Cascade Grotto Meeting
Hybrid meeting (Phinney Neighborhood Association and Google Meet)
Wednesday February 7, 2024
Votes
Allocate $100 for room rental per year
Eric proposed, Sarah seconded
- 10 for
- none against
Allocate $70 for a Bluetooth microphone
Eric proposed, Sarah seconded
- 10 for
- none against
Presentation
Sulfur cycling and Speleogensis: cave formation in the midwest
Karst
- Karst is rock dissolved by water, punched through creating caves
- gypsum and salt vs limestone form differently
- Cave types
- not all caves are in karst (e.g. volcanic terrain)
- glacial volcanic caves are caves within glacier/ice
- limestone (solutional) caves
- mammoth cave vs carlsbad cavern caverns
- epigenetic, i.e. top-down (water disolving from up top)
- big rivers going through
- hypogene caves i.e. down-up (dissolving coming from beneath)
- often very dry with lots of gypsum development
Background
- Indiana lots of classic karst terrain
- both epigenetic and hypogene caves
- examination of Mitchell plateau
- Past work
- Art Palmer did his phd in 1967 with mapping blue spring caverns
- Noel Krothe looked at water chemistry in the same area
- isotope (# of neutrons) of atom causes different behavior with water interaction
- different weights of compounds showed it was possible to determine what proportion of water was from atomspheric vs non-atmospheric sources (or other acquifers)
- used work from lee & krothe (2003), simplifying models
- Speleogensis
- carbonic acid (generally epigene)
- CO2 dissolves rock
- sulfuric acid (generally hypogene)
- requires less acid
- results in gypsum
- speleogensis is a key component of carbon cycle on earth
- carbonic acid (generally epigene)
Research
- Examination of sources of carbon
- not heavier
- unusual lighter source (organic source)
- origin is petroleum seeps in caves
- bacteria consume oil in seep
- gives caustic acid to cave water
- bacteria consume oil in seep
- Blue spring cavern
- discovered gypsum
- rare because it is water-soluble in a very wet cave
- depending on season (wet vs dry) lots of carbon sourced meteoric (sky) vs seeps
- adds complexity to what we thought was already explained for generation of cave
- Speleogeneis con’td
- fracking has changed how speleologensis functions as oil has been pumped out
- lots of similar behavior in KY and TN
- spelungers cave also has lots of sulfur/petroleum seeps
- fracking has changed how speleologensis functions as oil has been pumped out
Questions
- Do trees have an effect on limestone?
- trees breathing out carbon can “drill effect” as they dig into limestone
- often seen in FL
- trees breathing out carbon can “drill effect” as they dig into limestone
- How big of a component is this for global carbon cycle?
- geological reservoir of carbon is largest on earth
- it is very slow (geologic time scale) vs anthropogenic
- generally is net-neutral except for plate subduction (where volcanic behavior releases carbon)
Papers
- Burgess, S.A., Branam, T.D, Florea L.J. 2023. Divergent geochemical pathways of carbonate aquifer evolution in a classic karst terrain: (2) groundwater source delineation using regional water chemistry data. Water.
- Burgess, S.A., Florea L.J.. Branam, T.D. 2023. Divergent geochemical pathways of carbonate aquifer evolution in a classic karst terrain: (1) polygenetic cave development identified using longitudinal groundwater geochemistry. Water.
General meeting
Trip Reports
Aidan & others: AZ
- 3 or 4 vertical pitches in cave
- all carbonate
- very hot cave
- cave slide!
Alex & others: Dead horse
- this weekend on Sunday
- lots of people! (and new cavers!)
- went through rat hole
- first official grotto trip of the year
Eric & others: digging at Helens
- end up not being super successful
- recruited CA cavers
- pulled out one large boulder (in a sketchy way)
Sarah & others: digging @ Jackman creek
- lots of new people digging!
- dog ran into cave and was sad being in small cave
- made cave 5 ft longer!
Bram & others: fracture cave survey
- did some sketching
- survey 160 ft of passage
Sarah & others, WA DNR: bat counts @ Helens/Adams
- did a number of bat hibernaculum counts
Aidan & others: Horne lake, BC
- met people from the film Subterranian
Lee: FL
- mapped old turtle cave, added 500 ft
Dusty: high school cave
- checked it out
- also hiked around for other caves
Announcements
- next Friday (2/16) Oregon grotto meeting in Vancouver WA
- meeting will also be hybrid (virtual option if people want to drop by)
- Cascade grotto now has a consistent meeting time (1st Wednesday of every month)
- meeting schedule is on website
- planned official trip for every month!
- check out the calendar on the website
- there will be a google calendar soon
- if people tell us planned events, we can add things to the calendar
- Church cave trip in March
- reach out to Aidan
- First weekend in March, Papoose trip
- 6 hour drive from Seattle (in Idaho)
- vertical required
- 2 mile snowshoe
- really good cave
- reach out to Eric
- Second weekend March survey trip
- reach out to Lee
- depends on weather situation
- Wolf cave in March
- reach out to Dusty
- Oregon caves national monument (southern OR)
- reach out to Sarah
Business meeting
Rescue committee
- Patryk: Skamania county sheriffs office search & rescue
- unable to speak to missions in past
- mostly hasty missions
- unaware of recent incidents but wish to open channel of communication
- requesting maps of areas/locations
- looking to share resources
- can join our “beginner trip” in Helens area as orientation
- Why?
- in event of disaster important to have a plan to execute
- partners can reach out to us because we are the experts in caves
- dusty has lots of experience with cave rescue
- caving since 1995
- has lead lots of training in CA and USA
- caving since 1995
- higher consequence caves: vertical caves
- lewis river horse camp (6 caves)
- dynamited cave (by trout lake) – high consequence
- woman fell off ladder by entrance
- there has been no organized rescue
- cave ridge
- lots of non-familiar people visit
- high-risk areas
- local cave rescue organizations
- volcano rescue team goes into ape cave often
- lots of hikers get lost/injured
- very high visitation
- john punches (NCRC rep) has some information
- template available that we can fill in on incident command
- can be very different from other SAR organizations
- volcano rescue team goes into ape cave often
- Information resources
- Mark Garnick starting WACKS
- looking to make centralized location for all cave location/map data
- SAR could be an important partner
- Mark Garnick starting WACKS
- Action items:
- coordinate with john punches
- need someone to lead/coordinate (rescue secretary)
- will coordinate next meeting
- working group created
- generate call-out list, etc
- SAR organizations would likely appreciate list of cavers to reach out to/act as consultants
Compensation/thank you gifts for trip leaders
- small gifts for people who aid the grotto
- could be grotto swag
- could be compensating for gas money, etc
- tabled until next meeting for further discussion
Newsletter trip reports
- Garrett needs assistance getting trip reports from Facebook
- Bram will copy trip reports from Facebook to Discord
Votes
Votes summarized above