Burning Man

A shark-themed art car. :-)

The first time I heard of Burning Man and wanted to go must have been in Germany, sometime after college, a dozen or so years ago. This year, I finally made it. For those of you who have never heard of it, Burning Man is somewhat hard to describe. Maybe sort of a community-driven, creative, alternative, fire and art festival? For about a week, folks of all age and background descend into a self-erected city made out of temporary tent and shade-structures in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Burning Man's core principles include self-reliance, inclusion, and anti-materialism, and participants come here in order to live out their hippie, counterculture, or whatever other ideals.

A participant-driven zoetrope with a monkey and a serpent, in a not-too-heavy dust storm on the playa.

Deciding to go this year was a no-brainer: I had the time, and several good friends of mine were already planning on going. Surviving a week in the desert, being part of a theme camp and its activities, and having fun with costumes and the like take a decent amount of preparation in the months and weeks before the event. The remaining two weeks after our Europe trip I was busy getting bits and pieces together; building a swamp cooler out of a bucket, pond pump and computer fan; making costume pieces; etc. Since -- for once -- I had the time, I decided to drive the truck to Nevada and spend some weeks afterward on a road trip.

Helium-filled balloons on a string in the wind over the playa. Also very impressive at night, since they each were paired with an LED light. Another art installation in the background.

And what a good time it was! Roaming the desert on bike or foot; with friends or alone, making new friends; looking at art and crazy costumes… A lot of art installations on the playa are climbable; a lot of them involve fire or other things glowing at night; and a lot of them are made of wood so that they can be burnt in the end. Not to speak of all the art cars, also known as mutant vehicles -- the amount of effort and skills that must be going into building all these things seems endless. My schedule, as almost everybody else's, shifted more and more toward a nocturnal one as the week progressed.

The Temple of Times is burning.

I also watched a talk about the geology of the Black Rock Desert, went to a champagne brunch, and explored many camps' activities and events. Seeing the Man, Temple, and other art burn on the playa was fascinating. I stayed with a smallish theme camp organized by friends of mine. Our camp's contribution to the general craziness included a bat-themed merry-go-round and chill space, and a margarita party. The options to do stuff out on the playa were without limits.

I'm glad I went, and I plan on going back.

Caving in Slovenia, and Other Europe Fun

View from the summit of Viševnik

A week of congressing in the Czech Republic was followed by a caving expedition in the heart of Slovenia. More time spent in the Alps after our earlier trip to Austria, but this time our friend Matt had invited Andrea and myself to join him on Viševnik mountain. While living in Slovenia for two years, he had spent time developing the area into one of his caving club's project locations.

Camping was comfortable. We set up in a clearing about 200 meters away from our parking spots on a service road in the Triglav National Park. From there, it was another short (but steep) hike to our main cave: Evklidova piščal (Euclid's flute) is a fairly technical cave, currently somewhat over 400 meters deep and -- due to some additions as a result of our expedition -- a little over 2 kilometers long.

Garmin and Matic setting up the survey gear in Evklidova piščal -- a DistoX connected by Bluetooth to a PDA for sketching. None of those old-fashioned instruments and paper that most of the Texas cavers still use. ;-)

Caving in Evklidova piščal was, well, not quite as comfortable. I went on one survey and exploration trip in the cave with Matic and Garmin, two of the Slovenian cavers who had joined our contingent of about eight American cavers for the week. Lots of constrictions and fairly tight meanders required a fair amount of squeezing and climbing in all sorts of directions (upward, downward, sideways), only every now and then interrupted by relatively benign rope work. At the end of the day, I was completely exhausted, had ripped a huge hole into the butt of my PCV suit, and felt like an unprepared and too-big-for-the-cave novice caver, compared to my new Slovenian friends who I'm sure I slowed down significantly. Hadn't had this kind of experience for a while! ;-)

Other days on the mountain involved ridge-walking (looking for caves) on a plateau that features both tons of exposed limestone and a lot of mountain pines; registering locations of karst features and potential caves by means of GPS; and surveying a number of smaller caves. One of the biggest results of the expedition was the discovery of a new cave that was pushed to a little over 300 meters depth and keeps going. Very exciting!

Panorama of the plateau that we spent our time on in the quest for new caves.

After a week on the mountain, we took a break for two days of "tourist caving" in some of Slovenia's best-known and famous caves and karst. This included walking through some huge caves and limestone bridges in the Rakov Škocjan park, visiting the famous Škocjanske jame show cave, and rappelling down (and climbing out of) the impressive entrance shaft of Kačna jama (Snake Cave).

Tiny caver marked for scale in the Kačna jama entrance pit.

This concluded Andrea's and my participation in the Slovenia expedition. Together with friends from Austin, we headed from there to Berlin to visit with some friends of mine for three days, bike around the city, and eventually make our way back to Austin.

Andrea emerging from a yet-to-be-named cave on the Viševnik plateau.

Ice Cave Touristing in Austria

Before attending (and presenting at) the International Congress of Speleology in Brno (Czech Republic) at the end of July, Andrea and I went on a pre-congress excursion to some of the most fantastic ice caves in Austria. (Ice caves, roughly speaking, being caves formed in rock -- typically limestone -- and having perennial ice formations in them.) For a week, Austrian speleologists took us (and a number of other cavers from around the world) on a tour of these marvels in the Austrian Alps.

Beautiful rillenkarst in the Austrian Alps...

We spent most of our time in and around the Dachstein massif of the Northern Calcareous Alps. A good number of the caves we visited were commercially operated show caves, where we either pretty much stuck to the tourist trails and snuck in in between regular guided tours, or in some cases went into the cave after it had closed for the day and veered off trail to follow our guides through non-commercial parts of the cave. These included Dachstein-Mammuthöhle, Dachstein-Rieseneishöhle, and Eisriesenwelt.

Ice crystals in Dachstein-Mammuthöhle.

Our most involved trips went to Schwarzmooskogelhöhle and Eiskogelhöhle. Hiking to the Schneevulkanhalle (snow volcano hall) of Schwarzmooskogelhöhle took us through some beautiful scenery in the Alps, while the hike to Eiskogelhöhle was more straightforward, but required a number of skills inside the cave. Most of our caving trips involved wearing crampons to be able to move around on ice floors.

Rappelling into Hall of the Circe in Eiskogelhöhle.

A bonus caving trip not on the original itinerary took us to Kraushöhle, which did not contain any ice, but stands out as a cave formed by hypogene development. (Meaning, dissolution driven by water from below, rather than water cutting downward into the rock. [PDF]). And our last day took us to one of the eastern-most ice caves in Austria for a quick visit before heading to Brno.

A frozen waterfall has formed a huge ice stalagmite on the floor.

The excursion was extremely well organized and offered a good deal of education on ice caves in general and the genesis and other geological aspects of the particular caves we visited. We made new friends, and learned to enjoy Austrian schnapps -- in particular Zirbenschnaps, made from pine cones. Good times!

Two Months in (Mostly) Texas…

More rain showers and cloudy weather than expected gave me plenty of excuses to procrastinate cleaning my expedition gear after getting home from Mexico. No big deal, since I hadn't planned on using it much in May and June anyway. It was time to try and get some of the projects done at home that had been piling up on my to-do list for years. 

The outdoor guard kittens that come with our rental house are preparing for another work night...

Some of the activities I ended up keeping myself busy with included:

Learning How To Slaughter a Pig

Our friend Vico taught my friend Jean and me the basics of killing and butchering a pig. Obviously, besides a sharp knife, mastering this endeavour takes more training than doing it once -- but we got an excellent introduction. We spent an afternoon shooting a wild hog that Vico had caught earlier, trimming off the skin, and dissecting the meat. A good anatomy lesson, too!

Learning how to butcher a pig...

Visiting Chicago and Iowa

Andrea and I spent a week out of town during my time in Austin. We flew to Chicago and touristed around for a few days, something we had been wanting to do for a long time. And took the train from there to Ottumwa (Iowa) to see her parents. Good times were to be had, including a lesson in shooting a variety of guns.

Andrea shooting a cowboy (lever-action) rifle...

Playing With Car Electrics

It had been on my list for a long time to improve the setup of the auxiliary battery in the Tacoma, now my only vehicle. It took me several days of planning, shopping for parts, and fiddling around to move the inverter it powers to a spot in the cab where it wouldn't block the second jump seat anymore; to connect some of the existing and a few new power outlets, as well as the stereo, to the auxiliary battery; and to wire a remote switch that lets me join the auxiliary with the main battery to give the main a boost if it runs out of juice. Success! It's nice to have a car where you don't have to worry too much about drilling holes into the chassis to run wires through, too… ;-)

New wood panel to squeeze more power supplies into the middle console... Ugly, but it works.

In between, it was time to pack again for the next trip... (And of course, there are still tons of projects left on my to-do list.)

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.