Pancakes!

"Pancakes" is our traditional spring surface digging weekend. Instead of surveying, exploring, or digging underground, we shed our troglodytic habits for one weekend to poke and dig above ground and hopefully in the warm sunshine. Pancakes Weekend is usually scheduled to coincide with the Highland Maple Festival held every March. A local community organization runs a pancake breakfast at the Williamsville Community Center, and most of us start the day with a stack of pancakes there.

We typically choose the Festival's second weekend for our cave digs, as this gets us a bit closer to the vernal equinox and thus the start of Spring. We open the BCCS Homestead on Friday evening; and in recent years, some folks have come down on Thursday to get the digging started a day early. You can check our calendar for the exact date each year.

Pancake Weekend is a proven BCCS event going back more than a quarter century. Among our discoveries are several strategic, mile plus, and even multi-mile caves. (Barberry, Blarney Stone, Battered Bar, Basswood, Buckwheat, and Blind Faith come to mind!)

If you're interested in discovery—in finding virgin cave—and understand that we can only find such wonders these days with glove-handed, shovel-wielding hard work, then we welcome your eager participation! For a short history of what we've dug into since our official First Pancake Weekend in 1986, click here.

Everyone on BCCS preserves, going into BCCS caves, working BCCS digs or projects, or on BCCS trips needs to have a waiver on file. Please download, print, read, sign and bring with you.

Gregg Clemmer organizes "Pancakes" each year, so please contact him for more information. His contact information is in the NSS Members Manual.