We had a excellent restoration trip this weekend at Caverns of Sonora. About 65 cavers participated and removed 9 tons of rubble from the cave. I'll be sending an article with the details and some photos for publication in the Texas Caver. I'll also be sending all of the photos to Bill Bentley for posting on his website. I want to thank all of the fine people who helped make this possible.
The real question for many is, will we do it again? I said in my announcements that we would likely finish the Devil's Pit on this trip and then have much smaller restoration projects in the following years. Within an hour of digging we began to see that we might not finish. Large rubble-filled holes were found and kept us occupied all day. At the end of the day, I still wasn't sure if we were done. Arguments could be made that the job was done well enough or that more clean-up would be needed. I wanted the owners to make that call so after everyone left on Sunday I went in with the owners, showed them what we did and what was left, and they felt (and I agree) that more work is needed. So sometime in early November 2005, another crew of about 70 cavers will return to Sonora to try to finish cleaning up the Devil's Pit. I'll send the announcement with all of the details in late September.
Thanks again to everyone who participated.