Meet the Officers
The Northern Rocky Mountain Grotto is run by a volunteer Executive Committee of five NSS members. Here’s who we are and how we got hooked on caves.
Ian Chechet
In August of 2009, a friend and I decided to hike to the top of Avalanche Peak in Yellowstone National Park. On our way up, a blizzard hit (don’t you just love the Rockies?) and we turned back. Feeling unfulfilled, we headed back to Billings and saw an old, barely legible sign for Big Ice Cave 20 miles away. Two and a half hours later we arrived at Big Ice Cave and I was immediately hooked. I spent the next year trying to find cave locations with little success. Finally, in January 2011 I decided to join the NRMG and haven’t looked back. As soon as I met other cavers, I knew they were my kind of nerds and I became more and more involved with the grotto. I was elected Secretary in 2013 and Chairman in 2015. I look forward to growing and strengthening the Montana caving community. Let me know what I can do to help get YOU underground.
Will Boekel
I was born and raised in Denver, CO, and moved up to Bozeman, MT for college in 2011. I’m currently in the Laser and Photonics Technician Program at Montana State University and will also be working on my mechanical engineering degree. I began caving in 2015 visiting a friend back in West Virginia and have since gone caving in a few states. Most of my caving involves photography, but I enjoy other kinds of trips as well. I’m also very involved in Yellowstone National Park with researching the geysers there and volunteering under interpretation at the Old Faithful Visitor Center.
Dylan Chambers
The alpine has always interested me. Whether I’m chasing peaks, getting sewing-machine leg on some limestone slab, or squeezing through muddy crawls, it is my happy place. I got my first experience in a wild cave in July 2022, and ever since my life has been consumed by reading trip reports, exploring old alpine karst books, or corralling my caver roommates — we’ve been coined the “Cave Dawgs” — to join me on the next last-minute weather window for an adventure. Besides caving, I study English at Montana State University and have a passion for writing, literature, and teaching. I look forward to spreading the love around town for the deep, rocky, muddy happy places us cavers live for, and cracking some pale ales as soon as possible afterwards.
Mike McEachern
In 1962, as a 19-year-old college student, I read Adventure is Underground (subtitled “The story of great caves of the West and the men who explore them”). Forget electronics and engineering — my life was changed (NSS #6675). After a master’s degree (signed by Ronald Reagan) with a thesis on “Mortuary Caves of the Mother Lode Region of California,” I got a researcher assistant position at the University of Alberta and spent a couple of summers looking for evidence of early man in caves of the Canadian Rockies. A year after that I found a few caves in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. I spent a few years doing archaeology in California, Texas, and Alabama before getting a real job (at 38) as a computer programmer. I retired as a systems analyst from the University of Alabama in Birmingham Hospital in 2005, and two weeks later was in Hamilton, Montana.
Dustin Kisner
My aunt took me caving for the first time when I was about 10 years old in Rockcastle County, KY. I was immediately hooked and like to say I was raised by cavers. I spent my childhood around the campfire at Great Saltpeter Cave Preserve in KY listening to bad jokes and grand tales of cave exploration. Since then, caving has led to many amazing opportunities in my life, most recently landing me an internship in Red Lodge, MT as part of the USFS/BLM Cave Crew. The internship has passed, but I still reside in Red Lodge and have fallen head over heels for the amazing alpine karst and intense caving opportunities of the Montana and Wyoming area. I look forward to serving the NRMG and exploring the Northern Rockies with this amazing community.
Questions or comments?
Reach out to the Executive Committee — we’d love to hear from you.
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