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

With two leads 'beckoning we began the retreat.- The strain of a long trip beganto show. Every time our. process:f,on° stopped people dozed off. Only when we reachedthe L-room sump did we really wake up. All tackle (600 m of rope t pads, and boltkits) was derigged back to Camp I, the last person arriving at 6 p.m. Wednesdaynight after a 26 hour trip.During dinner we worked through the numbers. Total depth, verified laterin Austin, was 665 m (2181 feet). Length was over 4 km. The general plan W;lSto pack camp and degrig the entire cave on Thursday.DERIGGING: Following a brief 12 hours in the hammocks we slowly roused ourselvesto the task at hand. Personal gear was packed first. Wetsuits werenot needed above Camp I so those were also packed. All cans were crushed andplaced in a community garbage pile; everyone carried a share of this out. Whatremained of the camp food was finished off in a final gluttonous breakfast. Wethen scoured the campsite for trash. Not so much as a gum wrapper remained.By noon Thursday everyone had their camp packs ready for the ascent. Horowitzascended first with just his camp pack, intending to make a second trip forrope. The rest of us machos in camp decided we could each carry a fifth of theimmense pile of tackle up to the entrance in one °shot. This amounted to roughly120 m of wet, muddy rope per. person in addition to a 60 pound camp pack: Itall sounded so easy the night before. Johnson got 10 m into the 55 m pitch a­bove camp before deciding that something had to be rearranged. Things were abit unbalanced with a 100 pound cave pack! Everyone later agreed that it hadbeen one of the most difficult ascents of their careers. Once up this. pitchwe shuffled half the load at a time up successive pitches and climbs. At about-150 m I met Garza on the way in from the surface to help derig. Things wentsmoothly from there on. Steele and I reached the bottom of the 60 m entranceshaft by dusk with six duffels of equipment. Horowitz and Johnson had gone backdown to finish derigging. After freeclimbing the entrance at the top of ouremergency rope we bolt rigged a pulley with a Jumar safety and began haulingequipment bags up the entrance pitch.10 hours.We had been underground for 10 days andEPILOG: A computer generated map of the area showed that we had stopped only3/4 kilometer short of a major upstream lead in San Agustin. If a connectioncan be made between the two caves the resulting system will be 952 m deep(3121 feet) and over 13 km long. Limits of endurance, however, will necesitatea second camp at -500 m for the ~eturn expedition.THINK DEEP[see loose map of La Grieta at end]