December 6th Meeting Notes

General information:

Grotto website is live. Active grotto participants and members may be most interested in the meeting notes, and new and prospective members and cavers might check out the about and FAQ section.
We also created a way for dues-paying members to sign themselves up for trips. The sign up is in this Google workbook, which can be accessed by permission only. To get permission, members must reach out to an officer of the grotto with a Gmail account they’d like to use to access the workbook. (Note that trip priority still goes to people who attend the meeting.)
Today’s cave safety and first aid speaker was postponed to a future meeting.

Trip reports:

Cat, Nick, and Max went to TAG. Highlights include flying private to get there thanks to grotto members with pilot licenses. Areas of improvement include making sure to bring knee pads if there’s a long crawl!
Maddi, Will, and Max also went to TAG, did some very wet caves and dropped a pit with lots of cow bones at the bottom.

Upcoming dates:

Event	Dates	Trip leader / Contact
Caving* – intermediate horizontal	Dec 13 – 14	Eric + Max
Monthly grotto meeting	Jan 3 @ 7pm	Jack
Caving* – beginner horizontal	Jan 4	Eric
Caving* – TBD vertical	Jan 31 to Feb 2	Eric

*You must communicate with the trip leader to join any caving event. Reach out to the trip leader or contact to find out which caves we’re visiting and other details. Send us a DM on any social media platform to be connected to a trip leader, or email palmettogrotto@gmail.com. Dues-paying members can use this workbook to see details or sign themselves up — reach out to a grotto officer if you need to gain access.

Fun facts!

Our fun facts session was a hands on overview of knots for rigging. We went over and practiced tying a figure eight on a bite, a figure eight double loop (aka bunny ears), and an alpine butterfly.

Palmetto Grotto