We are cavers. We are explorers.
The Northern Rocky Mountain Grotto is Montana’s chapter of the National Speleological Society — chartered in 2000, with 260 members across the Northern Rockies and beyond, surveying, mapping, and protecting caves under some of the most beautiful country in North America.
Who we are
NRMG is a 100% volunteer nonprofit chartered in 2000 as a recognized chapter of the National Speleological Society. Our core is in Montana, but our membership stretches from Washington and Idaho through Wyoming, Utah, Texas, and California. Our youngest members are in middle school. Our oldest are in their eighties. What we share is the conviction that caves are worth knowing.
Our purpose is simple: discover, explore, study, and conserve the caves and karst of the Northern Rockies — and have a good time doing it.
Why Montana?
Because the caves here are extraordinary, and a lot of them have never been entered. In 2014, NRMG members exploring the Bob Marshall Wilderness pushed Tears of the Turtle Cave to a surveyed depth of 1,629 feet — surpassing New Mexico’s Lechuguilla to become the deepest limestone cave in the United States at the time. Just down the ridge, Virgil the Turtle’s Greathouse bottoms out at 1,586 feet. Bighorn Caverns, Montana’s longest cave, is more than twenty miles long and still going.
In a quarter century, NRMG members have mapped hundreds of new caves in the Rockies and overseas — the Grand Canyon, Croatia, Turkey, Peru. There is more karst in this state than there are cavers to walk it.
It is our mission to provide a forum where people can learn about and participate in caving.
How we gather
What we do
Annual Grotto Meeting
Our yearly convention — a weekend of presentations, campfires, the Ultimate Caver Challenge, and the company of people who think headlamps make a good party. Announced here, on Facebook, and through the members’ email group.
Cave Camp
A focused weekend of workshops, training, and wild caving, typically in central Montana. Past camps have run sessions on rope technique, survey, photography, and rescue.
Pub Nights
Informal gatherings hosted by any member — usually a brewery, sometimes a living room. Whitefish, Missoula, Bozeman, Billings. Minors welcome. Host one →
Caving trips
Plans go out through the members’ Google Group and often coalesce at Pub Nights. Most Montana caving runs late June through September because of mountain snowpack, with exceptions year-round. The fastest way in is to join and show up.
Project & expedition caving
Long-term wilderness work in the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat, plus international projects in the Grand Canyon, Croatia, Turkey, and Peru. Useful prerequisites: alpine experience, wilderness first aid, mountaineering, climbing.
Vertical training
Most of Montana’s best caves require rope. We offer Single Rope Technique (SRT) training periodically at Cave Camp, climbing gyms, and outdoor sites like Mulkey Gulch near Drummond.
Bats, gear, and clean caving
White-Nose Syndrome has killed millions of bats in North America since it was first identified in New York in 2006. Slowing its westward spread is one of the most important things cavers can do. NRMG partners with the USDA Forest Service Northern Region, the Montana Natural Heritage Program, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to study bat habitat across our region. Members have logged thousands of volunteer hours placing dataloggers and ultrasonic detectors in caves, mines, and bridges — the most comprehensive survey of bats in Montana ever conducted.
Current decontamination protocols and news live at whitenosesyndrome.org.
NRMG members are required to
- Use safe caving practices — helmet with chinstrap and three independent sources of light. Candles, lighters, cell phones, and glow sticks don’t count.
- Follow the current decontamination protocol. Gear used in WNS-affected regions must never be used in unaffected areas like Montana and the western U.S. The grotto keeps loaner gear available free of charge — ask us.
- Report bat observations (or the lack of them) within 30 days at nrmg.org/bat-observation, ideally as part of a full trip report.
- Tell someone where you’re going and when you’ll be back. Teenagers were recently rescued out of Ophir Cave without injury because they did exactly this. Consider a personal locator beacon.
Caving ethics
As stewards of the underground, NRMG members hold to the conservation principles of the National Speleological Society: caves have unique scientific, recreational, and scenic value; that value is endangered by both carelessness and vandalism; once it’s gone, it doesn’t come back; and protecting caves is the responsibility of those who study and enjoy them.
Everything inside a cave — formations, life, and loose deposits — is part of what makes it worth visiting. Caving parties leave a cave the way they found it. They pack out their waste. They mark only what’s needed for survey, minimally and removably. They take extreme care not to break formations, disturb wildlife, or trample new paths through pristine ground.
Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photos, kill nothing but time.
Background reading: the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act and the Montana Cave Conservation Act.
Neighbors
Other Montana caving clubs
Bigfork High School Cave Club
Led by long-time Montana caver and science teacher Hans Bodenhamer. Students run GIS-based cave monitoring projects in Glacier and Grand Canyon National Parks.
University of Montana Cave Club
Founded in 2015 by Ellen Whittle, Ben Broman, and friends. UM Cave Club students get free NRMG membership for as long as they’re enrolled.
Membership · $12 a year
Join the Grotto
Basic household membership gets you the members’ email list, trip announcements and trip reports, training, the AGM, the digital library, the newsletter — and the inside of a lot of caves you wouldn’t otherwise hear about. Pay with any credit card through PayPal.
Billed $12 USD per year. Questions? Contact us.