Cave Club earns national recognition

Bigfork High School teacher Hans Bodenhamer knew his students in Cave Club were doing some "amazing" work, but he got confirmation of it last week when he found out the club had earned national recognition.

The club is one of eight groups nationwide to win the President's Environmental Youth Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As a reward, the club's leadership and advisor will get to travel to Washington, D.C., to accept the award later this year.

Club members presented their work to the Bigfork School Board earlier last week before they found out about their award. The club, known for its research into area caves, spent the end of last year taking a stack of reports they and students in Browning had done over the course of more than five years and entering them into a GIS, or geographical information system, program in a little over a month.

"I think this sort of project and this sort of technology we should be more involved with," Bodenhamer said. "What they've done is absolutely amazing."

Board members agreed after seeing the students present their detailed GIS rendering of the caves within Glacier National Park.

With it, the students are able to track and read the data more easily and compare it between caves and time periods. They've detailed the inside of caves and included photos to show changes over time. They've recorded volume, location, mineral and geological values, temperatures, conditions and life forms within the caves.

"The kids really get into it," Bodenhamer said. "They're really engaged."

BHS received a $10,000 grant from Best Buy last year to purchase the technology. It's been an easy technology for the students to pick up, he said, easier for them than for him, but all have been teaching each other.

"It seems complicated, but it's actually really fun," club member Eugene Germann said.

Ernie Cottle, one of the club's leaders, has gotten particularly interested in GIS and hopes to use it in the future as an archeologist. Cottle describes GIS as a database and says the programming has its challenges put was easy once he got familiar with it

The students agree GIS gives them a better overall picture of their research.

"It's all right there," Cottle said. "You don't have to search."

They gave a similar presentation on their data and GIS work at the end of the last school year to 20 park managers.

"After the show, they were just blown away," Bodenhamer said.

And that presentation may lead to additional projects for the group as other agencies present expressed interest in the club's work. One woman is working with Bodenhamer to see if they can set up a trip to have a group of students travel to the Grand Canyon in Arizona to do similar data collection.

"Once they get going, twenty to fifty kids can come up with an incredible amount of data that would be overwhelming for an agency," Bodenhamer said. "Many only have one GIS person for a whole district."

Cottle said he was surprised at the response.

"I was really happy about that," Cottle said.

The club has students of all grade levels, with about 15 active members and 70 members who have come and gone over the years. With all the time they put in creating their reports, the students tend to get fairly tight-knit.

"Cave Club is pretty much the best club I've been in in high school," Cottle said. "You come in not really knowing anyone and within a month or two you're one big family."

The club meets every Wednesday in addition to practice sessions for GIS and time spent doing the actual work. They go on trips occasionally to gather the data, usually spending several hours or a few days in the field.

The students learn some basics before they go out into the caves – how to ascend and descend and tie knots. Very few of them had done caving before they joined the club.

Bodenhamer has also gotten excited about the new technology and hopes to find a way to create a new field science class next year that uses GIS.

"It's real world technology," Bodenhamer said. "I think it's something we should be doing more of."