I am going to try here to post something about Lyle Moss.
I am certain there are lots of cavers out there who knew him much
better than I did,
but he was someone I deeply admired, so I want to say what I can.
Lyle leaves behind 35 Facebook friends. Some are cavers: Among
them were Andy Belski,
Bob Montgomery, Emily McGowan of Houston, Cyndi Mosch, Evan Anderson,
Peter Jones, Rockin Robby of Colorado, Steve Beckley, Kenneth Newton,
Evan Gehring, and probably others.
He had lots of caving friends in the Colorado Western Slope Grotto, and even
attended their meetings while he was still in Houston, Texas.
Also, former Houston caver, whose name I am not posting ( currently deployed
on a mission in Afghanistan ). This caver was anxious to join Lyle's big dig
when he got back to Colorado.
My fuzzy recollection is Lyle started attending the Houston Grotto meetings in
around 1997 or so. For about 3 years, he attended about 6 meetings a year.
It was always exciting to see him. He was a cheerful person with a
likable charm,
so he had a way to make a good impression on people.
He immediately started inviting people to a secret dig on his property
in Glenwood
Springs Colorado. The cave was a crawlway only about 150 feet, but he had
hand-built mostly by himself an elaborate rail system and a mining car
to haul out
the dig debris. Lyle subtly implied that his idea of caving was
to crawl to the end of a passage
and load it with dynamite and then wait for the big boom. I don't
think very many
Houston cavers took him up on his generous offers. Part of the
deal was that he
would pilot his own plane out of Houston to Glenwood Springs, just for
the opportunity
to haul blast debris out of the passage.
I am not sure when, but Lyle left Houston, and most of us didn't find
out until years
later.
I tried to stay in touch with him via Facebook, but he was a busy
doctor, pilot, husband,
grandpa, etc, and we never got to know each other, partly because I
was not active in
the Houston Grotto during those years. Meaning, he probably had
not idea how much
I respected him.
He sent me a message in December of 2009 that he was moving to
Colorado, and he and his wife
were going to have to raise their grand-daughter, who I presume was a
toddler or young
kid.
I sent him an invite last year to NaturFest and he replied that he
"lived in cave country now," which I hope
means he was too busy caving to come leave Kentucky.
Below is a caving photo of Lyle that you can purchase:
http://www.speleobooks.com/art/A03/12.html
I believe the link below is to his wife's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1396891386
I think the article below mentions that Lyle found some virgin passage
in Lechuguilla Cave, but I have not
read it yet.
http://www.japaneserain.com/users/learn/news/second_50_miles.htm
The point here is that caving was an important aspect to Lyle's life.
In 1999, Lyle posted the following LED flashlight review on a forum:
I am really pleased with my Action Light. I used it for my
primary light source in
Lechuguilla for an eight day trip to the Far East section
and it worked extremely
well. I ran it on high almost the entire time and used up
about 2 1/2 lithium D's.
I added a ceiling burner electric spot for only about 30
minutes the whole week for
distance lighting, and only brought in 6, not 32, alkaline C
cells with a great savings
in weight. The more diffuse lighting is pleasant to the eyes
like carbide of old, but much
brighter, and the Action Light brings out the blue spectrum
in a way not seen with
filament lamps. Familiar formations were seen in a whole new
light, bringing out their
natural beauty for the first time.
There are several references to him in the Rocky Mountain Caving
Newsletter in the early
90's. And his name appears in several links for the following web-site:
http://whatafinecave.com/Index/home.html
There is a nice picture of him on rope on page 235 of the NSS News August, 1999
I will let other cavers tell more about him.
In summary, Lyle was a respectable person, and an experienced caver.
David Locklear
Ref:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1174880382
http://www.karstportal.org/FileStorage/NSS_news/1999-v057-008.pdf
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