Cave Research Foundation
Western Operations
Sequoia / Kings Canyon National Park
Lilburn Cave and Mineral King
Minutes of the Organizational Meeting
2024 CRF SEKI Organizational Meeting
Loyola Marymount University. Los Angeles, CA
January 20, 2024
Call to Order
The meeting was called to order at 13:27 hrs.
Welcome
It has been several challenging years, beginning with the shutdown due to the Covid-19 global pandemic, then closures due to fires just as activities were restarting in the park, which resulted in the loss of the cabin. And after this, extreme summer storms due to a hurricane, which prevented us from running one of the scheduled trips and drastically altered the canyon, washing out part of the road and putting lots of debris in the sinkholes.
But just like life is returning to the canyon amidst the charred remains of trees lost to the fire, so the Lilburn project will continue.
Introductions
We had 23 people in attendance. Of those, 10 were in person at LMU campus, 13 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
Hamilton Valley, the headquarters for the Cave Research Foundation (CRF), had been losing money. Insurance for the building has been canceled so that the money that was been paid to the insurer could be invested to offset some of the losses (and it will be used in case something happens to the facility). This saved $12,000 in the last year, and as a consequence, the Hamilton Valley facility turned a profit for the first time.
There are some concerns about Cave Books as a publisher of books mostly to national parks for sales in their visitor centers. Roger McClure is now 90 years old, and there needs to be a plan to transition to a new manager. Joel Despain has books that need to be sent back to Hamilton Valley, we can help with this.
Eastern Operations has been doing a lot of survey in Mammoth, and there are a couple of new projects in Minnesota and Natchez Trace Parkway.
Northwest Operations has been active in Craters of the Moon and Lava Beds, and there’s the new project at Klamath Mountain that Joel started and they’re doing a lot of survey.
Ozarks is focusing a lot on gating caves.
Southwest has been doing some restoration at Carlsbad Caverns.
There’s a new requirement by the national CRF body to have an annual update on insurance status of JVs, so we will require an updated JV form every year. This is because neither the CRF nor the parks are responsible for paying for medical treatment or rescues (although in the entire history of the park, no one has been charged for rescues at SEKI). At CRF West we have digitized our JV forms to simplify the process and the record-keeping.
Grants are still being funded, and there is more money than grants that have been taken, so more applicants are needed. 12 projects were funded last year.
The next meeting of the CRF BoD is on November 9, at Hamilton Valley, KY.
News from NPS and SEKI
Hurricane Hilary brought torrential rain to California in the summer of 2023. We actually had a scheduled trip that was canceled at the last minute because of this, and a couple hours after making the decision we received a call from the park saying that they were very concerned about our safety for this trip, and we told them that we had just decided to cancel it precisely in the interest of safety.
With the amount of water moving through the canyon due to the storm, and the lack of vegetation after the fire, the changes in the canyon were drastic. One that affected us greatly was that there was a huge washout in the dirt road from Quail Flat to Redwood Saddle, taking out about 2/3 of the width of the road.
Since we couldn’t drive to Redwood Saddle, for one trip we parked just uphill of the washed out part and hiked out from there, but for the next time the park was expecting to be working on the road, so we had to park at Quail Flat and walk from there.
At that point, Redwood Canyon was closed to the public, but we had administrative access thanks to the research permit, and we had the canyon to ourselves. We noticed an area where all the sequoia saplings had been flagged, and we figured that a group would be checking this area to study the survival rate and growth of the new sequoias.
Thankfully, for the following trip, the park had mobilized and they had repaired the road. Now you can’t even tell that there was an issue with it. The trail crew also went at least to the historic entrance area (possibly all the way to Big Springs, but we have not checked this), and now the trail is again very easy to follow. This was a welcome change, since after the fire the vegetation started coming back, and since there was no tree canopy or other competing species the brush extended around the valley floor, making the trail really hard or impossible to follow.
The interest of the park in repairing the road was that they had a crew replanting trees (sequoias, Jeffry’s, sugar and ponderosa pines). They had mule teams using the Redwood Saddle parking lot as a base, and mules were bringing tools and saplings all the way to the Lilburn area. Unfortunately there’s a group suing the park because of this, arguing that it is unnatural to plant trees, that nature should be allowed to follow its course without help from humans.
The rains changed a lot of the scenery in the canyon, with wide sandy areas in spots that used to have a small trickle of water (like Volvo Creek), but at least for 2023, there was surface water all year long.
In the cave, the main changes were that a new skylight appeared above the Meyer entrance, and the passage at this entrance after the first down climb and before the pit received a lot of water, which created two new down climbs, one of them relatively easy, but for the other one some people may need a handline.
The historic entrance was completely buried under a layer of debris about a meter thick. We reached the gate during one trip just to make sure that the entrance chamber was not silted out, and then we consulted with the park on digging it out. After careful consideration they gave us their OK, given that we didn’t modify the area (with concrete blocks, hay bales, etc), or relocate the debris too far away from the sinkhole. We told the park that sinkholes, due to their nature, constantly take water and debris, and that digging out the entrance is something that we have to do relatively frequently and have done so through the years.
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 2023 we planned 11 trips and 5 happened. 26 cavers participated this year. Of these, 12 were existing JVs, 4 were new JVs.
We donated 1226 hours of volunteer work to the park (equivalent to 51.1 person-days donated to the park). This gives an average of 245 hours per trip.
We spent 248.7 person-hours underground, and 25 person-hours on project-related surface work.
We spent 4.5 hours on maintenance this year (trail clearing), and without the cabin, we expect that maintenance in the future will be very low, close to zero.
It was a good year for water availability, so there was no time spent collecting water.
We spent 947.8 person-hours in non-project activities, like sleeping and eating.
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.
We also now know that we can make trips happen, so we can approach UC Davis to find out if there is interest in continuing their paleoclimate research in Lilburn.
Felipe Roz Barscevicius has the tablet that Carly had (she left this tablet with Sonia when leaving California), Fofo can contact Felipe next time he’s in Monterey to pick it up.
Carol Vesely had been the cave inventory project lead, but she is moving part time to Colorado and would like for someone else to take over this project. She approached Patrick Walker about this and he agreed.
Carol would need someone to modify the app, because the Hurricane Crawl project will need some enhanced inventory that the current app can’t do.
Mineral King
There was no access at all to Mineral King this year, since the road was very badly damaged with the storms and even residents couldn’t make it through, they were using ATVs to drive up. We don’t know how the road repairs are going, we will schedule a trip and we will evaluate conditions as the year goes by.
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. Additionally, the Ursa proposal was turned down by the park, Joel Despain will have to make modifications and he doesn’t have time right now.
Hurricane Crawl:
Same as with Ursa Minor, access in 2023 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 could be a possibility.
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:
Paul Nelson mentioned that the flush cycle would be a good project to study with all the sediment that’s in the cave now.
Patrick asked about grants, Jen Hopper did a quick recap about the CRF grants and how there’s more money allotted to grants than people receiving them. Patrick asked about the possibility of bringing lidar into Lilburn, he said that a grant could buy a small lidar unit. Whitney Potter showed an open source lidar that works on an 18 volt Makita battery, he said that it takes 3-4 min per scan, which would fit really well a survey or cave inventory trip.
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.
Ezgi Kuntas is a biologist, wants to get involved in Lilburn, Hurricane, or other caves and run a project there. Jen and Fofo should talk to her.
EC Moe attended a forum on White Nose Syndrome (WNS). So far, WNS has not been confirmed in California, but there’s concern that it will arrive to the state in the near future. There’s a program to do some checks in Lava Beds and other areas. The main challenge is that in California the people that need to monitor this don’t really know where to look for bats, so something very useful for them would be that whenever anyone goes out, if they see bats, they make notes about it. We could give these notes to EC and she’ll relay them to California Fish and Wildlife.
Patrick was wondering about doing an annual mule trip, to help bring with us the luxuries that used to be there with the cabin. This will also help some people that may be intimidated by a heavier pack to get back. Marek Cichanski said that he has had this fantasy about a “summertime cave fest at Lilburn,” so he was wondering if we could have mule teams bringing gear down the canyon. Carol agrees that it would be a more efficient use of time, being able to be on location longer, without having to worry about how much stuff we have to bring. Charlie said that we should discuss with the park to see if mule teams and/or a longer stay in the canyon would be allowed.
Roger Mortimer suggested getting a new cave ladder for Meyer entrance, and a suitable rope for a belay, which would save on the weight that each caver has to carry since no individual vertical gear would be needed.
Anastasiya Razumovska asked how long it would take to get the Compass data, and she volunteered to help with data management, even though she is currently living in Kentucky. We need to discuss with Jed Mosenfelder (chief cartographer) so that we get the Compass files from him.
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 $1239 in the general fund and $7190 in the Garvey fund.
Expedition Schedule for 2024
January
20: 13:00 hrs, CRF West Planning Meeting. Los Angeles, CA
February
16-18: CRF Lilburn (Lynne Jesaitis, Charlie Hotz)
March
15-17: CRF Lilburn (Patrick Walker)
April
12-14: CRF Lilburn (Boof T., Felipe R.B.)
May
24-27 (Memorial Day): CRF Lilburn (Jen Hopper, Fofo Gonzalez)
June
21-23: CRF Lilburn (Dav Angel, Ceth Parker)
July
19-21: CRF Lilburn (Patrick Walker, Charlie Hotz)
August
9-11: CRF Lilburn (Roger Mortimer, EC Moe)
September
30 Aug-2 Sep (Labor Day): CRF Mineral King (Fofo Gonzalez)
20-25: CRF Hurricane Crawl? (Joel Despain)
October
11-13: CRF Lilburn (Patrick Walker, Charlie Hotz)
November
9: CRF Board of Directors Meeting. Hamilton Valley, KY.
8-10: CRF Lilburn (Boof T., Felipe R.B.)
December
No trips scheduled
January 2025
18: 13:00 hrs CRF West Planning Meeting. Location TBD.
On a historical note, Marek mentioned that the road to the cabin was closed at the end of 1980, the group was given permission by the superintendent (he wanted to manage the area like a wilderness, even if at that point it wasn’t officially one) to drive as much material as possible before the road was closed, and the cabin was rebuilt in 1981. Not all material was brought in in time, and some cavers remember having to haul cement to the cabin.
Meeting Adjourned
After a lengthy discussion going down memory lane, the meeting was adjourned at 15:30 hrs.
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