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Monday, February 16, 2009

I Hear It's Pronounced Orr-gun.

This is where I spent the weekend:Doing some of this:
And a lot of this:
Generating this:
It was time for the annual grotto cave conservation lint-picking down in Oregon. I know it sounds crazy, but lint-picking is actually my favorite part of cave conservation. It's very soothing - listening to the cave, picking some lint, chatting with those around, finding a 6" long hair, picking some more lint - and the results are instantaneous.
This year I got to go on rope to do some of the cleaning, which was really cool - and also very nerve racking, as you avoid kicking the cave bacon or scraping the flowstone with your descender. It was well worth it, though.
It really feels as though we just got started, especially on the vertical section. There is a lot more cleaning to be done here!

One of the sections we cleaned on rope:

A section we've cleaned in previous years:

It was so nice to get out of the house, and out of town!