Caving & Pseudoscorpions

Today Deb and I drove up to Great Basin National Park.  I needed to meet with the park rangers medics and review their EMS calls and policies.  Unfortunately my trip coincided with a winter storm.  I had planned on camping and hiking the peak, but that didn't happen.  We drove through some slick roads over mountain passes to get there.  We did get to participate in a special cave bio-monitoring survey in the Lehman Cave.  Deb and I teamed up with two rangers who are cave experts.

 They do this every three months.  We crawled through passageways and went down side branches of the main cave to selected monitoring spots where we searched and documented any insect or animal species (including psuedoscorpions, beetle, and mites).  We also took temperature and humidity readings.  I did all of the recording and Deb ran the instruments.  It was neat to see the other areas of the cave and be a part of the scientific process.  We learned that the GBNP has 30 plus other smaller caves and some of those are monitored by the NPS.  Maybe I can get in on one of those cave surveys in the future.