50taoo de Ocotempaby Terry RainesMarc Tremblay in the Wind Crawl.(Terry Raines)64
s6tano de OCotempa has become a sagaof cave exploration in quite a short time.The story began in the spring of 1985 whena group of cavers from Belgium went cavehuntingin the mountains east of the townof Tehuacan in the state of Puebla. Whenthey eventually reached the village ofOcotempa, they were shown some pits in thearea by the local people. Just below theschoolhouse was the largest pit, S6tano deOCotempa. The Belgians explored and surveyedit, and reported in Speleoflash No.148, "We reached (at last) the bottom ofthe entrance pit and landed in a greatroom. An upstream and a fossil networkwere quickly explored but they both end."The notes were calculated and the depth ofthe entrance drop determined to be 380meters. A map was also drawn up and publishedin this issue of Spe1eof1ash.In France Paul Courbon was finishingup his 1986 issue of Atlas de GrandesCavites Mondiales and evidently liked whathe read in the Belgium report because helisted the S6tano de Ocotempa entrancedrop, Pozo Verde, as the fourth deepest inthe world and the deepest in the New World.When the book made it to this side of theAtlantic I read it and wondered about thatnew deep pit that I had not descended, andthus our group became involved. The groupconsisted of Aspen Adams, Dave Black, DonBroussard, Nancy cantin, Holly Cook, AlanCressler, John Donovich, Glenn Lemaster,Greg McNamara, Martha Meacham, LaurentOuellett, Susie Raines, Terry Raines, TinaShirk, Marion Snith, and Marc Tremblay.When we arrived at the entrance on 1January 1987 with our rope, we were looking<strong>for</strong>ward to the 380-meter rappel. I guessedthat the depth would be within 20 meterseither way of the 380-meter figure whenmeasured exactly with our electronic distancemeter, but what a surprise we were in<strong>for</strong>. We rigged from the natural bridge asshown on their map and found two dropswhere they had found one! At first I wonderedif we were in the same cave. Explorationand comparison with their map showedthat we were indeed in the same cave. Butour survey showed the entrance to be twoseparate drops of 221.3 meters and 82.4meters, a total of 303.7 meters.We continued the survey on down theknown passages, and as we neared completion,news came that Alan Cressler haddiscovered the Wind Crawl and then chimneyedup the Conglomerate Climb be<strong>for</strong>ebeing stopped by another climb. We surveyedin this new discovery with an additionalthree stations and started to leave. Atthis point I noticed that the tremendousamount of air that was blowing through thecrawl was disappearing down a head-sizedhole in the wall at eye level. Somethingstrange was happening here, but I couldn'tpossibly get into this hole, so I resortedto going up the Conglomerate Climb and thenclimbing up the impossible climb and pickingup the airflow again.Immediately I found myself approachinga window on hands and knees, trying to keepmy light from being blown out. I was atthe edge of a great pit with air rushingdown into it. A rock bounced <strong>for</strong> five tosix seconds, and I was very excited as Irushed back to tell the others. It was theend of our time, so we left the cave andheaded <strong>for</strong> home. We were already planning areturn trip.We did return, exactly one month later,this time the group being John Gilliland,Susie Raines, Terry Raines, MarionSmith, and Mauricio Tapie. We entered thecave on 2 February 1987 and proceeded downthe two entrance drops and on to where wehad left off surveying, a point just be<strong>for</strong>ethe Wind Drop. Here we began, and soon hadthe drop rigged and Marion going down.This one proved to be right at 100 metersdeep, and immediately we found ourselves atstill another drop. This time rocksbounced <strong>for</strong> up to' 13 seconds, but we estimatedthe drop to be a little over a hundredmeters, and we were out of rope <strong>for</strong>the day. After about 12 hours undergroundwe returned to the surface <strong>for</strong> a day ofrest and more gear.The following day found us back undergoundwith all our rope at the top of thegreat drop, which was later to be named theRain Drop. It proved to be 125 meters deepand quite spectacular. It led to four moredrops one right after the other. Now wewere wondering what we had gotten ourselvesinto as we stood at the top of what we knewwould be the last drop we could descendthis trip with the amount of rope we had65
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