Miscellaneous May

 Once again I have lots of miscellaneous photos for the month. Since my filing system is Year and then Month and then Event, it makes it easy for me to find these photos. My brother Ed came out in May and we took a drive up the Scenic Drive in Great Basin National Park. The road was closed at Mather Overlook, so we stopped there and shivered. It was fun to have some rain.

Down lower, Ed was able to enjoy the trampoline with the kids.

Desert Boy turned 11 and we celebrated with an Escape Room challenge. Even though it was aimed at kids, it was hard for them to solve, and there was definitely some frustration.

With a few clues, they were all able to escape.

Desert Boy really enjoys birthday parties. We'll see if he can practice enough to learn a couple songs on the ukelele.

Jenny showed amazing balance skills on the steel drum.

At work, we did a cave rescue practice, starting outside through an obstacle course.

Then we headed into the cave for a scenario.

We also spent lots of time at the settling pond, aka swimming hole. The mountain stream water is still cold, but that doesn't stop the kids. Having extra pool toys has allowed them more time on the water.

We helped briefly on a highway cleanup project.

Desert Girl and I got matching dresses from Svaha. They sell science-related apparel. We're wearing the cross-section of coral reef dresses.  (Click this link if you want to try them out and save 15% and help me earn some points to get discounts.)

Our rhubarb did well this year, and Desert Girl brought home a coupon from school that was an offer to make a rhubarb crisp. I took her up on it and it was delicious!

Desert Girl reached a milestone with her First Communion.

 Afterwards we went and looked for garnets at Garnet Hill and found a nice assortment.

We kept an eye on the owls. And Mama Owl, pictured below, kept a close eye on her two owlets and on us. To our amazement, all 7 of our chickens survived the backyard inhabitants.

We got 4-H t-shirts for our club and helped do a service project at a local cemetery to put out flowers for Memorial Day weekend.

Even though I was dreading the work, we got a small garden planted. This part followed the Square-Foot-Gardening method, where everything is planted densely to decrease weeds. Then I put down ag bag on the rest of the garden and made small holes for plants to keep weeds down there. Finally, I put a sprinkler on an automatic timer. So overall, the garden is relatively easy to maintain. We've been eating lettuce, spinach, cilantro, and peas out of it so far.

The end of school meant it was time for Field Day, a track and field event.

The events are so much fun to watch.

It also marked the retirement of the school custodian. He will be missed! Happy retirement!

Yikes, May is always a busy month. June doesn't have as many special activities, so we'll be focusing on play dates, sleepovers, and swimming. Hurray!

2018 National Cave Rescue Commission Weeklong Seminar, Alabama

 One of my hobbies is to teach cave rescue techniques with the National Cave Rescue Commission (NCRC). This year's weeklong seminar was in Mentone, Alabama. At first I wasn't going to go because May is always a crazy month, but Camp Skyline is such a nice location and I really wanted to see friends. So by shaving a day off at the beginning and end of the trip, I was able to make it work.

I arrived late the night before classes started and joined everyone in the cafeteria in the morning for the opening session. Then we split into our individual classes. This year I taught SPAR-X, or Extended Small Party Assisted Rescue. This was our pilot weeklong class. Our classroom was quite reminiscent of many shorter SPAR classes where we've rented out a house for a long weekend.

We didn't spend much time in the classroom. We were soon out on the cliffs practicing techniques that didn't use much gear or many people.

The cliff site worked really well for us, and we even had some rebelays to negotiate with a patient going both up and down.

The extra time also allowed for practicing some more advanced skills, and stacking different techniques to solve different problems.

We also had some gym time, and at one point we had all the students on rope at the same time!

Many evenings involved the math and physics behind what we were doing. Students loved it, and they even enjoyed the homework!

We also had some time in caves, which is always good for a cave rescue class. For our final scenario, we split into three groups, and each group had to rescue a person through multiple problems. This was a fun traverse--not your usual up/down haul.

The groups did great with the rescue practice.

At the last obstacle near the entrance, each group solved the problem a different way.

The group I was with did a very simple haul that was super fast.

A cave salamander watched us all go by.

Here's a slightly blurry photo of our class. We were all smiles after six days of great SPAR-X fun. This is a super class, and if you ever want to learn how to do rescues with minimal people and gear, I highly recommend it.

The only downside was that I brought a hitchhiker back with me from Alabama, a little deer tick. Fortunately I haven't had any symptoms of Lyme disease or other tick-borne diseases, but I'm still not out of the woods yet (even though I sort of am!). This tick identification website was really helpful.

At least I didn't get poison ivy! I just need to figure out a way to drop right into the caves, where there aren't so many things to look out for.

2017 Caves

In a beautiful local cave with friend Teresa and kids

2017 was a terrific year for caving. I went in caves at almost sea level down in Quintana Roo, Mexico, and in a fumarole cave at the top of Mount Rainier, over 14,000 feet high. Plus many in between!

I taught cave rescue classes in Texas, Arizona, and Oregon. The kids and I went to the National Speleological Society (NSS) Western Regional at Lava Beds in California. I was part of the CavesLIVE project filmed in Arkansas. Plus there was lots of great regional caving, including some super paleontological finds and assistance with archeological projects. Cave clean ups included two lint camps and a trip to a well known Utah cave.

Here are a variety of photos. In order to protect some of the caves, I don't necessarily give their name (plus some I've forgotten!).

Surveying a cave in Quintana Roo by float tube (Photo credit: Frank Bogle)


Hiking through the caves is sometimes easier than hiking through the jungle; with Carol and Peter in Quintana Roo


Sunlight filtering through an entrance into a fumarole cave in the summit crater of Mt. Rainier


The Buddha: a landmark in a local cave. It's survived many inundations.

Lint camp is surprisingly fun and brings out lots of smiles

I still don't know how this helictite column formed.

Another cave pretty: a gypsum flower

A trip through the humongous Talus Room at lint camp

A hydrologic oddity--water spouting off to the side. Only happens during fast snow melt.

The beautiful Model Cave harvestman (Sclerobunus ungulatus)

Checking out a cool earth crack cave in Arizona

Stations at a Flagstaff-area cave during a Small Party Assisted Rescue class

On rope next to my brother Ed

It's over a giant snow drift to get into this ice-coated cave

A minuscule millipede, only known from one isolated cave

At the bottom of Nevada's deepest cave, admiring the ice

One of the ephemeral oddities at the bottom of the deepest cave in Nevada

With friends in Blanchard Springs Caverns for the filming of CavesLIVE  (airing in mid-February)

Amazing cave folia

A rare posed photo with friends

Desert Girl in a lava tube at Lava Beds National Monument

Desert Boy in Valentine Cave at Lava Beds National Monument 

A cave millipede

Unusual bones found in a cave

Admiring cool carrot-like stalactites

My good caving pal Doug, who I will go into any cave with

Who will solve the mystery of the ripples on the broken inside of a cave shield?

Cool speleothems

Louise explaining coral pipes

It's always a treat to walk in a Nevada cave!

Classic boneyard ceiling (eroded partially by condensation corrosion)

The lone stalagmite

Checking out more bones in a cave

In a cave with a lot of graffiti for a little cleanup

Bonny smoothing out some of the graffiti in punk rock

A cool cave beetle

We're looking forward to another year with more fun caving. You never know what might be underground!