Several trips are planned to Fisher Cave in Meramec State Park to continue the restoration project that was started there several years ago.
For those of you that are not familiar with the project, here's a little history –
Dozens of tall, totem-pole stalagmites in the Ballroom of Fisher Cave were broken over a century and a half ago by early explorers and casual visitors to the cave. Around the time Fisher Cave became a tourist attraction at the turn of the century, the broken stalagmite pieces were moved off the floor of the Ballroom and piled haphazardly in the stream canyons on either side of the room. They remained there for decades, out of the way of the tours and slowly becoming coated with mud from flooding events. Many of the stalagmite bases were still embedded in the clay floor of the room, but no one knew which stalagmite matched which base.
This was how things stood until the 1980's, when Brian Wilcox (Meramec State Park naturalist) successfully reattached 3 stalagmites to their proper bases in the Ballroom.
While volunteering at the cave in 1999, I noticed the muddy stalagmite piles and the numerous "broken stumps" littered throughout the Ballroom. With the support of Brian Wilcox, I was allowed to begin a restoration project in the cave.
The first trip (in the spring of 2000) involved removing several tens of pounds of old wire, nails, and trash from numerous nooks and crannies along the tourist trail. On subsequent trips, volunteers began the daunting task of retrieving the broken stalagmite pieces from the stream canyons in the Ballroom, cleaning the accumulated mud off them with nylon brushes and cave water, and tying flagging tape to them before temporarily storing them in an out of the way corner of the room on plastic tarps. Over the past four years, volunteers have cleaned and organized over 200 stalagmite pieces, and with the help and expertise of Jon Beard, over 10 broken pieces have been matched to their bases and successfully reattached with epoxy glue.
- - - - - - - - - - -
The plan for the next few trips is to finish the retrieval and cleaning of the few dozen remaining stalagmite pieces in the stream canyons of the Ballroom and then to move on to the slow process of matching the cleaned pieces with their bases and finally gluing them back together.
In addition, several large areas of flowstone along other sections of the tourist trail need to be carefully power washed with backpack sprayers and nylon brushes. (The thousands of historic signatures in the cave will not be removed in this project, since they have been determined to be a unique resource and are therefore being preserved.)
- - - - - - - - - - -
The remaining trip dates for this year are the weekends of:
September 11-12
October 9-10
Recommended equipment -- Though I will have some restoration equipment available (including two large backpack sprayers), participants should bring as many of the following items as possible --
Helmet, lights, and other regular cave gear (Bring an extra shirt if you get cold easily.)
Neoprene waterproof gloves (Or several pairs of non-waterproof gloves.)
Small camping mat (Or some kind of insulating pad to sit on.)
A 5 or 10 gallon bucket
Several handheld nylon scrub brushes
Squirt bottle
Several sponges or clean cloth rags
Participants should expect to be in the cave for around 6 to 8 hours each day so bring an in-cave lunch and a pee bottle.
Camping should be available at the Meramec State Park campground, but you may want to make reservations to make sure you get a site.
There is a limit of 12 people in the cave on each day of the project, so space is LIMITED. Reservations are required, so please contact me if you would like to help with the project. (Be sure to mention how many people you are bringing, what date(s) you are interested in, and whether you can work both days or just Saturday or Sunday.)
I hope you can join me on one of these restoration trips. This is a great opportunity to see Fisher Cave without having to take a tour and to help restore a grand old cave. If you have volunteered with this project in the past, your continued help would be most welcome. However, if you have never cleaned up a cave before, no prior cave restoration experience is necessary.
Please contact me if you have any questions or need more information.
Regards, Michael Carter
Ozark Highlands Grotto
michael_carter@hotmail.com
| 
