Above left: A student explores the new passage. Above right: Dave demonstrates Single Rope Techniques to students and parents. Photos by Dan O’Sullivan.
This fun event was sponsored by the Canon City High School Caving Club. We had great help from students in the club (and from their teacher-sponsor, Ken Cline)
CaveSim travelled to Arizona to Kartchner Caverns for the second year in a row, this year for a 2-day program for Earth Day weekend. About 278 people explored CaveSim, and many more enjoyed our demos with carbide lamps and rescue litter. We also debuted a new demo with our cave rescue phones and some oscilloscopes, newly donated to us. This was our son’s first road trip, and he did great! A big thank-you to Kartchner Caverns for inviting us down again.
Quick story: Take a careful look at the front of the truck, and you’ll see that something is missing. No front plate! It was so windy on the drive down that our truck’s rear license plate ripped off, leaving the screws behind. In Arizona, only a rear plate is required, so we put the front plate on the back of the truck, and then got new plates when we got home to Colorado. We now have more bolts holding both plates on.
Left: Dave driving CaveSim past the Kartchner Caverns main gate. Right: Our young caver driving the truck, with a tape measure handy for building more cave. Photos by Tracy Jackson
About 23 6th grade students from the Mountain Song Community School in Old Colorado City experienced CaveSim on Friday. They did many of our activities, including:
The students asked great questions, and engaged with all of our activities. A big thanks to their teacher, Mr. McDonald, and to both parent volunteers who helped to organize and run the program.
Mountain Song 6th grade class and their teacher at the front of CaveSim. Photo by Dave Jackson. Photo waivers on file.
Thanks to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, we had a great day at The Wildlife Experience (TWE) in Parker, CO. First, we taught 25 educators a variety of hands-on lessons for teaching their students about bats and cave conservation. The educators had a great time – several went through CaveSim more than once, and one educator even volunteered to be carried around in our cave rescue litter. One educator and a TWE staff member even took the challenge of making their own map of CaveSim. After lunch, CaveSim was available to all museum visitors at no extra charge. There were also live bat demonstrations. Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) provided the funding that made it possible for us to bring CaveSim to this event — CPW also does an outstanding job of working with local cavers as they do research about White Nose Syndrome.
Time-lapse video of at The Wildlife Experience.
For the fifth year in a row, CaveSim educated hundreds of kids and adults at UCCS (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs) during the CoolScience festival. We had great volunteers: a huge thanks to Dani, Todd, Floyd, Bekah, Slade, Kevin, and our other volunteers. Floyd took some great pictures of the event:
Above left: Kids learning about cave formations from Dave while waiting to go through CaveSim. Above right: Visitors review their scores with the help of Dani (red shirt), one of our awesome volunteers. Photos by Floyd Fernandez.
Above left: Visitors learned about cave formations, cave rescue gear, bats and more. Above right: our new squeezebox lets participants safely try fitting through a tight squeeze. Quick-release action prevents visitors from getting stuck. Photos by Floyd Fernandez.
Above left: A cave model built several years ago by 4th and 5th graders in Catamount Institute‘s Young Environmental Stewards club is still in use today. It demonstrates the challenges posed by quarrying near caves. Above right: A panoramic view of our event. Visitors waiting in line stay engaged with our many lessons and demos. Photos by Floyd Fernandez.
A time-lapse video of our event. We keep pretty busy! Video by Dave Jackson
Hundreds of kids and adults learned about cave conservation by exploring the CaveSim mobile cave at this two-day event. Our sked, field phones and carbide lamps were a big hit with visitors too.
A girl and her dad explore CaveSim. A girl learns about carbide lamps from Dave.
An on-duty fireman with South Metro Fire Rescue practiced his confined space training by crawling through CaveSim. Photos: Gill Gilliland.
Dick Blenz (above right) continues to be our biggest sponsor, and he is helping us get to Convention again this year. Dick is a fellow electrical engineer and caver, and his generosity is truly incredible!
At the 2013 NSS Convention, we borrowed an ElSpeleo light to take pictures inside of CaveSim. The results were fantastic, and we’re still using those photos in our software today. ElSpeleo lights produce even better pictures than the 120V plug-in lights that we normally use for photography!
For the third consecutive year, students from the REACH summer program visited CaveSim to learn about caves, bats, geology, cave rescue and more. We did our most extensive demo of electronic equipment yet, and the students also got to practice cave rescue using the sked (rescue stretcher). The students will be going into a real wild cave later this week.
Left: Cavers about to enter CaveSim. RIght: Cavers of all ages went through CaveSim. Photos: Tracy Jackson
CaveSim designs, builds, and uses interactive caves to teach kids about conservation and science. We believe that kids who know better become adults who do better.