Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Block outlet
with lose
rocks.
March 1976
November 1999
Chapter 22 -- Boys' Life
"Down the Drain" by Zolton Malocsay
Cenote of the Spirits near the ruins of Tan-Ka in central Mexico.
By the time I felt the current, it was too late. I lunged to get
away, but the current had me, dragged me deeper under the
ledge, into the dark, into the throat of some underground river. I
clawed at the ceiling, but my fingernails couldn't hold in the slime.
My tanks clonked and scraped, my knees hit rock, my elbows,
and suddenly there was nothing but blackness and the rush of
water.
The plot's standard Boys Club fare, but the Scout learns how to
escape from a vertical-walled cenote having a waterfall from the
wall fed by an adjacent lake.
Cenote Lake
Outlet
Waterfall
"Hawaiians on Ice"
DRAFT 1122//66//22001122
Allow cenote to fill until waterfall is
submerged and water level stabilizes.
You're now floating at lake level and
there's no velocity in the waterfall
passage
Escape via a short dive through the
waterfall passage.
Prussiking is a technique used to haul yourself up a rope using
sliding friction knots. A longer rope has a loop for your feet on
both ends; a shorter rope attaches a harness to your climbing
rope...
Justin Leong prepares to practice his prussiking skills (see box
above).to pull himself out of an underground river.
Factual report of a Scout excursion with misuse of "underground
river" in lieu of "crevasse." We'll discuss glacial rivers in Chapter
41, Underground Rivers in Caverns other than Karst.
Although George Ralphson didn't write for Boys' Life, we'll include him in this chapter for his Boy
Scouts adventure series, the characters of which embody the slogan "Do a Good Turn Daily."
To the Boys and Girls of America, in the fond hope that herein they will find pleasure,
instruction and inspiration; that they may increase and grow in usefulness, self-reliance,
patriotism and unselfishness, and ever become fonder and fonder of their country and its
institutions, of Nature and her ways, is the cherished hope and wish of the author. -- G. Harvey
Ralphson, Scout Master
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