Mammoth Cave Restoration Field Camp, 2001.
heavy timbers away from the boardwalk area to various staging areas, and
then eventually all the way out of the cave. But although it was hard,
no one had to be super strong to take part. The hardest parts were
tearing down the old bridge and removing the supporting posts. The
boardwalk was torn out board by board, post by post. Some of the posts
were 6 x 6 inches x 12 ft. long and weighed approximately 120 lbs. due
to the creosote and to being waterlogged. These longer timbers were cut
in half near the end of the bridge with a battery operated saws-all. It
took lots of batteries to do this job, and not everything could be cut
up there. There was another "chop shop" set up in an area with
electricity, so the next part of the process was to get everything up
there to be cut up. This was a long way from the bridge demolition
project, not to mention up several sets of steps, so first the planks
were carried 1000 to 1500 ft. to a pile.
Then, they were moved again
another 1000 feet or so (and more steps) to "chop shop 2". The "haulers"
were like ants moving their loads to either one of the two staging
areas. At chop shop 2 the crew used an electric chain saw to cut the
wood up into 15-20 lb. pieces. These smaller pieces were each put into a
trash bag and then into a more durable plastic feed sack and stacked in
huge piles. The next segment involved carrying these bags a short
distance to the base of the Mammoth Dome, 192 ft. high. Here a bucket
brigade of cavers passed the bags up the concrete steps one at a time,
and all the way on up the steel tower to the top and into another pile.
Then, the bags were hauled another 1200 feet or so to the base of the
main entrance steps. 4 wheel barrows were used on this section, but the
"caver ants" hauled many, many bags one or two at a time also. One final
chain gang or bucket brigade got all the bags up the entrance steps to
the waiting park service dump truck. We only occasionally had to stop to
let tours and tourists enter and exit the cave! Norm Rogers said that we
hauled about 9 tons of wood out of the cave, and removed 178 feet of
bridge and walkway.
This is an excellent way to see Mammoth Cave!
You just go back and forth
carrying loads all day. We were also rewarded with some tours. We went
over to Great Onyx on Wed. pm. There were a couple of excellent trips on
Saturday that many people took advantage of. One of those Sat. trips was
under Flint Ridge to Turner Ave. This was a fantastic opportunity to see
some of the best of the system. I had been out that way 2 or 3 times in
my old CRF days. And, by the way, I was so inspired by this whole
restoration week that I have applied to CRF to start back caving over
there.
Restoration Field camp. They were from all over the
country, including California. This was the 12th year for the camp. Most
of the cavers in the past have come from Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. I
was surprised by the fact that Shari and I were only the 14th and 15th
ones from Kentucky to participate in all of those years. My guess is
that others had the same excuse we did which was, we did not want to use
vacation time for this. Or maybe a lot of Kentucky cavers don't realize
that this was going on, so close to home. Well, if you are reading this,
now you know! This is a very worthwhile and satisfying project. It takes
a lot of caver power to do this. Everyone is welcome. If you come to a
camp you will meet some great people and get to know parts of Mammoth
Cave very well.
prepare each meal, as well as a variety of other small jobs that helped
keep camp clean. We got up at 6 am, had breakfast at 7, crossed over the
Green River by the ferry at 8. We went into the cave at 0830, came out
of the cave for one hour at lunch, a sack lunch, and stopped work around
4-4:30. We were very tired-- especially early in the week. We stayed at
the Maple Springs houses. These are nice clean bunkhouses with A/C.
There were four hot showers at the field camp. Shari and I slept in our
van as we normally do in our traveling mode. There were light activities
at night, but most of us were in bed by 10 pm. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Restoration camp 2001 |