Cave Appreciation Club

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Tuscaloosa, AL
Cave Appreciation Club

Student caving club at the University of Alabama, locater in Tuscaloosa, passionate about celebrating and protecting Alabama’s underground world.

We focus on safety, conservation, research, and having fun. Open to experienced or brand new cavers!

02/11/2026

Working hard or hardly working?

This past weekend CAC members took on the challenge of learning to survey, powering through cold nights and morning huddles with great attitudes and puffy eyes.

Members learned the variety of roles that make up a survey team, and the importance of prioritising the Disto’s/Bric’s safety over their own lives.

Most members sketched cave passages, both on paper and with digital devices. At the cost of many brains turning to soup, the project cartographers now have plenty of data to generate beautiful cave maps.

We’re all extremely fortunate to have been entrusted with the project, borrowed supplies, and to have the support of the amazing leaders who volunteer their own time to pass on their knowledge.

If you want to hear more about people’s experiences from this trip, or want to come caving with us in the future, come to our next club meeting on 02/19 and become a full club member (more information in the highlights).

02/05/2026

This past weekend might have been chilly but our members were toasty warm inside the caves, which are a steady 55 degrees year round!

We saw pseudoscorpions, baby slimy salamanders, adult cave salamanders, beautiful formations, and had a great time with our general and full members in two different caves!

Want to go caving with us? Make sure to join our GroupMe linked in our bio! And send us a DM if the link doesn't work :)

01/26/2026

Reintroducing our exec board and announcing our first meeting of the semester! Our first semester kick-off meeting is this Thursday 1/29. Get to know the exec board and full members, grab some food, and watch an amazing cave movie focused on Canadian exploration!

Exec Board:
President Max Koether
VP Anna Drabik
Secretary Liam Rosener
Treasurer Nathan Friedrich
Social Sec. Sophia Remhof
Kit Officer Ken Jones

11/24/2025

Our members just contributed to the 2 miles of survey in this beautiful cave in a single day. You read that right!

This expedition marks the fourth with CAC involvement and we had 9 CAC members along with us along with several first-timers (Ken, Campbell, and our adviser and badass speleologist Dr. Hazel Barton) along with us.

It's an amazing cave and we're so excited to continually have the opportunity to push the edge of the map and bring cavers here to teach and develop their survey + sketching skills. Special thanks to the landowner and expedition leader Reilly!

Important discoveries were made this weekend and we can't wait to get the chance to go back and keep pushing those leads, no matter how mucky they might be!

10/20/2025

FACT: The midterm scaries can't follow you into the cave

08/11/2025

Over the summer one of our exec board, Fynn has been surveying in Mystery Cave State Park MN with the Cave Research Foundation. She's been helping map the cave and conduct important biological and geologic surveys.

These efforts increase the park's understanding of the cave and assist future research and exploration efforts.

If you want to explore caves and help map them be sure to come check our table out at the upcoming Get on Board Day!

07/01/2025

NSS Convention 2025!!

Our club sent 5 members to the National Speleological Society's 2025 Convention. Isuru, Anna, and Max all presented on their PhD topics while there, and undergrads Ken and Fynn attended talks and went caving! We visited caves in New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts throughout the week, all of which are pictured above! We saw marble caves, fossils, copious amounts of speleothems, and other beautiful things!

Also, congrats to Dr. Hazel Barton of UA for receiving several prestigious awards during convention!

We can't wait to have more members join us for next year's convention in Indiana! Save the date!

06/01/2025

It's officially been a month since the semester ended, so let's see what some of our members have been up to!

Reilly (1,4,6) has been working as a hydrologist and karst surveyor for the USFS in the Tongass National Forest. She also helps out with tours of El Cap Cave, the longest in Alaska! We're so proud of her!

Ken, Liam, and Campbell (2,9) have all been caving throughout TAG and making grotto connections! They've been spreading the good word of CAC and improving their caving abilities. We can't wait to hear their stories in the fall.

Fynn (2, 5) has been caving back home in Illinois and Iowa, and went to the CRF Memorial Day Expedition! She can't wait to go back and keep pushing the lead her team left behind. She's also been rappelling steep cliffs along the Mississippi River to keep her vertical skills up and making connections with Midwest grottos.

Anna has also been caving around TAG, and most recently went on a very wet caving trip (hence the lack of photos)! She's also been working on her research, make sure to ask her about it at convention!

If you've done anything cool this summer, send us a DM and we'll post about it! We love to celebrate our members :).

05/11/2025

Over the past week some of our exec board (Anna and Nathan) were out collecting samples and conducting research in Wind Cave, SD. We are super proud of them and can't wait to see the results of their research!

One goal for the week was to "collect atleast 2 microbes." We hope they have surpassed this lofty goal and collected, perhaps, 4 microbes.

Pictured above are beautiful and rare calcite rafts, boxwork formations, a very special cat, and other pretty things!

04/28/2025

Our members were busy on the last weekend of the semester! They went caving, surveying, and ridgewalking!

We are so incredibly thankful for all of you who have supported CAC since it's creation in 2024. Whether you were a student coming on trips, driving people up, leading trips, or a member of the caver community that opened their arms to teach our members valuable vertical and survey skills, we truly appreciate you!

We've already got big plans for next semester and can't wait to see you all in August (we'll also be at SERA this weekend)!

(And remember, don't stop caving over the summer, join a grotto via caves.org!!)

04/21/2025

Last Wednesday we had our Annual General Meeting! We cooked food over a fire, held officer elections, gave out awards (including 100 year old white oak cross sections and pretty rocks), and discussed all we've accomplished throughout the year!

Unfortunately, we were having so much fun that we didn't get many photos 😔 please enjoy the images we did manage to take and keep an eye out for new officer introductions 👀

Address

Tuscaloosa, AL

Website

http://mysource.ua.edu/organization/cavingclub

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