Outside Voices at the ADK-GVC Chapter Meeting

This free and open to the public meeting includes the following presentations:

6:30 PM Erie Canal Centennial Concert: Tales & Tunes Along the Towpath
Join Merry Mischief for music from the time of the Erie Canal and American folk music with its history, along with poetry and a few fun jokes.

7:30 pm Program: Finding the Rest of Burroughs Cave (Essex County, NY) by Ben Brown
This presentation will include an overview of caves in the Adirondack region, cave conservation considerations, safe caving guidelines, and regional caving organizations. The main focus will detail the search for—and ultimate discovery of—significant missing passage in the Hotwater Pond Cave system, which was first documented in the 1870’s.

Burroughs Cave is formed in the Grenville Marble, the base rock of the Adirondack Mountains in New York State. The water resurging from the cave entrance comes from Hotwater Pond Cave with an insurgence about 1500 feet to the west. The path in both caves is blocked by water-filled passage (sump) that can only be passed with scuba gear. The distance between the upstream and downstream sumps in the system is about 700 feet horizontally and 85 feet vertically. Missing cave in between has long been hunted but never found.

The cave is located 2 miles from the nearest road. The project took advantage of newly available access using a recently abandoned rail line to establish convenient camping access near the cave. Better access enabled extensive in-cave and surface survey, along with traditional hiking in the snow to find promising dig locations. The mapping of known cave in combination with LiDAR surface imaging focused the digging effort.

The project is in an area with a significant glacial history which presented a set of special search and digging challenges both on the surface and in the cave. The metamorphic bedrock is inconsistent in its structure which creates similarly inconsistent cave passages, especially when combined with glacial melt events.

Ben Brown has been wild caving since the age of 13. His caving pursuits were largely deferred for a few decades for a career in electrical engineering and raising a family. He has been actively caving in the northeast for the last 15 years and involved in the discovery of many new caves. He is the current chairman of the National Speleological Society Digging Section, and the treasurer of the Northeastern Cave Conservancy. He currently lives in Ontario, NY with his wife of 30 years, Susan.

The Voice of the Hudson is a film documentary by Emmy-award winning cinematographer and filmmaker John Barnhardt featuring the 2-week, 375-mile Hudson River Source to Sea Expedition and the eight student explorers who hiked, paddled, and biked from New York State’s highest summit—Mt Marcy—to New York City, and along the way conducted a citizen science project of the Hudson’s water quality, including an assessment of microplastics.

During this project-based learning expedition, a venture collaboratively planned and led by Adirondack Hamlets to Huts, Mountain Goat Movement, and Evergreen Business Analytics, LLC, the student explorers discovered the river’s uniqueness, relevance to conservation, and current ecological condition while being endowed with a strong sense of achievement and environmental stewardship. In completing this challenging expedition, the young men on this transformative journey followed in the footsteps of explorers throughout the ages and shared the aura of adventure and scientific discovery that has driven intrepid pathfinders across time.

For more info visit: https://adk-gvc.org/our-chapter/monthly-program2-2/