| The
Kentucky Caver Quarterly
Proceedings of the
Bluegrass Grotto: the North Central Kentucky Area Chapter of the National Speleological Society |
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Page 16 [contents] || 
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vol. 41. iss. 2, June 2006 |
| months, I've finally got the go-ahead to
START THE SURVEY! and so yesterday I taught one of my co-workers to
read instruments, and we did a teensy bit of survey on an old tourist
trail. I NEED HELP!!!!! My boss has scheduled MASSIVE amounts of time for me to dedicate to surveying the cave, but obviously I can't do it on my own! Most days I will have a coworker with me, but we'll still need a third - especially because there are some BIG passages to survey, in which we'll rack up a good number of 100' shots. (To help with this, we'll hopefully be getting a laser distance meter soon!) I've ordered some 8.5x11" Rite in the Rain paper to make sketching easier. I would love it if some of you could volunteer your time to come help out. The first days of survey will be the easiest, as we'll be in BIG walking passage, on a tourist trail, and in some cases we'll probably be able to re-use old survey stations. Even if/when we make our way to the river passage, or to crawling passages, there's the distinct possibility of virgin cave: after all, the 1/2 mile that Ben discovered in D4 was right off of a well-known, surveyed route! ...So, why the rush in getting the resurvey done? In August I'm heading to Cornell University in Ithaca NY, where I'm starting a 5-year PhD program. The park realizes that cave surveyors are hard to come by, because they've never employed one before! So they've already got somebody who knows the cave, has the keys, whom they trust, etc. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, the park will know some of the local cavers, so they can continue the resurvey or resume exploring in the historic area once I've moved away. Here is a list of the days I'm scheduled to survey in |
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the cave. My scheduled time is from
12 noon until "close" (sunset; right now about 8:05pm) each day -that's
Central Time. June 19-21, 27-30, July 6.
If you're available any of those days, I'd LOVE your help with the survey! I'll be sketching and compiling the data, but if we got enough people it'd be great to have multiple teams some days. If you live out of town, we can probably find a place for you to sleep. CONNECTION, Mud River in Logan County, KY. Gorham/ Spring Acre Caves. Preston Forsythe, (NSS, Western Kentucky Speleological Survey, Cave Research Foundation), Jason Richards (NSS-Cave Diving Section, and CLUG (Clarksville Underground), and Shari Forsythe, NSS. For 28 years cavers have speculated that the underground course of Mud River was a good candidate for a cave dive. The river flows through Gorham Cave to a sump, and then reappears in the nearby Spring Acre Cave. I met Jason Richards and his wife, Chrissy, on a tourist trip to Dunbar Cave at Clarksville, TN. Peggy Renwick led that trip. Jason and Chrissy cave dive and Jason is also a helicopter pilot at Ft. Campbell. I mentioned the Mud River to Jason and he said he was interested. On April 22, 2006, Bill Eidson (xBBG, Electrical Engineer BS, MS at U. Kentucky) and I met Jason for a recon at Spring Acre Cave. Chrissy was on a section hike of the Appalachian Trail. Many members of the BGG remember Bill as he was very active with the Blue Grass Grotto in the mid 60's to the early 70's and on and off since then. |