by Chads93GT » May 19, 2010 8:14 pm
Hello. I live about an hour south of St. Louis and am the current SEMO Grotto president. If you are a beginner, you should try hooking up with the MVG, Meramec Valley Grotto, or the MMV Middle Mississippi Grotto in St. LOuis. You can find their web pages by clicking on the "Find local caving club" link at the top of the page.
I extremely discourage you wanting to go caving solo. Google Floyd Collins if you want to find out what happend to him as the result of caving solo. While normally I would invite you to a SEMO meeting, there is only one problem, our meetings are held in the caves when we survey. The other problem is 99% of the time we are doing vertical river caves so its definately not even close to a beginners cave.
While I cannot speak for the other grotto's in St. Louis, I do know that they do have active cavers as well who do all sorts of projects. Don't get frustrated if it takes you a while to "get in" as I had to bug the semo grotto for many months just to take me on a trip and I live in the cave capitol of MIssouri.
Caving is expensive when you really get into it, and vertical caving is really hard on the pocket book. If you are interested in vertical caving, then start reading books. On Rope is a great book to read, as well as other vertical ropework books. My first "ascent" out of a pit cost me about $20 as I already had a figure 8, climbing harness, and biners. I started climbing on Knots. I figure if someone is driven to learn like I was, and still am, they will do whatever they have to do to learn (im 90% self taught), and go on their first trips as cheap as possible. While climbing out on knots sucks, its how I started till I had the money to start buying ascenders and modifying my rig into what I have today.
I encourage you to goto the next MVOR event in the fall near Hannibal MO, its a large caving event and you will meet tons of cavers, and even get to go on some cave trips in areas you normally wouldnt ever go. Good luck, and check out both of those grottos. They are WAY more organized than my grotto is, as they actually have meeting places, and meeting times scheduled. Good Luck
Chad McCain
SEMO Grotto