Permit #: 0906-1a
Trip Leader name: Bill Gee

Trip date: 1 June 2009
Project manager: Bill Gee
Trip purpose: Biology student trip
Areas of Cave visited: Convention Hall
Trip participants: Justace Clutter, Nataly Jager, students (see narrative)
Entry Time: 10:15
Exit Time: 5:45
The trip report: Most years Dr. David Ashley teaches a class at a field station operated by St. Louis University. The class is a 3 week intensive course on Ozark Cave Biology. One of the caves they visit is Carroll Cave.

This year we had 12 participants in the trip. Andy Isbell was the other trip leader. Dr. Ashley brought 5 students and a special guest, and we had three regular CCC members participating. The entire list of participants is:

Bill Gee Andy Isbell
Justace Clutter Dr. David Ashley
Nataly Jager Alan Leary
Vishnu Reddy Raunak Patel
Maja Sadikovic Joshua Markak
Leila Thampy Lori Schultz

The special guest was Alan Leary who is the staff biologist at Missouri Department of Transportation. His job is to look at all things biological wherever MoDOT is building a road. Dr. Ashley and Alan have worked together doing cave biology work in Tumbling Creek Cave.

I made a day trip out of it, driving down early Monday morning. When I got to the schoolhouse about 7:15, I found Andy and Lori Schultz just getting up. They had done some caving on Sunday and camped at the schoolhouse. While they went into Montreal to have breakfast, I went up the hill.

After opening the silo and rigging the rope, I installed a permanent rope pad on the top rung of the ladder. During the student trip in early April the sawing motion of the rope against the top rung wore a hole clear through the sheath. I used a piece of old fire hose sliced lengthwise and fastened on with some big zip ties. The pad worked very well! My brand new rope suffered no damage from the rung.

Dr. Ashley and the students arrived about 9:15. Everyone geared up and by shortly after 10 we were heading down the rope. Nataly used a cable grab and everyone else rappeled. We were all in the cave by 10:45.

The entire group headed over to Thunder Falls for the usual touristy stuff. From there we all went upstream to UL2. On the way we searched for fish in the stream. We found about a half-dozen which were measured for length.

We arrived at the entrance to UL2 about 12:45. Dr. Ashley and a couple of the students took a close look at the bait sticks while everyone else climbed up to view the formations. We grabbed a quick bite to eat, then split into two teams. I took one team upstream to Flat Rock Falls while Andy took the other team into UL2.

We arrived at Flat Rock Falls around 1:45. Maja, Leila and Vishnu set up to do an isopod count while I took pictures. They counted and measured isopods for about 20 minutes. We went back to the small waterfall at the entrance to UL2 and did an isopod count there as well.

From there we went into UL2 to meet the other team. On the way in we stopped to view the formations. The other team had got all the way to Convention Hall where they were relaxing and taking photographs. Dr. Ashley, Alan Leary and I made a quick trip over to the Conference Room where we examined and documented the state of the bait sticks there.

Back at Convention Hall Dr. Ashley examined the bait sticks, then we all left. My team went first and headed straight back to the ladder. It took us about 45 minutes. We arrived at the ladder about 5:00pm. Andy’s team arrived less than 5 minutes later. While everyone else geared up, Dr. Ashley examined the last pair of bait sticks near the shortcut to Thunder Falls.

Everyone was out by 5:45. We had the hole de-rigged and were all headed down the hill by 6:15.

Bill Gee