, Auditorium
Charles Bishop, NSS 9355 FE LB
Catherine "Cat" Bishop, NSS 12100 FE LB
A Couple of Cavers from Kentucky
A family vacation trip to Mammoth Cave in 1965 was Charlie's introduction to the underground world. He joined the NSS in 1966 while still in high school, started caving with Blue Grass Grotto in central Kentucky, and learned to survey after he was invited to work on the Sloan's Valley Cave mapping project. Catherine "Cat" Bishop also started with a commercial tour of Mammoth Cave but didn't do any wild caving until a few years later when, as a summer camp counselor, she helped other staff members lead younger Girl Scouts through a small cave in the nearby Daniel Boone National Forest. In 1969 she joined Blue Grass Grotto and assisted in exploring, surveying, and mapping numerous horizontal and vertical caves in the karst areas south of Lexington, Kentucky.
After entering college with the intention of becoming a geologist, Charlie soon changed his major to engineering. He graduated from the University of Kentucky with bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering with specialization in geotechnical engineering. Cat's degree is in social welfare because, as she says, "People are so interesting! They do such crazy things!" Her professional career has included teaching high school equivalency courses and writing technical articles for a company that researches nutrition and exercise physiology in Thoroughbred racehorses.
For over 50 years, Charlie and Cat have participated in the ongoing exploration and study of James Cave. Located only a few miles south of Mammoth Cave, James is an 11-mile-long maze of vertical and horizontal passages on five levels under 30 acres. Coach Cave, less than 200 feet away, offers 3.5 miles of low crawls, huge domepits, a booming canyon, and hundreds of signatures from the Civil War era. As the keeper of five decades of survey notes, Charlie is working with the next generation of cavers to update and produce a digital map of the two caves.
Both Bishops are NSS Fellows, and in 2010 they received the Lou Bicking Award which honors cavers who have devoted many years to a specific caving project.
Biography
Charlie and Cat are part of an ongoing restoration project to remove lighting fixtures and deteriorated wood left in James and Coach after commercial tours ended in the 1980s. They also assist U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologists who conduct a biannual census of endangered gray and Indiana bats that hibernate in both caves.
When they aren't caving, Cat and Charlie enjoy backpacking, whitewater canoeing, and competing in Masters track and field events. Charlie is a pole vaulter and distance runner while Cat excels in shot put, hammer throw, and the 200-meter sprint. Charlie says, "She throws things… and I run!"