

Communication venues:

  • problem is not every place is updated all at once
  • we currently only use facebook & email
  • other options:
    • slack, telegram

Action items:

  • any updates on the cave rescue scholarship (Eric & Vandy)
  • look into a bluetooth microphone (Will)
  • proposal w/ costs for vertical gear stuff (Daryl)
    • proposal for vertical gear for the Feburary meeting (Daryl)
      • 4 or 5 kits total
      • a kit roughly costs like 400 or 500
      • we should get a variety of gear so people can test out different things (e.g. bobbin & rack)
  • buy copies of Kim Lauper’s book “Caves of Trout lake”: (3 volumes) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50868946-trout-lakes-caves-a—e (Eric)
    • Proposal to set aside budget passes
    • 6 for, none against
  • new officers
    • update google docs permissions to add new officers (Daryl)
    • cascade_grotto email goes to current officers, needs to be updated (Daryl)
  • add exchange newsletters to website (Daryl)
  • prep for beginner Lake cave trip in April: get people based in OR to organize
  • try out the Slack channel for those who aren’t using Facebook/email (Daryl)
  • shoot out an email w/ a dues reminder (Daryl)

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