Meeting Minutes: 2/8/2012

12 people were in attendance

Meeting called to order at 8:03 by Chairman Jeremy Browning

Treasurers Report:

- Cabins were deducted leaving us a total of $812.44

Vertical Committee:

- 4 people were in attendance with no new folks.

- Jeremy motioned to replace the cowstails on the grotto gear with dynamic rope bought from Karst Sports with the grotto funds. Motion was passed.

Old Business:

- The SGA grant will be discussed by Andrew Rowell next week.

- Jeremy motioned to order 30 copies of the grotto newsletter from last year. Motion was passed. They will be about $2.50 per copy. If we run out we will simply get more.

- The hot tub for Rancho Relaxo was put in last week so it will be there when we arrive.

- John Tudek will give the grotto members, who are going to Organ Cave, a copy of the Organ Cave map in case he does not make it on the trip.

- There was no more information presented about the logo but Cullen suggested that the lettering be changed somehow because a big “G” would make others think we are from another grotto. Dave Riggs suggested there should be a flying WV within the light beam coming from the cavers headlamp.

New Business:

- Fundraising was brought up at the meeting. It was suggested that we could work one of the few basketball games coming up or join club sports to get $5000 in revenue from them. We need a little more detail about how we qualify. It was mentioned that we need to have some sort of competition to qualify and attend all of the meetings they have. One reason we would like to do this is for the revenue and the other is to gain recruits.

- John Harman discussed that the grotto should make a new Facebook page or edit the old one to get people to view our page. We need to add pictures of our trips as well. This may help with recruiting new members.

Important Dates:

- February 17-19: Rancho Relaxo to Bens home.

- February 22: Meeting Cancelled because of nearby cave trip. Cave determined but no name was given at the meeting.

- March 16-18: Simmons Mingo trip will be that Sunday. We will be staying as Jeremy’s sister’s spare house.

- April 27-29 Spring VAR

Trip reports:

- Allen Dove took two trips to Short Cave this weekend. One trip was a walk-though to make sure there weren’t any forgotten leads in the cave that still needed to be surveyed. The second trip was a survey trip. The next trip will definitely break 1.75 miles.

- Jeremy Browning tested the radioactivity of the rocks in the Germany Valley area this weekend. He noted that the contact between the Lincolnshire and New Market limestone read within 20 counts/minute of each other.

- John Harman presented a slide show of the tag trip he went on last weekend to Keystone River Cave and Blue Springs Cave.

He explains Keystone River cave as starts off being a 3000 foot long passage where one is sometimes crawling and sometimes swimming. The passage then merges into a river that has a nearly equivalent discharge of North Fork River in the summer time. All of the streams water disappears down a hole. They repelled 250 feet with the waterfall behind them and went through more cave.

He then explains Blue Springs Cave as being a very large cave. John Harman and his groups motive was to go 3.5 miles into the cave and bolt climb Preachers Dome. They got to Preachers Dome and met a massive waterfall. They climbed up the dome and went through a tight canyon and saw a cave rat and surface debris and felt lots of air blowing passed them. He said it’s very possible that there may be another entrance. Unfortunately, they had to go 3.5 miles back to the other entrance and exit the cave.

Meeting adjourned at 8:47 by Chairman Jeremy Browning