Cavers have spent over thirty years exploring the caves of this plateau – the Huautla Cave System, descending shafts, crawling along passages, scrambling down slopes, climbing waterfalls, sliding down tyroleans, diving underwater sections known as sumps and mapping the cave. The Huautla Cave system is currently 62km long and over 1400m deep. At the other end of the plateau the in the Santo Domingo Canyon the water which runs though the Huautla system re-emerges to the outside world. Between the ends of these explored caves a gap of more than four kilometres exists and a connection would make the system 73…
Follow our progress 'live' via updates to our Facebook page which are re-posted here. In the lead up to the expedition we will be updating everyone as we prepare to depart. A lot of work, training and preparation goes into a large expedition like this and you can follow the team members as they get ready to head to Mexico in 2011.
In May of 1981 a reconnaissance trip to the Santo Domingo Canyon was fielded to look for resurgence springs for Sistema Huautla. During this trip, Bill Stone and Pat Wiedeman were shown the entrance to the Cueva de la Peña Colorada, an enormous fossil resurgence cave that, in high water, still issued enough water from its entrance to fill a 20 meter wide arroyo. During the dry season it is possible to descend more than 30 meters vertically into the cave to where one quickly comes to Sump 1, the first underwater tunnel. During a return in 1992, which included…
After a long journey from home including a nine hour bus ride from Mexico City we finally arrived in Huautla a little dazed and confused. We met Ernie Garza early in the morning at the bus station; Ernie has been caving in the region for many years and was our fixer, its safe to say without Ernie we would have found things very difficult if not impossible to sort out. Once introductions were made Ernie suggested breakfast at Rosita’s, it’s been the meeting place of cavers in the area for many years. Over a welcome meal Ernie outlined a plan and explained how we were to get the final 15km up the road to San Agustin our final destination. But first we needed supplies and cooking utensils so a shopping expedition took place for several hours. If you know where to look, Huautla has everything an expedition needs to set up a base camp. Finally we loaded our huge kit bags and supplies bags into the back of Ernie’s truck and he introduced us to our mode of transport for the next ten days, “The people’s taxi”!! Basically it’s an open backed truck with a cage around it that the driver stuffs as many passengers as he can in before setting off to the destination you ask for. They are extremely cheap and fairly regular you just hope that the driver is good and does not lose the road! Finally we reached San Agustin and found the accommodation Ernie had sorted for us, We were to rent a room from Jaime Escudero Rodriguez for the duration. Jaime had given up part of his family house for us and is another important part of the Huautla story. Jaime was involved in the 1994 expedition with Bill Stone. After settling in and taking stock of the rather impressive view down into the Doline’s of San Agustin and Rio Iglesia Ernie suggested we take a walk down to the entrance proper for a look. Ernie then left us on our own in San Agustin and headed back to La Carlota the American caving base camp.
10-1-2012
The walk down into the doline is fairly steep and drops around 250 meters from the village down through corn fields and jungle a great way to start and finish any trip! Our plan today was to start rigging the cave, we hoped to get the entrance rigged and the climb up into fools day extension sorted and then as far down fools day as we could. All six of us set off with heavy bags including 600m of the rope we had with us plus all the rigging gear. The first pitch is the Jungle drop, this pitch is around 60m on a steep ramp covered in jungle and by jungle I mean proper jungle with mud, foliage, loose rocks and most of Mexico’s known species of creepy crawlies. Jon had the honour of rigging and descending the jungle drop and the rest of us followed on with heavy bags.... Click Read More!
thout Ernie we would have found things very difficult if not impossible to sort out. Once introductions were made Ernie suggested breakfast at Rosita’s, it’s been the meeting place of cavers in the area for many years. Over a welcome meal Ernie outlined a plan and explained how we were to get the final 15km up the road to San Agustin our final destination. But first we needed supplies and cooking utensils so a shopping expedition took place for several hours. If you know where to look, Huautla has everything an expedition needs to set up a base camp. Finally we loaded our huge kit bags and supplies bags into the back of Ernie’s truck and he introduced us to our mode of transport for the next ten days, “The people’s taxi”!! Basically it’s an open backed truck with a cage around it that the driver stuffs as many passengers as he can in before setting off to the destination you ask for. They are extremely cheap and fairly regular you just hope that the driver is good and does not lose the road! Finally we reached San Agustin and found the accommodation Ernie had sorted for us, We were to rent a room from Jaime Escudero Rodriguez for the duration. Jaime had given up part of his family house for us and is another important part of the Huautla story. Jaime was involved in the 1994 expedition with Bill Stone. After settling in and taking stock of the rather impressive view down into the Doline’s of San Agustin and Rio Iglesia Ernie suggested we take a walk down to the entrance proper for a look. Ernie then left us on our own in San Agustin and headed back to La Carlota the American caving base camp.
