Permit No. 1110-2 B
Submitted by Rick Hines
10/22/2011 Permit #: 1110-2 A
| TRIP | NAME |
| Long | Cyle Riggs Leader |
| Long | Andy Isbell Leader |
| Long | Greg Herin |
| Long | Joshua Shock |
| Long | Kayla New |
| Long | Pradeep Sapkota |
| Long | Dennis Novicky |
| Long | Mike Camden |
10/22/2011 Permit #: 1110-2 B
| TRIP | NAME |
| Short | Rick Hines Leader |
| Short | Casey Evans |
| Short | Lori Schultz |
| Short | Don Meier |
| Short | Janet Meier |
…
This trip was originally planned to be a Kansas City Area Grotto, KCAG, trip into Carroll per the CCC’s policy that allows grottos an annual introductory trip for the grotto members. As the trip evolved it became clear that there would be more new CCC members than non-CCC, KCAG members. As it turned out, Greg Herin, a KCAG member, was the only caver signed up for the trip that was not a CCC member. Soon we had 13 cavers signed up for the trip necessitating a second trip and two trip leaders. Cyle Riggs and Andy Isbell offered to lead a trip to the mapped end of Upper Thunder while Rick would lead a shorter trip up the Carroll Passage. Rick’s trip had three making their first trip in to Carroll and Cyle and Andy had five newbies on their trip.
From these trips and the “Landowner” trips Oct 15 & 16, 2011, it is clear that there is a need for Carroll trips that are designed to allow new CCC members an opportunity to see Carroll for the first time. I encourage other CCC trip leaders to organize trips with this goal. This will increase our membership and bring new talent to the group.
Rick’s trip report follows and Cyle and Andy will report on the longer trip up Thunder River.
Rick’s group went in first starting down the ladder at about 10:45 AM. Lori rappelled in with a birthday cake she had made hanging below her. Lori made the cake to help us celebrate her 50th birthday (Oct 21st) in the cave. As far as I know, this was the first birthday party with cake in Carroll. And it was and excellent homemade cake. Happy Birthday Lori!
The service project for the trip was to try to clean two fresh muddy spots from a white stalagmite near the Giant Formation. This particular stalagmite had previously been the focuses of several restoration trips organized by the Ozark Highland Grotto, OHG. On the landowner trip the prior weekend (10/15/11) Rick noticed the fresh mud after two of our young guests passed by. Our group took our time getting to the Giant Formation, studying boxwork, soda straws, spathites, helictites, and other formations on the way.
When we arrived at the muddied white stalagmite we first took “before” photos. We filled our sprayer with clean water and tried to spray off the mud. We soon learned our spray did not have enough pressure to remove the mud. We then tried rubbing the spots with clean microfiber cloth towels while spraying and were able to slowly remove most of the mud. We also used the point of a knife to remove mud from deeper pits. Finally we took after photos to document our progress.
We headed back toward the ladder but took the short cut to Thunder Falls. From Thunder Falls we stayed in the river until we reached the mud loop on the left and followed it around to the climb up to Angel Pool passage. We followed Angel Pool passage to the formation choke taking time to admire the two rimstone pools on the way. We studied the soda straws and spathites near the end of the passage and speculated on factors that cause the spathites to lean in the same direction.
As we headed back to the ladder we got to use the steps constructed last weekend. They worked great.
We were all out by 4:00 PM. We left the shaft rigged and the gear rope in place for the Long trip group.
We stopped by the natural entrance to look for bats and saw none. I did notice several fresh dug holes along the left side of the entrance. I do not remember seeing them last week so they may be fresh.
We loaded up the last of our gear at the school house, stopped by to say good bye to Greg Fry, and headed to Senor Pepper’s where I had a senor burrito at a senorita price.
Submitted by Rick Hines