We just got back from a short week caving with Ramón and gang over southwest of Taxco in Guerrero. This was one of his old finds from back in 1989 when they mapped 1750m in an active river cave called C. Aclalá, down 17 pitches to a sump. This was in Dec. and the hope was that now in the dry season (and this is one of the driest seasons Mexico has had in a while) that the sump would be open. From that point it is 6km straight line to the resurgence, so there is a lot of potential cave to be found.
We drove over to Iguala (birth place of the bandera - they have a huge (by far the biggest flag I have ever seen) flag flying on a hill over-looking town) on Monday and crashed in a hotel in Iguala. Ramón and gang showed up before noon and we headed west to the little pueblo where we then had to ask permission to camp out and explore the cave. Ramon has this letter from the university that states he is there on official research business associated with the university that greatly helps out these kinds of political maneuverings. Most places we don't have to pull it out, but when you need one, you really need one, and this place was one of the later. It didn't help that the commisario (the local major) was piss drunk, as was number two man. But eventually they got a meeting convened (fortunately previously called for other business) and gave us permission to camp out in the local school house - the kids were on vacation. Now this was one of the reasons I had been avoiding coming to this area - camping out in the middle of town, surrounded by overly curious kids, is not my idea of a vacation. But the road Ramon had mentioned that led to a field near the cave entrance now seemed to not exist. Where I have I seen this disappearing act before? I should know better to let Ramon sucker me in with vague promises of lovely camp sites and awesome going cave. At least the cave was as he described it - and I saw his photos to be sure.
The entrance is about a 30 minute walk downhill from town and takes the water from about a 60 sq. km drainage. The 3m wide arroyo didn't look too impressive, but the 20m wide entrance sure did. Just into the zone of darkness it had narrowed down to about 10m wide and was guarded by an entrance pool which you had to drop yourself into. Not only was it COLD, it smelled utterly fetid due to the guano and bird droppings stewing in it. At least it kept the locales at bay.
But before we could enjoy those pleasures we had to endure a night sleeping in the school. Being the only outsiders to have come to town since Ramon was last here 10 years ago, we were quite a big attraction. Having all the kids on vacation didn't help matters. It was the best I could do to control my temper and not lose it with what must have been close to a hundred kids hanging around just watching us. The heat was oppressive and even if we went inside the school there would be a dozen little faces peering in the windows, which we didn't want to close as they offered the only little breeze to combat the high 30 degrees temperatures. Finally darkness fell and most of them wandered off home, and we could finally wander off and take a pee without being followed by a horde of curious onlookers. All the chilangos bedded down in the school while those of us from Guadalajara put up tents under the awning of the porch. Neither group got much relief from either the heat or the barking dogs, pigs, donkeys, hens and roosters. They obviously sleep away the heat of the day, for they sure were awake all of the night. By morning I was seriously considering leaving without even seeing the cave. No cave could be worth another night in this hell hole.
Somehow or other I was talked out of it and got volunteered to go in with Ramon to rig the first ten pitches. We decided to take Izta (the 16 year old girl who took a 7m fall while we were at Dos Aguas at Xmas) with us at the last minute while her sister went in with the second group with the idea of following us in to the rig the bottom 7 pitches.
If nothing else going into the cave meant a nice quiet place and relief from the heat. Knowing the temperature of the water we were prepared with wetsuits and were quite welcome of them once in the first pool and its frigid water. Definitely colder than Dos Aguas, which was at Xmas and another 1000m higher in elevation. The next two pools were similar before we were numbed enough not to notice, and were warming ourselves up downclimbing little nuisance drops (said nuisances drops would come back to haunt us on the return trip). Most of the little walking to be done in the cave is in this first section of swims punctuated by either a short (5 to 15m long) walk or a downclimb. Then after the umpteenth swim you arrived with your chin still in the water looking down the first pitch. Fortunately the river was not flowing and there was no tendency to be washed over said pitch.
Now began the fun of looking for and evaluating 10 year old bolts. The technique quickly became, if the new bolt could be threaded into the old spit it was considered good enough. Sometimes that meant using the reaming wires from our carbide lamps to scrape out the accumulated rust so that the bolt could slide in. And down we went. This section of the cave became, drop, swim, drop, for ten pitches. Some of the drops landed right in deep water meaning you had to extract yourself from the rope while treading water. Great stuff.
None of the swims were more than 60m long and were actually quite pleasant because you didn't have to carry your bag of rope. We had put inflatable air bags in our cave bags (in my case old wine in a box liner bags) to help give us flotation and would swim on top of the bag. Very casual just pulling yourself along the walls, watching the cave go by. It wasn't long before we had run out of rope and hangers as it turned out, so we left the last of our pitches needing an extra hanger and headed back out. We passed the second team a couple pitches up and continued on our respective ways returning to the surface after a not too tiring 8 hours. Plus the walk back uphill to the school of course.
Team two didn't get back out of the cave until about midnight and turned out to have only put a hanger on the pitch we left and returned, leaving all their ropes at the same pitch. Somewhat annoyed, Ramon and Vicente were volunteered to go a finish the rigging and see if the sump was open. They got a crack of noon start while I was off checking out a new entrance just east of town. A very drunk local was keen to have someone go down it to see if there was any water that he might tap into for his fields. It turned out to be a nice little entrance just big enough to drop yourself into, descending about 4m to where you were at the top of a pitch that looked to be about 10 to 15m deep. I came back with a couple of ropes and a large support crew of everyone else who was having a rest day. Fortunately I was able to rig it off a natural thread (the two bolt kits were down in the main cave) and down I went. It quickly belled out to a comfortable 3m wide and was obviously deeper than the 15m I had thought. Tying on my other piece of rope I continued on down placing a deviation at about 15m. From that vantage point I thought we had lucked out big time. I was coming down into a 3m wide meander on a 25m tall canyon passage that turned the corner downstream where I couldn't see. This had to go big time. But landing on the bottom after passing the knot, I walked downstream right into a 20m high mud bank. Totally choked. There was a small drainhole in the floor where the water obviously disappeared, but was not passable. Oh well, as Dale Chase likes to say, "you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince".
Meanwhile Ramon and Vicente had bottomed the cave and found the sump still sumped, getting back at 2:30 in the morning. They had spotted a meter long coral snake near the bottom and a climb about 40m back from the sump, up over a big flowstone inlet. This gave myself and Dave Jones, who had just arrived the night before, an objective. His timing couldn't have been better, as he was the climber who helped us out getting up into the El Pilar passage off Cueva Chonta a month back. So we headed in with a few more ropes and planned to de-rig the bottom part if the climb didn't go. With a completely rigged cave we were at the bottom in about 3 hours and met up with a group of four who left 2 hours before us. They planned to head out slowly and wait for us back at the top the tenth pitch to help de-rig if necessary.
Dave, as seems to be his custom, didn't waste any time getting at the climb and I had to fish things out of both of our packs to pass him up things like slings for protection and later the rope. He made short work of the 10m vertical and 15m traversing section leaving me to wimp out trying to follow in my windsurfing booties I was caving in. Fortunately he was able to tie it off for me to jumar up, only to find there was another 5m high climb to see what we really had. This part was up a beautiful, sparkling white, flowstone covered in mini-gours and led to more of the same. After checking out the chamber and finding it choked, Dave tried to convince me to climb up just to check it out. I declined, but he was quite insistent, so up I went and found myself in what I think is the most spectacular chamber in all of Mexico. Not huge, but completely covered in the same sparkling white, crystalline calcite and gour dams. A clear bluish lake was rimmed by projecting calcite build-ups, the likes of which I have only seen in Lechuguilla Cave. Blinding white on all sides, totally pristine. Obviously the yearly flood waters didn't make it up quite this high. We christened it - White Dreams - or Suenos Blancos.
Dave then climbed up on the left into another chamber which was just boulders and didn't go either. But from there he spotted a big hole up above White Dreams which must be where all the air is going. The amount of air in a low spot in one of the lakes was enough to blow out our ceiling burner carbide lamps, and we weren't feeling any of that air flow up where we were. But it was located at the top of about a 10m high slightly overhanging wall. A bolt climb for another day. Dave was wanting to start it right away, but since we had tentatively agreed to de-rig today if possible, and not knowing how keen Ramon would be to come back to a bolt climb, while he is sitting on more caving areas with going caves than most people know of leads, we decided to try and catch up with the other team.
De-rigging went smoothly and the long lakes (a 250m and a 160m) were almost restful, floating along on top of the ropes in the cave bag. For me at least - Dave's flotation bag had gotten a hole so he only had neutral buoyancy with all the ropes and really had to work swimming. The other team was waiting for us at the top of the long lake and we leapfrogged by them, leaving them to bring out the upper ten pitches. Remembering to dump the water out of the rope bag before you started up a pitch became an ever more important detail as we became more tired. And the little nuisance drops were certainly that, even though Ramon had put some polyethylene cord on them. But we made it out in time to see the last of the sun set and enjoy a cold beer left cooling in the entrance pool. Everyone else was safely out with all the rope by 11ish, while Ramon was thinking seriously about putting all the rope back in to have a go at the climb we had spotted. Definitely worth a go.
Chris Lloyd
Monday, April 20, 1998
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