asscciation for mexican cave studies box 7672 ut station austin ...

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8Trip SummaryBill Stone, Steve Ward, Spencer McIntyre. Ernie Garza, Blake Harrison. and Jill DormanBy Bill StoneAfter the hordes of cavers disappeared from the Sierra de Guatemala Fiasco.six remained in my truck to maintain the search for the "mile deep" hole. We hada good lead from John Graves of a large-entranced pit taking water up near CuevasMinas. so ~ye all drove up to San Francisco the first day. All but Steve and Idropped Sotano de los Lobos (620'). We went karst-whacking for about 6 hours(7-8 miles), finding two small pits. the largest perhaps 60' deep. The next daywe drove out to Cuevas 11inas and met an American geology student there whoshowed us all of the new air photos of the area. Gra:\Tes f arroyo leaped right outwhen we used the stereoscope-right on the "contact" ! (John· Graves from SanAntonio. Texas. had originally located the pit. ) It l1ad rained mos t of the nightso we had some slippery 4 lID'ing up to the cave. which was in a fairly obviousdepression to the right of the road. The main entrance was about 70' tall and30' wide - impressive. A side entrance bypassed the 30' entrance drop and webo~ed on down the steep breakdown slopes to a 40' drop at about -4Om. About·this time we noticed a peculiar smell in the cave. Upon inspection Steve pointedout the stream of human feces entering from a small passage and going over thedrop. SHIT: After the 40' drop was a 10' drop to water. Another 400' of cavingand downclimbing lead to another 40' drop, passing by beautiful orange pools offungus : The 40' drop lead to a 30' drop and terminal siphon at -120m. So wechristened it "El Sotano Feo del Arroyo" for lack of a better name. We 41ID allthe way to San Francisco coming in on the Lobos road and returned to Valles.Harrison and Dorman split via bus and the four of us left for a week at theOtate Mine.I should mention - before Blake left the summer rains came in and itrained heavily for two days without let-up. Imagine trying to get up in aheavy downpour! We all put wetsuit tops on at Los Sabinos and walked out totake a look at flood stage Sotano del Arroyo. We heard the rumbling from thetrail, but when we arrived at the entrance it was awe-inspiring ! For anyonewho has been there - imagine 1200 cubic feet per second of water pumping in theentrance drop : It makes Yo Chib look tame : So we figured with all this watergoing in here, imagine what the Choy is like : The lower entrance to the Choywas completely underwater and 4' geysers erupted from the resurgance! Weestimated around 5000 cubic feet per second of flow.Well anyways, back to Otate - The nine road really got wiped out by therain and it took some aggressive 4t-m'ing to make it. lole packed up for a 4 day"black hole or perish" chop from the Estrella Sink. It took over 6 hours to getto the star-shaped depression. as we had to re-chop large sections of the trailwith 70-80 lb. packs. v7e set up camp near Sotano de la Estrella and began oursearch. We chopped a major trail due west from camp which extended well over thewest ridge. Then•.spacing ourselves about 100' apart. we compass chopped southfor over a kilometer and reversed the formation back to the main trail. This wenton till we returned to camp.lf the hole was as big as Russell said, we figured,we couldn't possibly have missed it. So we chopped further west to a knoll andfound a 4n' high tree which afforded a view of the western crest for over 10miles. So we sat in the tree for over an hour. hypothesizhg that if the pitwere actually 100' in diameter. it would certainly have a parrot population.We spotted four distinct clusters on a 22 E of N bearing and chopped for overa kilometer on that bearing -- right into the back of Cuesta: Not random luckat all -- we refound Cuesta with only a 50' error in the chop line. If the blackhole was there, we Hould have chopped right into it. There may be a small chancethat we just didn't wait long enough to get the right bearing on the black hole,so I invite all the birdwatchers to go out to that tree and look for another"parrot bearing" - Good Luck.continued
Anyways we speleo-boppedEstrella and Cuesta. getting some interestingphotos of disabled macaws on the floor of Estrella. These great beautifulbirds are in reality quite spastic; we saw several fly gracefully into awall of the pit and fall 100' to the floor -- it was pitiful after a while!It rained when we did Cuesta that afternoon so no IIray of light" shots wereforthcoming. We hiked back to the truck the next day and tried to get a leadon the fabled illS minute ll pit. but the entire mining crew had split -- lockstock and shovels. The place looked like a ghost mine :The next day we chopped around the Diamante Sink in radial patternsand found a 2' X 3' hole. This turned out to be about 130' deep. bottomedby Garza and McIntyre. Meanwhile I found 3 pits southwest of the road tocamp. The largest of these was 50' in diameter. but bottomed at only 130';the rest were just blind rabbit holes ! I should mention that we receiveda flagging tape message from John Pollack and Norm Pace who did Diamantethe day I left for convention in June. They said they went down -500' on theMinton route but stopped when they noticed all the debris on the ceiling -apparently it floods easily so they split. recommending a dry season push.Upon returnin~ to Valles. Ernie left for the states and Steve. Spence.and I drove to Tancoyol to begin our 4th week of the trip (7th for me). Wehad two leads to check. both required long hikes. The first trip left forLas Flores, two hours north of town. A new road will be completed in December.so it won't be quite so bad. From Las Flores we hiked to San Antonio.four hours from town. The locals knew of two "deep" pits nearby. so we hikedout without packs. They showed us a 100' pit near a karst pinnacle and anotherpit which looked considerably deeper. in a karst pinnacle nearby. This wasSotano de la Palma Real, a 345' free drop which we bottomed the next day.Somewhat further away (still muy cirquita on the Mexican scale) was El Sotanodel Rancho El Tigre, a 150' diameter hole which gave some impressive soundingrock times. We bottomed this the next day also -- the entrance drop was 400'shear to a room about 60' in diameter.Sotano del Rancho El TigreSotano de la Palma Real1so100I,D: ...210':;I.T0so.00'101-1M300)10460yN a1=..~6N.,ot;s:5Jrcontinued
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 and 14: AMCSMEMBERSHIP ACTIVITIES LETTEREdi
Page 15 and 16: 3Michael Schulte has been working o
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: June 97Dear AMCSRE:Diamond CaveAfte
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
Page 67 and 68: AlfCSACTIVITIES LETTEREdited by Bil
Page 69 and 70: 35. I personally had the following
Page 71 and 72: volunteered to rescue the bag. They
Page 73 and 74: one large black hole near the top o
Page 75 and 76: The next day we left camp at dawn a
Page 77 and 78: 11First Exploration of NogalThursda
Page 79 and 80: '"entire passage has·solutional ro
Page 81 and 82: 13Date: January, 1975Destination: A
Page 83 and 84: 15Trip Report, Christmas-New Years
Page 85 and 86: THEOTATES MINE AREA17SIERRA DE EL A
Page 87: large storms, this arroyo sends flo
Page 90 and 91: 20but the handholds are unstable re
Page 92 and 93:
22Diamante received its name from t
Page 94:
jer_I') CIRCLE ROOW•LA CUEVA DE J
Page 97 and 98:
elev 1310mmeters 0Hoya de las Conch
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AMCS ACTIVITIES LETTEREdited by Bil
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3View across the botto~ of Hoya de
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dubbed "The 170" quickly led to ano
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Roy dropped 3 pits an'i :l cave nea
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which would have been hazardous hol
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\I0YA DE LA LUZProfile B-B'Located
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12hotic DiseasesThe August 1976 iss
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14San Juan Area Nov 1976"eo?le: Tr~
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16Caving in Puebla, Vera Cruz, and
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RETURN TO HUAUTLA~Jith t~e 1976-77
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20SCHOOL BUS SCOOPSZOaUITLAN AREA~)
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enU~«
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2April 1, 1977, marks the 10th anni
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TRIP REPORTSDestination: Cueva del
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5uestination: Sierra las Alazanas a
Page 133 and 134:
The Fissure t..as located by T.P.
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11The next morning Francisco "Kissi
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12could scamper up a wed~ed log and
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14This idea was thwarted given an u
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16NEW YEAR'S DAY IN SAN AGUSTINan t
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1'1later Jim and I began the long c
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20Our group of six intended on rapp
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22here and poked around for leads.
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24and myself about trash and abando
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line didn't cross; nylon against ny
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...'"1IIc.21II .._1II~(,),-• c..'
Page 155 and 156:
30Medical Report On The April 1977
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'32One caver alInost lost her voice
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34considered normal. The diabetic d
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36Jim Smit~ Has followinp, Blake Ha
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3~the spot would make a smaU slip.
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AMCSACTIVITIeSNewsLe TTe Rno. 7
Page 169 and 170:
'International NewsTHE SIERRA DE GU
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International Newsin the entrance a
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The Ten Deepest Caves in Mexicoby B
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to a drop. t returned and dropped a
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to the entrance. From San Andres we
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stove in a semi-catatonic state. He
Page 182 and 183:
above the roaring cascades. At time
Page 184 and 185:
With two leads 'beckoning we began
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Chaining a passage in Cueva de Infi
Page 188 and 189:
the cave. We pulled our rope down b
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increased the cave's depth to -197
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series of parallel ascending (+30 0
Page 194:
La Sistema Purificacidn: a theory a
Page 197 and 198:
Between the Cold and the" GlorybyTe
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Back tothe Bird PitsbyBill StoneSum
Page 201 and 202:
'Getting Down in Peiiaby Bill Stone
Page 204 and 205:
CUEVADELAPENAPROFI LEmetersoRanc ho
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