Winter MSS Meeting 2015

The winter meeting of the Missouri Speleological Survey was on January 24, 2015 in Rolla.  

After a bit of socializing Jon Beard kicked off the presentations with a great talk on vadose speleogenesis within the Pierson Formation in Southwest Missouri. 

This was followed by a history of the exploration and survey of Pulaski County's massive Tunnel Spring Cave by Spike Crews.  It was a nice tour through some good memories for many who helped with the project over the years and revived an interest in seeing the beautiful handy work of James Corsentino with a finished map. 

Dan Lamping then gave a talk which had also been given at the 2014 NSS Convention in Huntsville, Alabama, on some of the spring caves within and around the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, where a newer generation of CRF cavers have mapped several, largely virgin caves in the mile range and many smaller ones.  

Chad McCain kicked it off next with a fine talk on the exploration and survey of Black Fathom Cave in Ste. Genevieve County.  This has been an impressive project from the beginning given that it's such a large and spectacular cave but aso given unusual cartographic progress started by Kris Hartmann and continued by Chad.  Most mappers follow the ethos of survey as you go.  The SEMO boys have expanded that to draft as you go by keeping up with over 7 miles of mapped passage, fully drafted and updated after each trip.  . 

Finally, Jim Cooley braved the crowd and told us tales of persistence and how a friendly relationship with the local Sheriff's  Department in Oregon County has led to the discovery of many new, smaller caves.

The business end of the Board meeting itself when pretty quickly, leaving plenty of time for Scott House to demonstrate some new functions of the Missouri Cave Database, particularly the incorporation of faunal records. 

Project updates were given for the Mark Twain National Forest by Mick Sutton, Goodwin Sink by Klaus Leidenfrost and the City of Perryville project by Scott House, among others. 

Three crews of cavers then went out Sunday to map Hanley Cave, a MTNF cave in Phelps County along with a surface survey to connect to the previously mapped Western Turkey Cave, which appear to both be the same cave.