FORREST WILSON DONALD DAVIS Coming soon! PENNY BOSTON 2017 CONVENTION, RIO RANCHO, NEW MEXICO DALE PATE Dale Pate became the Cave Specialist for Carlsbad Caverns National Park in 1991. In this role, Pate provided coordination and oversight for all of the survey, research, and inventory activities in the park’s caves. In 2012, Pate was hired full-time as the National Cave and Karst Program Coordinator for the entire National Park Service. His many concomitant activities include preparing inventories of karst resources in the germane park units, making recommendations for important research that should be conducted, and providing education and outreach opportunities at the national level. An expert explorer, Dale Pate is also an advocate of high-quality survey and inventory work in caves. He is skilled with the camera and many American cavers have been enthralled with his captivating photographs of the underground wilderness. Download a copy (58:27, 166 MB)
Hear Dale's award-winning cave ballad "To Turn Off the Night" here.
CAROL A. HILL Carol Hill’s mineralogy studies in Mammoth and in Carlsbad provided the main impetus for her to write Cave Minerals of the World. This book is populated with fantastic color photographs of incredible minerals and speleothems. Carol has explained that one of her hopes for the Cave Minerals series is that it will stimulate scientific interest in cave mineralogy, illustrate the beauty that lies in the subterranean world, and convince even the layperson that the underground wilderness is precious and irreplaceable. Download a copy (1:06:08, 575 MB) CHARLES H. GIBBS In addition, Charles developed a harness design that facilitated rigging one ascender to a foot and another just above the opposite knee. In this way, the rope could be climbed in a natural “walking” manner. Over time, such an arrangement became well-known as the Ropewalker system. Download a copy (57:43, 283 MB)
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While living in Washington, Forrest Wilson attended meetings of the D.C. Grotto, met Paul Stevens, and learned of the Organ Cave Project. Paul mentioned that Organ had a sump that “needed diving” and suggested that Forrest take a look. Using an electric light designed for coal mining, and underwater gear that seems sophomoric by today’s standards, Forrest Wilson cracked the Bowen Sump in Organ Cave. Sheck Exley read about the Bowen Sump dives in the D.C. Speleograph and invited himself up from Florida to participate. Together, Wilson and Exley found more than a mile of dry cave, thus becoming the first group in America to discover a mile of passage beyond a sump. 
For more than 20 years, Dale Pate enjoyed explo- ring and surveying in Sis- tema Purificación, and in many of the other fascina- ting caves of the Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas region of Mexico.
An initial fascination with Mammoth Cave catalyzed Carol Hill’s passion for cave geology, along with the speleothems that decorate the underground world. Later, when studying a waxy mineral that she had observed in Carlsbad and in other Guadalupe caves, Carol learned that this material originated in low-pH, sulfuric-acid conditions. Subsequent sulfur isotope analysis provided additional evidence that Guadalupe caves in the Capitan Reef owed their speleogenesis to a sulfuric acid mechanism.
After a trip to Schoolhouse Cave, Charles Gibbs reasoned that some type of ascender activated by the legs instead of the arms would desirably free one’s hands to push off of a lip and, thus, facilitate the sometimes difficult task of topping out at the top of a pit. So, in the mid-1960s, he began development of an improved design for a climbing cam. Charles made both the cam and the shell very strong, engineered the rate of cam closure, and figured out a geometry that would prevent slippage even if the teeth were worn smooth. Because of his cautious demeanor, Gibbs emphasized safety over all other parameters when considering the variety of tradeoffs.
