Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 22:52:20 -0400 From: "David A. Riggs" Subject: 2006-09-20 WVUSG Meeting Minutes Minutes for the Sept. 20, 2006 WVU Student Grotto meeting. ** Please note that there will not be a regular meeting next week, we'll be caving instead! See item 2 in the minutes! ** There were 20-something people in attendance at tonight's meeting. We had a lot of people join the grotto at Beginners Weekend: Jeff Stephenson, Gayle Suppa, Jerome Feagons, Melissa Carey, Sadie Green, Kelli Edmiston, and Jake Helmick. Welcome to the grotto everyone! The consensus seems to be that everyone had a great time at Beginners Weekend. 1. There will be rappelling practice at the Coopers Rock Iron Furnace trail tomorrow, Thursday Sept. 20 at 5pm. Directions: Take I-68 to the Coopers Rock exit, make a right. Turn right on the first road inside the park, Iron Furnace road. Go under a big power line, go under a second big power line. Vehicles will be parked on the side of the road, the trail is on the right. Contact Brian [1] with questions. 2. There will be a beginner-level caving trip to Upper Beaverhole Cave next Wednesday evening, Sept 27th. Meet at WVU's Rec Center at 5:30pm. We will be back before Midnight. 4x4 vehicles are required to drive there. This is a very cool cave and it is just 30 minutes from Morgantown. Please RSVP with Kyle [2] if you can drive or need a ride. Astute readers will notice that this is during our regularly scheduled meetings - we will NOT be meeting in White Hall next week, we'll be caving instead. 3. Fall VAR [3] is this weekend in Giles County VA. Nobody but me is going! 4. There will be a trip to Mystic Cave Oct. 13 - 14. The word is that Mrs. Teter, the excellent landowner, needs work done on a fence. Someone needs to contact Kevin Frick for details on this, as it'd be a nice to help her out any way we can. 5. There will be an introductory cave rescue class Oct. 14 - 15 at Laurel Caverns PA (only 30 minutes away) conducted by the National Cave Rescue Commission. It costs $40 and includes lunch. See details on their website [4]. 6. We got a narrated slideshow of Jason Thomas's great photos from this Sunday's trip to the via ferrata [5] at Nelson Rocks. This should be a planned grotto trip in the future, it was an amazing experience. 7. James Skinner [6] is looking for someone with a "ropes certification" to do training for a Boy Scout troop in Clarksburg. Please contact him if you have any information on who is qualified for this or what exactly they require for qualifications. 8. The future! We talked about doing an introduction to cave survey. John Tudek wants to do a cave trip to Lewisburg in October. Kyle wants to do algea removal at Lost World Caverns [7]. John Cunningham wants to go climbing soon. Whew! Chairman Kyle McMillan adjourned the meeting at 8:50 and the post-meeting commenced at BW3. I'll update the grotto calendar [8] with all these new events when I get a chance. - DR [1] Brian Masney [2] Kyle McMillan [3] http://www.cave.org.vt.edu/fallvar06 [4] http://www.caves.org/committee/er-ncrc/training.html#Upcoming [5] http://www.nelsonrocks.org/via.html [6] James Skinner [7] http://www.lostworldcaverns.com/ [8] http://www.caves.org/grotto/wvusg/calendar/ -- David A. Riggs