Cave dwellers

By FAITH MOLDAN / Bigfork Eagle

One of only three clubs like it in existence across the United States, Bigfork High School's Cave Exploration and Conservation Club has club members deep in adventure and learning.

The club, which is in its first full year, maintains about 13 full-time members and 20 total with short-term members. Club advisor Hans Bodenhamer said there are another 20 BHS students who participate through his geology class.

Bodenhamer's classroom is where many of the club's members' interest is piqued. The idea of venturing into a cave, studying its features and contents, climbing and rappelling is altogether too much for students to pass up.

"I'd never been in a cave before," junior Blaine Latimer said. "I wanted to learn more." Latimer, who was enrolled in geology, and his sister Cody are one of the club's two brother-sister duos. Sonja and Anthony Baker make up the other.

"It seemed like something fun and different," Cody Latimer said. She joined the club halfway through the year. "I'd never been in a cave before last weekend."

The weekend Latimer is referring to is the club's March 15-16 trip to Bean Hole near Augusta, Mont.

"The cave is about 800 feet long with several big rooms," Bodenhamer said. "But to enter requires dropping into a 140-foot pit."

That drop is the largest the club has made. Club members practice ascending and descending at a height of 20 feet.

"Some kids were going really slow," Bodenhamer said of the big drop. "At the surface (Bean Hole) the pit is only about 10 feet in diameter. It bells out 10 feet below the surface so that the rope is hanging free, away from the wall," Bodenhamer said. "At the bottom the pit is over 50 feet in diameter. So it is a pretty exciting experience dangling from the rope into that big empty space."

The club plans on visiting several caves in the Little Belt Mountains near Great Falls in June. One cave, according to Bodenhamer, has two large pits, each more than 150 feet in depth.

"Another cave they will visit has a huge room. The entire high school building could fit into this room," he said. Bodenhamer added that the club would remove trash and graffiti from the larger cave, as the Bigfork club has a much greater emphasis on conservation than the other high school caving clubs. "One is in Texas," Bodenhamer said. "These clubs are attached to private schools with expensive tuition. They also place emphasis on the adventure and athletic aspect of caving."

The club in Texas allows the students to letter in caving, while taking trips in the Southeast and Mexico and their big, multidrop caves.

"We have talked about some future trips into the Bob Marshall (Wilderness) where there are some large multidrop caves that rival those in the Southeast."

While the rush of rappelling and climbing might hook the students at first, they match their athletic endeavors with cave mapping skills and learn how to read instruments, while some try their hand at sketching. They map locations and descriptions of fungus, sticks, stalactites while helping conserve the caves as well.

"We removed about 35 pounds of trash from the Ophir cave and removed graffiti with wire brushes," Bodenhamer said. The club did its work in the Ophir cave in October.

According to the club's December school board presentation, Montana caves are mostly unknown, many are fragile and most are not managed for conservation. Bodenhamer and club members hope to start conservation work with the National Parks and Forest Services. Students are sometimes able to do more conservation work than parks and forest service personnel because of the increased number of individuals and greater amount of time they have to spend in the caves surveying, mapping and cleaning.

A few of Bigfork's students may have the chance to get involved in a project, conducted by a nonprofit organization called The Caves of Montana, to map and inventory caves in Glacier National Park. Plans have been set for a visit to a cave near Lewistown and conduct a monitoring project for the Bureau of Land Management.

"There are also some caves we will visit in other parts of the state and other agencies that have cave conservation projects that students may get involved in," Bodenhamer said.

While the trips to caves and work are plentiful, the club is applying for several grants to help with the cost of field trips and is trying to develop a Global Information System (GIS) computer lab. The lab will allow the students to computerize the maps and monitoring information they gather.

"But this will require more sophisticated computers than those we currently have," Bodenhamer said. The club hopes to have 10 computers with four gigs of RAM each.

When there's not a big drop, there are tight spots to get through to reach the cave information the club members seek to monitor and map. The tight spots sometime limit some members from moving further through the cave. Tight spaces are the only things which seem to limit club members, as the club continues recruiting and drawing in new members like Ernie Cottle.

"I've done a high ropes course before and have been in mine shafts," Cottle said. "I like climbing, but have never rappelled."

Cottle's first trip up and down the rope during practice went quickly and smoothly, as he was harnessed into one of the club's eight frog rigs. The frog rigs, caving rope, helmets and headlamps were all provided by a grant from the Charlotte Martin Foundation. The rigs are a sit-stand system, consisting of an ascender (which holds the rope) at chest level attached to the sit harness, a second ascender held in the hand and a long loop of rope for the feet. The feet and hands move in unison in a motion that appears like a frog kick.

Cottle and a handful of other club members practice both outdoors along the Swan River Nature Trail and indoors when inclement weather prohibits practice along the nature trail. That's when the club hits a scaffolding and pulley system in a space provided by school board member Denny Sabo. Sabo provided the space in a building on his property after the club made a presentation before the school board.

"We practiced on the bleachers at the school before," Bodenhamer said.

The group practices one to two times a week, timing themselves using the frog rigs.

Bodenhamer started a caving club while teaching in Browning during 2002-2003. Students there became interested in Bodenhamer's work in cave management for the National Parks and Forest Service and prompted him to sponsor a caving club. Bigfork students learned of the club from Browning students during speech, debate and drama competitions, and Bodenhamer was again asked to sponsor a caving club, this time in Bigfork. The club has plans of teaching Bigfork Middle School students about caving. Club members have just a few words of advice for those who want to try their hand at caving.

"Don't fall."