Cascade Grotto Meeting
Hybrid meeting (Phinney Neighborhood Association and Google Meet)
Wednesday February 7, 2024

Votes

Allocate $100 for room rental per month

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

Slides

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

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
• 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

Questions

• Do trees have an effect on limestone?
  • trees breathing out carbon can “drill effect” as they dig into limestone
    • often seen in FL
• 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
  • 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
• Information resources
  • Mark Garnick starting WACKS
    • looking to make centralized location for all cave location/map data
    • SAR could be an important partner
• 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