12MB PDF - Association for Mexican Cave Studies

we had finished the last of the ropeworkfor a while and could ditch verticalgear and wetsuit tops for thefinal stretch. At this point ourcascade canyon junctioned with alarge trunk passage dubbed the Metro.The river quietly ran along thefloor, giving a momentary respitefrom the thunder above. A briskhike downstream brought us to anotherjunction, this one dwarfing the first,where a great talus pile fifty meterswide shot up into the blackness.Camp III was somewhere up there. None·of us who had been there before hadreally scoped it out thoroughly so acampsite had to be found. We dumpedthe supplies on an eroded flows tonebank halfway to the summit, then wentfor it. To our surprise the top wasfairly flat and floored with siltysand. Space proved to be no problemas the nearest wall was fortymeters away. The cascading of thedistant river filled the chamber witha soft rumbling sound. Camp III.Back at the gear we took a nap,waking an hour or so later shiveringin our wetsuits. With due intent towarm up we split for Camp II. Afterfifteen pitches and 19 hours on thego, we stumbled into our woolens, madesome chow and crashed.It seemed an eternity. I couldsleep no longer and opened my eyes.Nothing. Then there was a dull poppingof a carbide lamp being ignitedin the distance. Tommy was up,writing in his journal. Dino firedone up as well. I called out,"Steve, what time do you have?""Nine ~ " i'Is that day or nigh t?" Iqueried. "Nine," he replied somewhatamused. I backtracked my log,knowing full well we hadn't sleptonly nine hours after that trip ofyesterday. The wind was blowingthe wrong direction as well. We hadbeen asleep for 21 hours. Twenty-onehours!42We slowly packed up camp.Ev-erything had to be meticulously quadruplewrapped in plastic trash bagsto make it through the gorge intact.We left a note for the second teamshould they arrive in our absenceand a one day supply of provisionsfor the retreat. With that we bidadieu to Camp II for the next twelvedays. Despite the load, the tripdown was one of the best we'd hadto that point. Within eight hourswe were hiking up the slope to CampIII. We stopped at the equipment depotto exchange wetsuit tops and verticalgear for food and carbide, thenmade our way up the final stretch.Upon cresting the summit everyonedumped their loads and scouted out alikely spot to sack out. The placewas so spacious that Hal establishedhis own sub-camp some fifty metersfrom the rest of us. Steve, Dinoand Tommy took the "hilltop" areawhile I dug out a furrow near thekitchen. As the floor was coveredwith a thick layer of silty sand wewere able to travel a considerabledistance from camp in bare feet.It was difficult at that pointto really think about, or worry about,the cave above. We had been travelingfor four days underground now andfinally, nearly a month after we hadleft the States, we were within strikingdistance of our two primary objectives.We gathered around for abull session while dinner cooked.Conversation centered on the highlead which loomed above us at the endof the camp chamber. Was it just adead end, or the main trunk passagewhich fo~med the chamber we werecamped in? We broke out a Wheatlamp and focused the beam. It lookedpretty awesome -- a good sixtymeters above us with the final fortymeters going up a sheer wall of mudcovered breakdown. It was going tobe a sporting climb to get up there.Following breakfast the next dayTommy and I climbed down the rubble