asscciation for mexican cave studies box 7672 ut station austin ...
asscciation for mexican cave studies box 7672 ut station austin ... asscciation for mexican cave studies box 7672 ut station austin ...
2The latest issue of the ROC Cairn, the newsletter of the Rensselaer OutingClub, contains a 15 page account of the Christmas trip to El Socovon by BillStone complete with area maps and sketch maps of El Socovon and Sotano de Ojo deAgua (283 foot entrance drop, total depth 746 feet). Several other pits werelocated and explored in the El Socovon area, and numerous leads were gatheredfor the next trip. After returning to the road at Tancoyol, the group split up,some of the group following the new road to the top of the El Abra and choppin~out to pits. The thrill of discovery is evident in Bill's account of the explorationof Sotano de Arbol Sangre: "'We arrived at Sotano de Arbol Sangre aroundnoon and rigged to a sinuously rooted tree which literally "bled" white sap whencut, hence the name Arbol Sangre. Bryan rappeled in the 100' entrance drop to abreakdown mountain sloping steeply down. He walked down out of hearin~ rangeand returned 10 minutes later reporting he had found a 20' diameter pit of unknowndepth. Art and I descended and Don went over to the other nearby pit tobegin chopping down.'We climbed down the breakdown and took a look at Bryan's pit. It lookeddeep. We examined the rest of the passage which had a deep fissure runnin~ downthe middle. It ended 200' further on in a 3 second pit. We returned to Bryan'spit again. This time we dislodged an immense boulder, perhaps a meter cubical,and rolled it in. 1••• 2••• 3••• 4.CRASH•• 5••• 6••• 7••• 8•• CRASH •• RUMBLE ••12 •• l3 ••1~•• CRASH ••18•• l9•• 20•• BOOOOOM! At this point (no kidding) the floor we werestanding on shook! GEEZUUZ! Well, our first thought was to forget it and comeback tomorrow with a BIG rope. However, as in the case of many other deep pits,rock times can be deceptive, especially if the walls are close together and permita lot of bouncing. So we decided to at least give it a try with the ropes wehad. We climbed out and hiked over to where Don was chopping and had lunch. Fromthe "lunch ledge" Don's pit looked like it might be deep so I stayed to helpchop while Bryan and Art went to try the pit with a 300' rope. Don and I managedto get to the bottom in about 1/2 hour. It was only 200-250' deep, shearon 3 sides. No passages except for a small tube leading to a skylight entrance.Don decided to return to camp. Bryan and Art were still in Sotano de ArbolSangre so I dropped in and climbed down to the second pit again. Bryan was inthe process of Jumaring out on the 300' rope. We arrived semi-exhausted and reportedthat the 300 feet wasn't nearly enough. We decided to try one more timeand tie on the remaining 120' rope. Since neither Bryan nor Art wanted to rappelover the knot that left the dubious honor to me. We rerigged using a minimalamount of rope tied around a semi-solid looking column•••shaky! The pit issmooth walled and roughly elliptical with a narrow fissure running off each end.At -300' I tied on the 120' rope and kept on rappelling. At the end of the secondrope I was about 10' off the top of a talus pile. Totally forgetting in my excitementthat I was at the end of 420' of GOLDLINE, I untied the knot and rappelledoff the end. TWANG. ZIP. Up went the rope 25' off the floor~ Well, what abummer! After getting over a surge of blind panic I found that I could chimney(just barely) up enough to clip a Jumar on the end and pull it back down. Aftertying it off I followed the high canyon-like passage for 200' where it ended insilt fill. We surveyed out and started back to camp by dusk. Total depth was709' with the second drop officially 433'."
3Michael Schulte has been working on his Aquismon Area Project during Januaryand February. On December 28 he met the EI Socovon trip at EI Socovon,then was back in theOAquismon area to yo-yo Golondrinas with the NY RensselaerOuting Club Group. Then he searched unsuccessfully for the Bridge Pit, and metRoger Skages, Rich Stocker, Warren Netherton, Devi Ukrin, and Dave Witacre todo Hoya de Guaguas. On January 21 he helped carry Blanca Rubio Ramirez, aTamapatz school teacher, over a muddy trail in a makeshift stretcher fromTamapatz to Aquismon and then drove her to a hospital in Valles. After checkingcaves north of Tansosob he returned to Tamapatz and finally found the elusiveBridge Pit, Joya Jawecito, on February 15. It is an impressive pit butnot the deep shaft we had hoped. It can be climbed without rope. He concluded"there are still significant leads and much mapping left in this beautifularea."Discovery of Diamond CaveDiamond Cave promises to be a major cave, a deep complex three dimensionalmaze beneath the dolina just to the northwest of the Otate Mine. Just west ofthe mine the new road circles the south edge of the dolina, so when our grouparrived at the Otate camp~round an obvious first thing to do was to check thisnearby dolina. So soon after we set up camp I walked back down the road andcrashed down through the jungle. On reaching the flat densely overgrown floorof the dolina, it was apparent there were no large overhangs, but there was asmall drainage channel crossing the bottom. I follQwed this shallow channel towhere it sank under a low ledge in the southeast corner of the dolina. Afterclearing some debri it looked possible to squeeze into the opening and followthe water - and there seemed to be a small air flow, rare in the El Abra. Theentrance looked small but promising, but air flow in the El Abra indicates aconnection to big cave. Encouraged by this thought I decided to chop a traildirectly south back to the car as it would be much shorter than the roundaboutway I had come. After chopping 20 feet south I stepped across a small hole inthe karst that looked like it should be checked. Trail chopping became increasinglydifficult and after a hundred feet a series of jungle covered six footledges convinced me that was not the best way to return to the car, so I circledback the way I had come.That afternoon Andy Grubbs and I returned to check out the small sink, andafter much squeezing managed to explore about 100 feet of small tube to wherethe tube divided into several smaller tubes too small to follow. We squeezedback out and while Andy looked for quartz crystals in the arroyo, I went hackto check the hole in the karst. This hole is only about 2 x 2 feet and is likethousands of cracks in the karst but seemed deeper. But once I slid into theopening it was obviously not just another hole in the karst. A six foot in diametertube sloped downward and was scoured clean by water entering from thedolina bottom through cracks in the karst. I quickly explored for about 100 feetto a climbable ten foot drop where I returned for Andy. We returned to the drop,Andy climbed down and indicated the cave continued, but due to light trouble wehad to wait until that evening to explore further. That evening ~.,e pushed throu~hthe squeezes to the Frog Falls area and Andy climbed to the bottom of the flowstoneonly to be stopped by an unclimbahle pit. We flagged the entrance, but astime was short and we wanted to finish chopping the trail south to Cuesta we leftfurther exploration to others.Bill Russell
- Page 1: ASSCCIATION FOR MEXICAN CAVE STUDIE
- Page 5 and 6: 3So the large-entranced sotano whic
- Page 7 and 8: 5MINA OTATES, T&~.: DSC. 25, 1974,
- Page 9: MERIDA, YUC.: OCT. 1974, David McKe
- Page 13: AMCSMEMBERSHIP ACTIVITIES LETTEREdi
- Page 17 and 18: 5To the right of the partition in t
- Page 19 and 20: 7Diamond Cave RevisitedAndy Grubbs,
- Page 21 and 22: 9CHE~-VEN-SIL-MUTSYSTEM\+--1000 ft.
- Page 23 and 24: Cave Map Symbols11On the following
- Page 25 and 26: 13I NATIONAL SPELEOLOGICAL ISOCIETY
- Page 27 and 28: ASSOCIATION FOR MEXIC&~ CAVE STUDIE
- Page 29 and 30: 17Discussion of Map Symbolsby Bill
- Page 31: 19in a 90 meter pit could collect d
- Page 35 and 36: AMCSACTIVITIES LETTEREdited by Bill
- Page 37 and 38: 3After leaving Valladolid we went t
- Page 39 and 40: CASI UlL 5By Bill Stone as told to
- Page 41 and 42: June 97Dear AMCSRE:Diamond CaveAfte
- Page 43 and 44: Anyways we speleo-boppedEstrella an
- Page 45 and 46: The adrenelin still pumping through
- Page 47 and 48: 13Sotano Hondo de Pina1itoBy Steven
- Page 49 and 50: CAVE MAP SYMBOLS(continued)15The AM
- Page 51 and 52: mechanical shading -- the dots, con
- Page 53 and 54: morphogenetic feature involving gra
- Page 55 and 56: height variation, say. across the w
- Page 57 and 58: 23that list to include a broader se
- Page 59 and 60: 25be represented by rigidly p,eomet
- Page 61 and 62: 27..• D. 0. ȯGravelFEATURENOTESS
- Page 63: ASSOCIATION FOR MEXICAN CAVEUAP Snm
3Michael Schulte has been working on his Aquismon Area Project during Januaryand February. On December 28 he met the EI Socovon trip at EI Socovon,then was back in theOAquismon area to yo-yo Golondrinas with the NY RensselaerO<strong>ut</strong>ing Club Group. Then he searched unsuccessfully <strong>for</strong> the Bridge Pit, and metRoger Skages, Rich Stocker, Warren Netherton, Devi Ukrin, and Dave Witacre todo Hoya de Guaguas. On January 21 he helped carry Blanca Rubio Ramirez, aTamapatz school teacher, over a muddy trail in a makeshift stretcher fromTamapatz to Aquismon and then drove her to a hospital in Valles. After checking<strong>cave</strong>s north of Tansosob he returned to Tamapatz and finally found the elusiveBridge Pit, Joya Jawecito, on February 15. It is an impressive pit b<strong>ut</strong>not the deep shaft we had hoped. It can be climbed witho<strong>ut</strong> rope. He concluded"there are still significant leads and much mapping left in this bea<strong>ut</strong>ifularea."Discovery of Diamond CaveDiamond Cave promises to be a major <strong>cave</strong>, a deep complex three dimensionalmaze beneath the dolina just to the northwest of the Otate Mine. Just west ofthe mine the new road circles the so<strong>ut</strong>h edge of the dolina, so when our grouparrived at the Otate camp~round an obvious first thing to do was to check thisnearby dolina. So soon after we set up camp I walked back down the road andcrashed down through the jungle. On reaching the flat densely overgrown floorof the dolina, it was apparent there were no large overhangs, b<strong>ut</strong> there was asmall drainage channel crossing the bottom. I follQwed this shallow channel towhere it sank under a low ledge in the so<strong>ut</strong>heast corner of the dolina. Afterclearing some debri it looked possible to squeeze into the opening and followthe water - and there seemed to be a small air flow, rare in the El Abra. Theentrance looked small b<strong>ut</strong> promising, b<strong>ut</strong> air flow in the El Abra indicates aconnection to big <strong>cave</strong>. Encouraged by this thought I decided to chop a traildirectly so<strong>ut</strong>h back to the car as it would be much shorter than the roundabo<strong>ut</strong>way I had come. After chopping 20 feet so<strong>ut</strong>h I stepped across a small hole inthe karst that looked like it should be checked. Trail chopping became increasinglydifficult and after a hundred feet a series of jungle covered six footledges convinced me that was not the best way to return to the car, so I circledback the way I had come.That afternoon Andy Grubbs and I returned to check o<strong>ut</strong> the small sink, andafter much squeezing managed to explore abo<strong>ut</strong> 100 feet of small tube to wherethe tube divided into several smaller tubes too small to follow. We squeezedback o<strong>ut</strong> and while Andy looked <strong>for</strong> quartz crystals in the arroyo, I went hackto check the hole in the karst. This hole is only abo<strong>ut</strong> 2 x 2 feet and is likethousands of cracks in the karst b<strong>ut</strong> seemed deeper. B<strong>ut</strong> once I slid into theopening it was obviously not just another hole in the karst. A six foot in diametertube sloped downward and was scoured clean by water entering from thedolina bottom through cracks in the karst. I quickly explored <strong>for</strong> abo<strong>ut</strong> 100 feetto a climbable ten foot drop where I returned <strong>for</strong> Andy. We returned to the drop,Andy climbed down and indicated the <strong>cave</strong> continued, b<strong>ut</strong> due to light trouble wehad to wait until that evening to explore further. That evening ~.,e pushed throu~hthe squeezes to the Frog Falls area and Andy climbed to the bottom of the flowstoneonly to be stopped by an unclimbahle pit. We flagged the entrance, b<strong>ut</strong> astime was short and we wanted to finish chopping the trail so<strong>ut</strong>h to Cuesta we leftfurther exploration to others.Bill Russell