Kinda sounds like the pot calling the kettle black, Phil. ;>) Jerry. -----Original Message----- From: Phil Winkler via Texascavers <texascavers@texascavers.com> To: texascavers <texascavers@texascavers.com> Sent: Thu, Aug 14, 2014 9:10 pm Subject: Re: [Texascavers] book review: Fern Cave
Gees, Bill, If you can't say something nice don't say anything at all. Jenn's book is a superb summary of the discovery and exploration of one of our greatest caves. Her writing is passionate and on topic, factual and timely. She brings everything up to date from Donal Myrick's classic publication from the early 70s. I've been in the cave dozens of times from the early 70s thru the 80s until even 2000 with JV. It is a major cave with so much diversity with formations, passage, pits and complexity, not to mention the huge colonies of grey bats in the Morgue section. Phil On Aug 14, 2014, at 10:41 PM, Mixon Bill via Texascavers wrote: > Fern Cave: The Discovery, Exploration, and History of Alabama's Greatest Cave. Jennifer Ellen Pinkley. Blue Bat Books, 2014. ISBN 978-0-9903547-0-3. 6.5 by 8.5 inches, 371 pages. Softbound $25, $10 for Kindle or Nook e-book from www.bluebatbooks.com. > When I visited Fern Cave, it consisted of a short stream passage and > Surprise Pit. By that time, the route to the new rigging point, which provided a dry 404-foot rappel, had been Toroded to the point that the step across the four-hundred-foot-deep gap in the ledge was only moderately scary. Nearby, New Fern was discovered and explored through several entrances. It was finally connected to Fern Cave, and the whole took over the name. So I'll have to call the original cave old Fern, I guess. > Fern Cave is more than fifteen miles long and is essentially a vertical > maze, with many levels connected by numerous drops. The part of the cave in the vicinity of the Morgue Entrance contains the largest hibernaculum of gray bats, which have been declared endangered by the feds. So most of the entrances to the cave were purchased by the Fish and Wildlife Service as a detached part of the nearby Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. The owner of old Fern was not interesting in selling, and the connections between it and the rest of the cave are obscure or dangerous, so the FWS didn't pursue the matter. Relations between the Huntsville Grotto and the FWS were good, and the grotto was allowed to manage the FWS parts of Fern, provided that no caving was done in the gray-bat section during the hibernating season. The grotto established a permit system, and exploration and mapping continued. Old Fern and Surprise Pit continued to be open without red tape, and eventually they were purchased by the Southeast Cave Conservancy. > Then white-nose syndrome appeared, and the Fish and Wildlife Service > declared that all caving should stop in states where it occurred and all adjacent states. Naturally this was ridiculed and widely ignored, but caves owned by the US Forest Service or the FWS and other parts of the Department of the Interior were declared closed, and the agreement with the Huntsville Grotto to manage Fern Cave ended. Even the Southeast Cave Conservancy jerked its knee, and old Fern was closed, although it has since reopened. When some research access by cavers to Fern Cave was allowed years later, it was found that, in the absence of the grotto's management and the monitoring that it allowed, some vandalism had occurred in Fern despite the official closure. (None of the entrances to the cave have been gated.) White-nose syndrome has affected tri-colored bats in New Fern, and sensitive tests have detected its DNA in swabs from hibernating gray bats, but so far they seem unharmed. > Pinkley's book is a very nice, reasonably priced summary of the history of the cave from the original discovery and descent of old Fern through today. There are numerous black-and-white photos, many of considerable historical interest. I initially found reading the book a bit tedious, but that turned out to be just because the prose would probably be recommended for middle-school students by those computer programs that rate the difficulty of a text. I got used to it, and certainly I can't claim the book is difficult to understand. Embedded are personal accounts of some of the author's own involvement in the cave. She is very bitter about the FWS's turning on the cavers that had done so much to help them before WNS appeared, but actually they had no choice but to march to the drums in DC. The limited vandalism, mainly spray-painted arrows and scratched names, that occurred during the time the cave was effectively unmanaged, if officially closed, distresses her greatly, although I'd say it wasn't that big a deal for a fifteen-mile cave. It is a lesson, though, that managing an open cave, even if not foolproof, can be better than an ineffective closure. > Bill Torode's map of Fern Cave has never been published, and since it is wall-sized it probably couldn't be. A remapping project has surveyed around half of the known cave. The only maps in the book are a couple of very local examples of the detail in the new survey. Some simple line plots might have clarified parts of the narrative of exploration, or they might not, given the complexity of Fern Cave.— Bill Mixon > ----------------------------------------I didn't do it. You can't prove it. Nobody saw it. The sheep are lying.----------------------------------------You may "reply" to the address this messagecame from, but for long-term use, save:Personal: bmixon@alumni.uchicago.eduAMCS: a...@mexicancaves.org or sa...@mexicancaves.org > _______________________________________________Texascavers mailing list | http://texascavers.comtexascav...@texascavers.com | Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/texascavers@texascavers.com/http://lists.texascavers.com/listinfo/texascavers > _______________________________________________ Texascavers mailing list | http://texascavers.com Texascavers@texascavers.com | Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/texascavers@texascavers.com/ http://lists.texascavers.com/listinfo/texascavers
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