Canyons, San Luis Potosí's Deepest Cave, and Food...

I hadn't written yet about the remainder of my Mexico trip, so here it is. I got back from down south about four weeks ago. Thanks to the truck being searched twice at the US side of the border I was ten minutes late for the UT Grotto meeting, but overall I didn't experience any trouble driving through Mexico. So how did I spend the three weeks after the Puebla expedition?

I stayed in Mexico City for a few days at a friend's place who was one of the organizers of the Puebla trip, and enjoyed having some time to decompress, catch up with the Interwebs, go souvenir-shopping downtown, and watch my Mexican friends dance Salsa. ;-) The Metro made getting around easy, and I loved all the different areas downtown with stores that specialized in one thing or another. There were blocks of only hardware stores, audio equipment stores, cell phone repair part shacks, ...

Alexander von Humboldt statue in front of the (ex-?) National Library in Mexico City.

We headed toward Pinal de Amoles in Querétaro for the weekend, intending to go canyoneering. Spending the night in the picturesque (but loud) mining town, our group of a handful hiked from the town center toward the canyons the next morning. After some way-finding we made it to the upper part of the La Barranca canyon and had a blast hiking, rappelling, sliding and jumping into the water pools.

Instead of returning to D.F. (Distrito Federal, aka Mexico City) afterward, I decided to spend a few days in the touristy capital of Querétaro, where I got surprised by plenty of coffee shops with real espresso, and really good microbrews served in a few spots. If anybody is looking to relax in a touristy and safe setting, I recommend it!

Jumping one of the shorter drops of La Barranca.

My last two weeks were spent in San Luis Potosí, staying with the parents of a good caver friend of mine from Austin. I didn't get to do quite as much caving as I had initially hoped, but I know what it's like to have to work during the week and only be able to go caving on the weekend. ;-) So I enjoyed a constant supply of fantastic food cooked by the doña of the house, and spent some time walking around the (quite scenic) old part of town.

However, I also scored an awesome "tourist" trip into what is now San Luis Potosí's deepest cave. I was invited to tag along to pick up some cavers from their long weekend of exploration, and this unexpectedly turned into a day trip down to Camp 2 in the cave (at -500 meters or some such). A very beautiful place!

Cave passage in San Luis Potosí. Glove, umh, for scale.

And I went on another canyoneering trip to Pinal de Amoles with my friend Jean, who came to visit from Austin for a long weekend. This time, we went and played in the lower part of the La Barranca canyon. I have to admit that the water-rich canyons we did in Querétaro are way more fun than the fairly dry ones I had experienced before this trip. ;-)

Jean and I also participated in a successful vertical and self-rescue practice of the local caving club in San Luis Potosí, A.P.M.E. They have access to a steel tower that was originally built for emergency workers to practice, and is just perfect to hang a bunch of ropes off for practicing vertical skills...

Driving the truck back to Austin, and in general driving around in Mexico, was uneventful. Lots of checkpoints, military and police, on the highways in Mexico, but I wasn't hassled once. And my Spanish skills have definitely improved, but are still on a very basic level. ;-)

Tzontzecuiculi Expedition 2013

It took me about half a day to loose my sun glasses in the thicket of brambles, brush, trees, and other random spiky things we encountered on our first day of looking for cave leads at ~2,500 meters elevation in the state of Puebla, Mexico. The first half day of sunshine, that is, after about three of pretty much non-stop heavy rain -- after all, we were in some sort of cloud forest.

Mexican (and Australian ;)) friends invited me to participate in their annual expedition up in the Sierra Negra mountain range, and I excitedly agreed to come out for the full month of the expedition. This expedition features some great Mexican cavers (as well as a few from other places in the world); had previously produced caves over a kilometer deep; and I was keen on spending some time in an environment that would actually force me to improve my pretty much non-existing Spanish.

It turned out to be a great time. For about the first two weeks, the expedition force was comprised of about a dozen cavers, many of them from Mexico City, but also including my good friend Bev from Austin. A going cave lead from the previous year, a cave named Doncella, sadly did not continue past a hundred-and-something meters depth. Much time was spent prospecting for, and checking, new karst features and potential caves in the -- as seen from base camp -- more remote (and higher elevation) parts of Tzontzecuiculi. (I am told that even the locals don't know the meaning of this mountain's name.)

Gathering back together after a day of swarming out high on Tzontzecuiculi to look for caves. A typical exposure of weathered limestone; the brush down in the forest can be much worse to travel in.

Potential cave leads closer to base camp, and to the little town Ocotempa at the base of the mountain, had been "exhausted" in previous years. (To the level of thoroughness one would expect if there are potential exciting leads elsewhere on the mountain that nobody has ever looked at.) And so we cruised (and oftentimes stumbled) over the very weathered and much-exposed epikarst; thrashed (and often cleared our way with machetes) through the undergrowth of the (mostly) pine forest, and in and out of sinkholes; in areas between one and three hours away from base camp.

A propos base camp. Located a couple hundred meters above and few kilometers from the next town, at the location of an old logging site, exists a spot on the mountain that has sufficient flat grounds for a large communal tent structure as well as individuals' personal tents. Scrap wood from the locals' logging operations conveniently helped with the creation of some basic structures, such as a large table and a kitchen area that already existed from previous expeditions. Finding wood for campfires, which were also used to get rid of most of our trash in accordance with local custom, wasn't a problem either.

In camp on a rainy day. The water jugs are already full from collecting rain water off of tarps.

Mules were rented to transport gear and food up (and at the end, down) the mountain to and from our trucks. A little stream is close by to collect water, although (in my opinion) the rain running off of tarps that we collected during some large rain events we experienced throughout the expedition tasted significantly better. ;-) Last but not least, there even is a hill with (albeit very, very slow) cell phone / Internet access within 10 minutes hiking distance. Quite plush. :-)

In the last two weeks of the expedition, with a caver force slowly being reduced to five of us for the final week, efforts started to concentrate on mainly two promising leads, one on the east and one on the west side of the mountain:

A cave referred to as TT103 (based on its entry in the expedition's cave/karst feature register) that had been found -- but not explored -- last year and is about half an hour away from Doncella. This allowed us to use the bivvy setup that had been established earlier at the Doncella entrance, allowing a team of two or three cavers to spend the night close to the cave -- in sleeping bags under a tarp spanned between trees -- rather than spending about four hours a day just for the hike from and to base camp. Plus, a trail had been established to Doncella previously, making travel not easy, but at least easier. TT103 was the first cave on this expedition to exceed a depth of 200 meters, and in the end was pushed to slightly more than 250 meters. It awaits more exploration...

TTW28 was found this year on the west side of the mountain, at almost 2,700 meters elevation, after a good day or so was spent early on to establish and cut a trail to that side of the mountain for easier travel to that prospecting area. After a hundred-and-something meters of depth the cave required a bit of chiseling to enlarge a constriction, but then continued well. Since we had only one set of bivvy equipment, which was in use at Doncella, this eventually involved long day trips from base camp as the depth of the cave continued to grow. This cave was left going at the end of the expedition as well, with an exciting pit half-way rigged.

In the entrance of TT103. Cleaning eroded limestone off the wall in order to place a bolt anchor for the rope.

Many other "lesser" caves were found during the expedition, some going to about 50 or 70 meters deep, but were quickly abandoned when it turned out that they didn't continue past that. (Looking at the elevation of the resurgence that is associated with the karst up on the mountain, a depth potential of about 2 km exists if one can only find the right cave. ;-))

All in all, I enjoyed this expedition a lot and learned many things. For one, obviously, a decent set of caving-related vocabulary in Spanish; although -- as usual -- it takes me forever to commit new words to my brain's memory. But also a good amount of new (to me) caving techniques and tricks, heavily influenced by the European style of caving. Rigging with 8 mm rope and knots I hadn't known before; using abrasion-resistant and lightweight dyneema cord instead of webbing; having universal ways of charging all types of batteries from a 12V battery fueled by solar panels; ...

And not least, this may well have been one of the most socially developed (in a positive sense) expeditions I have been on. A number of friends who mostly know each other fairly well (and yet were extremely welcoming to me as a new group member and not-much-Spanish speaker); sharing of not just food, but all sorts of gear, including each other's vertical kits and caving suits (who wants to drag their many kilograms of personal gear to another part of the mountain every day? ;-)); and temporary contribution of individual rigging gear for group use by each individual instead of commercial sponsorships or huge expedition fees. (In addition to a number of things that have been amassed over the years in a group stash, everybody brings some rope, rigging gear, ...) Etc.

Another month of my life well spent! :-)

Exiting a cave from where it bottomed out. You can see the daylight and vegetation in the entrance.

Off to Mexico...

Those were 2.5 busy weeks in Austin!

I came back from China with a list of desired improvements to my caving gear and other preparations necessary for my upcoming trip to Mexico. Besides the usual things on my to-do list that I thought would be easy to knock off without having a day job.

One thing that had bothered me multiple times on the last expedition was my photo setup. So I decided to invest 150 bucks to buy a new off-camera flash and sync cable -- the previous generation was a manual flash that always caused over-exposed photos in small cave passage, and a cable with a short in it. Tests of the new setup left me quite pleased so far. Another investment of several hundred dollars was a bunch of Petzl gear, including some replacement spares and a kit to set SPIT bolts, a specialized type of self-drilling caving bolts for (non-permanent) expedition rigging. I had wanted that kind of gear (a hand driver for the bolts, a number of hangers, and obviously bolts) for a while, but the upcoming expedition in Puebla finally gave me an excuse to actually buy it.

My current cave-photo setup: A Lumix LX5 with a Panasonic flash and sync chord to get the flash off the camera and prevent reflections from water and dust in the pictures. Not quite as nice as dragging an SLR around, but certainly more compact. There are more interesting flashes out there that work with my camera, but this one here actually fits into my little waterproof box and seems to work just fine.

I also managed to finish another long-term project that I had spent an hour on every now and then for the past two years: improving the subtitles that I had found online for my favorite German movie, 23 -- the story of the German KGB computer hackers from the 80s. I'll put them online when I get back to Texas.

In between, I spent some time digging in south Austin caves, and providing training in SRT (single rope technique - vertical caving) to half a dozen folks. Good times!

Right now I'm in Laredo, Texas, at the border to Mexico. Tomorrow I'm planning on heading to San Luis Potosí, and then on to Puebla the next day. The plan is to go caving in the state of Puebla for a month, spend a week in Oaxaca surveying caves, and then take up a friend on his invitation to spend some time with his family in San Luis Potosí to work on my Spanish and explore their caves.

I'm excited to finally take the truck back into Mexico, the last time was in May 2010, before things sort of deteriorated in terms of safety in northern Mexico. Recent reports from cavers driving to southern parts of Mexico across the border sounded like they did not have any trouble, and with driving only during the day and on toll roads I decided it's an acceptable risk for me to take the Tacoma instead of flying and/or taking buses.

Caving in South China - Hong Meigui's Spring Festival Expedition

I went to participate in this year's Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year) expedition of the Hong Meigui Cave Exploration Society. The objectives sounded exciting: Establish camp in (and push leads off of) Da Luo Dang Tiankeng. In particular, explore a multiple-seconds drop (when throwing down a rock and listening for it to hit the bottom) downstream, where the explorers had turned around during a previous expedition, since they didn't want to take their chances to get flushed down it in the rainy season.

View of camp, and into Da Luo Dang Tiankeng.

The tiankeng (Chinese for "sky hole", "heaven pit") is most easily accessed by cavers through the San Wang Dong system, rather than climbing to it on the surface and dropping into it. This involves a 2-6 hour trip (depending on amount of gear to carry and other factors), mostly through walking passage and some borehole, but with a few shorter vertical drops, smaller spots, and climbs on the way. We established camp in the passage that opens up into the tiankeng after a few dozen meters; the floor is relatively flat, and there was evidence of previous human use in the form of two cooking hearths and a little rock wall to protect against the wind, presumably created by miners a little while ago. We brought custom-made, floor-less, light-weight tents with us that were attached with strings to bolts and features in the walls, in order to protect ourselves from the draft when in our sleeping bags and capture some of our body heat -- a common technique when camping in drafty cave passage.

It was funny to stay in a cave camp that would see daylight during the day. And cold, since we had direct access to the surface climate. (As opposed to the usual 12 degrees Celsius that is typical for the caves in the area.) Camp was maintained for ten nights total, Angela being the only one down there for the full time without getting a surface break. Erin almost made the record, but then her and I were faster than planned on the de-tackling day before breaking down camp for good, and managed to drag a load of gear out of the cave all the way to the surface, earning ourselves a break from the freeze-dried dinners underground and going back to sleep one more night in the cave. Early on in the expedition, Madphil and I had spent a day bouncing to the surface and back to get more rigging gear, our supplies of rope being exhausted much sooner than expected. (Our trip lead to the entertaining question of what a reverse call-out time should look like: Send a rescue party to the surface if we aren't back in cave camp by the next morning? ;-)) And to add yet another surface trip for myself, Devra and I joined the team leaving the cave during the first wave of de-rigging and departure from the expedition. I spent a surface day to rebook flights, and then solo-caved back in to bring food supplies for the remaining days.

View up in Da Luo Dang Tiankeng.

Once derigged, all the gear was transported back from its / our temporary home in the village of Er Wang Dong (Houping area) back to Tongzi, and us remaining expedition members spent multiple days cleaning gear and wrapping up things. The accomplishments of our group of (at peak times) eight cavers during not quite two weeks of caving included:

• Exploring the downstream passage, spear-headed by Carl. The ~ 80 meter pit was rigged, and passage was explored until the remaining leads were still promising, but require better preparedness for cold, wet caving.
• Madphil and Rob spent most of the days aid-climbing upward, using a total of not quite a hundred bolts. Their noses directed them straight toward Tian Ping Miao Tiankeng, a (relatively!) smallish sinkhole known from surface topography and now connected into the system. Sadly, no interesting leads were found off of it.
• Erin climbed up a steep slope in Da Luo Dang Tiankeng in order to determine its extensions, and to her surprise found passage that showed evidence of miners (nitrate, maybe?) spending time up there, processing stuff, and having built a system to traverse a series of rifts as evidenced by wooden stemples and ladders apparently used to ease traveling at a certain elevation in the rifts. We spent multiple days exploring that passage without finding an obvious way on - when we ran into climbing leads in the last days, the only hammer drill left in camp conked out at the first attempt of using it.
• Beardy and I got a good amount of decent photos on the trip, I think. I wish I had brought my second slave flash unit...

Upward, by means of hammer drill.

I enjoyed this trip a lot, it was a great mixture out of new and old caving friends, skills, and personalities. It also was a good opportunity to get me comfortable again with (and remember where my limits are when it comes to) slightly more involved expedition caving - traversing along fixed lines, (free) climbing relatively exposed climbs, etc. I'm ready for the next one! :-)

Cave Survey Guidelines, and Other Things

A few years ago, Bev and I wrote a set of notes for new cavers on how to be a (both effective and efficient) part of a survey team. Basically, how to read instruments, set stations, communicate with the sketcher, etc. Which, really, is a good (the best?) way to get involved with and invited to caving projects, until you progress from there to learning how to sketch and draft maps, amongst other things.

David surveying in Punkin Cave, a couple of years ago... ;-)

While surveying in Quintana Roo over the holidays, I had time to reflect on this and also to collect some extremely useful comments from the fellow cavers who were around. I've finally managed to consolidate all this and publish an update on our Grotto web page:

Cave Survey - Using Tape / Disto and Instruments (PDF version)

In other news that will be less interesting to the general public, I'm currently spending a few weeks in Texas before heading to China for an expedition over Spring Festival. Besides participating in a cave digging project in Austin, (which is surprisingly fun, I have to admit as somebody who doesn't dig much in caves,) we made some progress in my project cave O-9 Well last weekend.

Line plot of survey data from Walls (a cave survey database application). 100 meter-grid. The orange stuff was added to the survey last Saturday.

Nine Texas cavers headed out west to continue the re-survey of the cave in three teams. All in all, we surveyed over 500 meters of fairly small, muddy, and wet passage. It took us longer than I had expected, too. But, all the main passage has now been re-surveyed, and what's left to do is to follow a side lead to where it's likely to end under a plugged sinkhole (the leg taking off to the north on the line plot above). And, of course, for me to draft the final map of the cave based on the survey data and sketches -- the primary reason for starting the project.

Apart from that, I'm dragging behind with accomplishing the various things on my to-do list. Something that hasn't changed since I left my job. Ah well.

Quintana Roo Cave Mapping Project

Over the holidays, Andrea and I went to Quintana Roo (in México, it's the state sharing a peninsula with the Yucatán) for ten days. Our aim was to help with the survey of dry caves in the region, conducted by the Quintana Roo Cave Mapping Project. (Dry caves in this context mean they aren't underwater caves that require cave diving -- there may still be streams and lakes.) The particular objective of this trip was to create a high-quality re-survey of a cave system that is also being used by a natural reserve tour operator, just south of Playa del Carmen. The resulting data will then be used to create a new map for the cave.

It was both plush and productive caving. All in all, our group surveyed over 27 km of cave on this trip. I personally contributed about 2 km of sketching over 9 caving days -- some in chest-high water, but most of it looping through a huge breakdown room with multiple chambers created by the breakdown. Frequently running out of pages made my brain hurt sometimes, though. (See photos of pages of my survey book. They will be replaced with better copies soon.)

A page from my survey book, showing the south-east corner of a large breakdown room we surveyed.

Survey notes. Distance between survey stations, as well as azimuth and inclination readings.

Since the caves are all located in the jungle and close to the surface, they have a rich fauna. Amongst other creatures, we frequently saw amblypygids, tarantulas, small catfish, cave-adapted fish, cave crickets, etc.

Amblypygid sensing around for prey. No scale, sadly, but there were some pretty big ones in the caves.

Our group of 20+ cavers mostly camped on the same property in the jungle that our main cave entrances were located on. We had flush toilets, showers, a pool, and daily breakfast and dinner were cooked for us -- couldn't be better! In between, we took a day off to visit the Maya ruins in Cobá and go snorkeling in the Gran Cenote outside of Tulum. Traveling from Texas to our camp was fairly straightforward, too -- direct flights between Austin and Cancún. Fun times all around.

Cutting (not quite ripe) coconuts to mix their juice with rum on Christmas Eve. :-)

I didn't take many pictures, and the few I took are of pretty low quality, but for completeness, the public photos of this trip can be found here on SmugMug.

Photos: Nepal, Bhutan, Bangkok

Happy 2013!

Views in the Khumbu Region of Nepal

Views in the Khumbu Region of Nepal

Over the holidays I finally managed to edit photos from my recent travels. If you are interested in taking a peak, here are the links to my public SmugMug albums:

• Glacier Caves in the Khumbu: Pictures, Blog Entry
• Trekking in the Khumbu: Pictures, Blog Entry
• Kathmandu: Pictures, Blog Entry
• Bhutan: Pictures, Blog Entry
• Bangkok: Pictures, Blog Entry