Cave Research Foundation
Western Operations
Sequoia / Kings Canyon National Park
Lilburn Cave and Mineral King
Minutes of the Organizational Meeting
2025 CRF SEKI Organizational Meeting
University of California Riverside. Riverside, CA
January 26, 2025
Call to Order
The meeting was called to order at 13:06 hrs.
Welcome
One more year of caving is ahead of us, and given how things have looked like in the previous years, after the major incidents of the Covid lockdown in 2020 and the KNP Complex fire in late 2021, our project will continue to show positive signs and get better results as we learn how to manage our new way of conducting work trips in Redwood Canyon.
Introductions
We had 20 people in attendance. Of those, 3 were in person at UCR campus, 17 joined via teleconference (using the Zoom platform). We had a round of quick introductions to share how we joined the Cave Research Foundation (CRF) and what are our interests.
Overview of CRF Board of Directors (BoD) Meeting
There’s up to $15,000 available each year for grad student research grants and was not all allocated last year. Each grant is usually $1000-$2500.
Reports for the different projects:
Hamilton Valley (headquarters of CRF): They took over Cave Books
Northwest Ops: Klamath National Forest, Craters of the Moon (CROM), and Lava Beds (LABE). Klamath has been active with new caves and maps. LABE has been adding to survey in multiple caves. Craters had a 3 week expedition with 46 caves surveyed. There’s another expedition this September.
Eastern Ops: There was mostly discussion around posting cave info on social media. Some new JVs learned how to survey in MN.
Ozarks: There was mostly discussion regarding expired agreements with agencies who oversee the area. There are staffing shortages and replacements which are affecting Memorandums of Understanding (MOU). Cave gates have been getting breached. More young people are joining the projects.
Southwest Ops: There was only one Carlsbad Caverns trip last year to remove stones from pools and do cleanup. They are looking for a new ops manager after this year to replace Janice Tucker. The Cave Technician position at the park was still open. There is a grad project on radon that is active.
Galapagos Project: Aaron Addison and Elizabeth Winkler are coleads. Work has been happening for 10 years. They have surveyed 50 new caves.
The 2021 annual report is finished now. Now they are collecting info for the 2023 report.
A large portion of the meeting was devoted to discussion on expiring permits and MOUs from various areas and the current progress.
The CRF now has a Compliance Officer position.
There is ongoing work on a new CRF website.
Fellows and Certificates of Merit were nominated and voted on.
This year’s board of directors (BoD) meeting will be held In Springfield, MO on Oct 31 as a tentative date (but most likely it’ll be the following weekend).
News from NPS and SEKI
The announcement that we are most excited about is the return of paleoclimate research to Lilburn. Dr. Natasha Sekhon has joined the project. Natasha is interested in sampling calcite deposition and weather changes in three different areas (Lilburn Cave, Big Springs, Mineral King, Yucca Creek), to compare the effect of burnt areas vs. non-burnt areas.
Another major announcement is that Trey Brink has joined the NPS, as a physical scientist. One of his main areas of focus is air quality assessments (a job that he was already doing in Yosemite before accepting the position in SEKI), but he’s going to oversee all physical science aspects and he will be our main liaison with the park.
The undergrowth in the canyon has been impressive. Since there is no tree canopy to control the growth of bushes (some of them thorny) and they are all competing for space several areas after the Redwood Creek crossing are completely overgrown with bushes. This affects us in that the trail can be hard to follow. The trail crew has not been working in the canyon because it’s closed to the public, they won’t be cleaning the trail just for us. On the bright side, this should help control the soil to prevent as much silt and soil deposition in sinkholes as we have been noticing recently. We’ll find out in the first trip of the year, to see how badly we need to dig out the Historic Entrance to Lilburn.
The badly washed off spot in the dirt road from Quail Flat to Redwood Saddle after Hurricane Hillary in 2023, which was repaired for the reforestation work, was showing signs of water damage.
On good news, we have confirmation rom the wilderness office that because the canyon is closed to the public, we don’t need to request a wilderness permit, our research permit works as a wilderness permit in this particular case.
The ladder at the Historic Entrance is too short now, the base on which it sits has lowered due to water erosion..
The data cable between the cabin location and the Meyer entrance was exposed due to the runoff, we may need to remove it. Also, the Mays Cave entrance was silted out, someone who remembers the location may need to relocate it so that we can reopen it.
SEKI Operations Overview
For 2024 we planned 11 trips and 7 happened. 28 cavers participated this year. Of these, 17 were existing JVs, 11 were new JVs.
We donated 1706 hours of volunteer work to the park (equivalent to 71.1 person-days donated to the park). This gives an average of 244 hours per trip.
We spent 379.0 person-hours underground, and 25.5 person-hours on project-related surface work.
We spent 24 hours on maintenance this year (mostly trail clearing).
It was a good year for water availability, so there was no time spent collecting water.
We spent 1277.5 person-hours in non-project activities, like sleeping and eating.
In 2024 Paul Nelson mentioned that the flush cycle would be a good project to study with all the sediment that’s in the cave now. Natasha would probably like to study it.
In 2024 Whitney built this unit himself, the lidar module is about $300, and he designed the controller circuit board. He’s working on releasing it as an open source project once it’s up to his standards. It saves the data into the cloud, basically the output is a text file with all the XYZ points, this is the standard for lidar, and there’s open source software that reads the data to generate a 3D model.
Whitney says that he flies an IR drone with his SAR team, Paul suggested using a drone with IR to find cave entrances (find a spot near the surface that has warmer air coming out of it).
Whitney also said that he’s a retired metal fabricator/blacksmith, he can help with making a new ladder for the historic entrance.
Project Review
Cartography and inventory at Lilburn
There was no survey at Lilburn this past year, so the cave length remains at 22.25 miles. The focus in the last trips has been on cave inventory, especially after the fire and flooding, to find out what changes, if any, happened in the cave.
Mineral King
We will schedule two trips to Mineral King, since Natasha would like to survey the sties for sampling for her paleoclimate study.
Ursa Minor:
Access to the Crystal Cave area was also not possible for this year, people who really needed to get there had to park at the Generals Highway turnoff and hiked from there. Natasha was told that we can access the area, but we don’t know if the person that told her this is aware that the last we heard was that the road was so bad that people were hiking from the Generals Highway, so it would be very challenging trips.
Hurricane Crawl:
Same as with Ursa Minor, access in 2024 was not possible due to the state of the road. There’s an approved research proposal for Hurricane Crawl. We asked the park about automatic renewal of these permits that could not be used, they said that there’s no process for an automatic renewal, but that certainly an expedited review and approval would be available.
The cave needs to be resurveyed, it was surveyed by people without a lot of survey knowledge and without the benefit of modern equipment. There may be some good leads left too. It will be necessary to run inventory on the go, this is a requirement from the park, especially focusing on the biological inventory.
There’s going to be lots of surveying, working in four person teams: two sketchers in the team, one for plan and one for profile, one instruments person, and one inventory person. Two teams in the cave at a time, start at the entrance and work thoroughly and methodically. There may be four teams total, having long work days, and while the first two teams take a rest day, the second two teams work in the cave.
If anyone wants to go, there’s a great advantage to knowing inventory and being a sketcher.
And in between each trip the map should be drafted.
We may have to deal with cleaning the flagging that’s used to mark the cave, since it’s been in place for many years. There will be dedicated trips to the dirty places, but it is expected that even on clean trips some parts of the cave will get dirty, and there will be dedicated cleaning trips.
Joel would also like for people to bring their cameras to document the cave very well, take lots of photographs and all of those will be turned in to the park.
General discussion:
Fund Status
There was a slight reduction in the main fund, mostly due to the printing of the CRF Newsletter that’s sent as a hard copies to the park. The Garvey fund saw an increase due to interest.
We have $1226 in the general fund and $7682 in the Garvey fund.
Expedition Schedule for 2025
January
26: 13:00 hrs, CRF West Planning Meeting. Riverside, CA
February
No trip scheduled
March
21-23: CRF Lilburn (Patrick Walker, Fofo Gonzalez)
April
25-27: CRF Lilburn trail work (Roger Mortimer)
May
9-11: CRF Lilburn (Boof Truchan, Brody Blacet)
24: First day of quota season at SEKI
23-26 (Memorial Day): CRF Mineral King (Jen Hopper, Fofo Gonzalez)
June
13-15: CRF Lilburn (Brody Blacet)
July
11-13: CRF Lilburn (Patrick Walker)
August
8-10: CRF Lilburn (Lynne Jesaitis)
September
29 Aug - 1 Sep (Labor Day): CRF Mineral King (Fofo Gonzalez)
12-14: CRF Lilburn (Patrick Walker)
18: Last day of quota season at SEKI
October
17-19: CRF Lilburn (Boof Truchan, Felipe Roz Barscevicius)
Edit: Dates changed to 24-26 per Boof's email request on March 15, 2025
November
1: CRF Board of Directors Meeting. Springfield, MO.
14-16: CRF Lilburn (Greg Roemer)
December
No trips scheduled
January 2026
25: 13:00 hrs CRF West Planning Meeting. Location TBD
Meeting Adjourned
After a lengthy discussion going down memory lane, the meeting was adjourned at 15:06 hrs.
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