Mammoth Cave Restoration Weekend Nov. 5 and 6, 2005 The last restoration project of 2005 was a huge success. We accomplished our two goals for the weekend: (1) We carried approximately 900 bags of creosote wood out of the cave and (2) We cleaned up the leftover steel from the Wildcat Hollow Cave bat gate project. These two plans worked out well because Rick Olson and Rick Williams had everything lined up and well organized. These projects do not happen without a lot of prior planning and coordination. This work was also possible because 72 cavers showed up ready to go. Park ranger Larry Johnson recruited a group of students from Western Kentucky University. Dan Pertzborn recruited 19 Outdoor Club members from Madison, Wisconsin. Ken Alwin brought down his group of Boy Scouts and leaders from Troop 605, Rising Sun, Indiana. The remainder of the caver workforce came from Chicago, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
On Saturday morning we hauled the bags of wood (stockpiled at Vanderbilt Hall during the week long August camp) to the base of the steel tower at Mammoth Dome. Then we passed the bags up the 192 feet of concrete and steel steps. The large number of cavers made this easy work. We piled the bags at the top of the step and went outside of the cave for a leisurely lunch. The weather was fine and it was a warm fall day. After lunch Larry Matiz took the new recruits down to see the Dead Sea and the River Styx. The rest of us started moving the bags to the base of the Historic Entrance steps. It seemed to go slowly for awhile but when everyone came back it took no time at all until we were done. This section is all on paved tourist trail (no steps) and there were at least four wheel barrows on the job. This is hard work, pushing those loaded wheel barrows, and it is all up hill! Cory DeJonge wheel barrowed 70 bags on this leg. The rest of us walked back and forth carrying one to three bags at a time. (O.K. SOME people carried more!) By the 3 p.m. we had hauled all of the bags to the base of the Historic Entrance steps. Then we bucket-brigaded everything up the entrance steps and into the park dump truck. A lucky few got to ride in the dump truck to the bone yard and toss all the bags into the dumpster. Some people were ready to hit the road by then, but we needed to take the grass sacks back to Vanderbilt Hall. So, Larry Matiz took a portion of the group on a tour of Historic Cave to the Star Chamber while Rick Williams detoured with another group via Vanderbilt Hall to drop off the feed sacks before joining Larry's tour. Larry really enjoys these tours and in his next life he will come back as a cave guide. About 4 o'clock Sunday morning a squall line with high winds and rain hit Maple Springs. Those of us who slept in our vehicles or in tents were suddenly awakened by thousands of incoming acorns and hickory nuts. We had it easy. A serious tornado hit 20 miles to the NE of the park at Munfordville and another touched down 20 miles to the west at the little town of Woodbury on the Green River. Woodbury has the next dam below Brownsville. No one was killed at either of these towns but there was a lot of damage to historic buildings in downtown Munfordville. Two hours earlier this same storm had hit east Evansville, Indiana, where twenty two people were killed in the most deadly tornado this year in the U.S. Sunday around 9 a.m. found us on the north side of the Green River near Wildcat Hollow Cave. This is a significant small cave because it has Rafinesque Big-eared bats. Roy Powers and crew constructed the heavy-duty bat friendly gate earlier this year. Our job was to clean up some scrap steel. Rick Olson and Charles Blakeway used their jeeps to drag the heavy pieces from the wooded entrance back to the gravel road where Park Maintenance people can later load the material and take it to the bone yard. Everyone picked up the smaller pieces of metal and carried them up to the road. We were done by noon. It was another beautiful fall day in the woods. I suggest a Google on this guy Constantine Rafinesque. He was a character, but a real explorer and naturalist. He has been described as "an odd fish" who swam against the tide. His explorations in the early 1800's included important archaeological sites in western Kentucky like Lost City in Logan County and Fort Bluff in Caldwell County. Sunday afternoon Tony Groves and Charles Blakeway from Tennessee, Kitty Albee and Steve Petruniak from Florida, and Shari and Preston Forsythe hiked over to the Turnhole Bend springs. It had been 25 years since I had hiked over there. The huge sandy beach under the overhang and the overflow spring are major karst features. Turnhole Bend is the largest of the 4 major springs which drain the sinkhole plain and plateaus in Mammoth Cave National Park. Did I mention the wonderful campfires we had Friday and Saturday night at Maple Springs? I told my best Mexico travel story Friday night. I know Diana and Peter Lucas from Pennsylvania enjoyed the weekend. Shari and I really did like meeting them and seeing their new Sprinter Airstream RV. I apologize that I cannot list all of the 72 cavers who attended and worked so hard. In addition to those named above a few are Dan Williams with his enthusiasm despite a sprained ankle, Dave Carsten and his wife who was here for the first time, and many other regulars like Ken DeJonge, John Kirk, Todd Richards, Nancy Bortle, Kim Nelson, Jennifer Estep, and Jonathon Lewis. Contact for the Mammoth Cave Restoration Group is Roy Vanhoozer of Lexington, KY [email protected] The next Mammoth Cave Restoration weekend will be the first weekend of March. We hope to see you there! Cavingly, Preston and Shari Forsythe _______________________________________________ Texascavers mailing list [email protected] http://texascavers.com/mailman/listinfo/texascavers_texascavers.com
