Cascade Grotto Meeting
Phinney Neighborhood Association/Zoom
September 28
Presentation: Scapegoat 2022 expedition
Overview
- Scapegoat is a 240k acre wilderness in Montana
- Part of a 2.54 million acre roadless area
- Massive karst area explored in the 70s but not much later on
- Large pits up on plateau are plugged up by snow most of the year, creating caves
- Approach is 30 mile gravel/dirt road, then 13 mile hike in
- Mules haul much of the gear/food to camp
- Weather is highly variable: sunny, smokey, or even snow
- This year is the 50th anniversary of the wilderness creation
Caves
- Green Fork: main entrance
- Kathy’s Icebox: near Greek Fork, target of the expedition
- New caves found!
- Eric found 5 caves up on high cliffs:
- 3 fairly accessible
- 2 required climbing
- Surveyed 2 of the caves
- Eric found 5 caves up on high cliffs:
Promising Leads
- Bobby pushed a lead of a dome (crab butter) but only lead to a big room
- Resurveyed One More Day cave, pushed a lead that may go to Scapegoat
- Examined pits on the plateau
- Built a dam out of clay to divert a waterfall and went down
- found a new lead that goes but ran out of rope
- Bobby did a climb to find a massive passage (40 ft by 60 ft) that lead both ways
- Half-moon park (other side of the valley) may have caves but no easy access (250 ft climbs)
Kathy’s Icebox
- Tough access: requires rappel down, climb up, or long through trip
- Consists of large canyon-like passages up to 80 ft tall, only a few ft wide
- Some crawly passages but mostly walking
- Rigging required for some passages
- Sections are fairly wet: “lake” goes up to the waist
- Kathy’s Icebox used to be filled with ice; not as much anymore
- Lots of formations hidden away including calcite rafts
Decadence
- five star backcountry dining, making pizza, steak, biscuits, cake, etc
Questions
- How deep is it?
- 1400 ft of possible depth, deepest known pit is ~250 ft
- What is the temperature?
- Water is 34 F, air is 35-40 F
- Are bears an issue?
- Definitely around and we hear reports but haven’t been so far
Trip reports
- Remapped cave near Mt Saint Helens crater
- Eddie Cartaya has been lead there for years
- Surveying caves in Alaska
- Caused areas of wilderness to be protected from logging/mining
- Trout lake caving/digging
- Bonanza queen mine: tried to access marble cave
- Cave sits on inaccessible 2nd level of 3 level mine
- Requires climb up or down mine shaft
- Poet’s crest surveys ongoing
- Ape cave cleanup
- Vandy got a battery-powered pressure washer to clean graffiti
Announcements
- Western Regional in Nevada is this weekend
- Cave ridge trip up to Cascade this weekend
- Poet’s crest surveying this weekend
- Every weekend there’s caving in Trout Lake, Claude will be digging
- Dead horse cave in November 12 lead by Brad
- Dusty has a Dynamited/Wolff trip, thinking 10/22 (open to suggestions)
- Nason ridge later this month: possible fissures to explore
- Ape cave cleanup: Oct 29 – Nov 5
- they will have a generator/water and will be able to camp in parking lot
- contact vandy to assist w/ cleanup
- email information is on facebook & google group
Official business:
- Mark Garnick wants to buy a survey device (BRIC 4) for $850
- only good device now as Disto X isn’t available for purchase
- could be hard to track such a thing: we could lose it
- would people use it?
- seems like there’s some interest
- they don’t last forever: 4-6 years
- no vote was taken
- Eric proposes NCRC scholarship proposal
- teaches people cave rescue (requires vertical cave experience)
- do we want to only have 1 person per year?
- should this be best fit or first applicant?
- how does this get back to the grotto?
- tabling discussion for later