8MB PDF - Association for Mexican Cave Studies

named after a ghost of popular Mexicanlegend. The cave looked promising, so twoteams entered to begin the survey and exploration.The first team, consisting ofJerry Atkinson, Mark Minton, Alan Williams,and Peter Keys proceeded in with a smallamount of rope, and began rigging. Theyexplored a fair amount of passage beforebeginning their survey. The second team,consisting of Paul Fambro, Erika Heinen,Bill Mixon, Peter Sprouse, and TerriSprouse began at the entrance and surveyedin. The passage immediately started descendingat a 40 degree angle, with noticeableairflow. Numerous short drops wereencountered, many of which were free-climbable.Others needed handlines, and somerequired full rigging and vertical gear.They also surveyed an interesting sidepassage, the Tricycle Run, a prettyflowstone stoopway.The passage was a nice comfortablesize, averaging 5 meters wide and had aceiling 5 to 6 meters high. The floor wasbeautiful, dry flowstone. At the bottom ofthe fourth rope drop, Fried Egg Falls, aflowstone blockage stopPed exploration. Thepassage continued above this blockage, andan hour's work with a lasso was successfulin securing the rope to a stalagmite ontop. Leaving it at that, the team hadmapPed 460 meters into the cave to a depthof 90 meters. On 23 November 1984, thepush continued, with two teams entering thecave. Beyond Lasso-up Drop, the cavedropped back to its previous leveL A teamconsisting of Jerry Atkinson, Mark Minton,Dale Pate, and Alan Williams leap-froggedahead, beginning their survey at the top ofa 20-meter drop. The bottom was a blindmudhole, and the only lead was a climb-up.This easy free-climb led to another seriesof beautiful flowstone drops. The lastpitch in this series dropped into a tallroom 15 meters by 18 meters wide, dubbedKnots Landing. The descent into this roomhad been accomplished by stealing the ropefrom another drop a short distance back upthe passage, the Stolen Rope Drop.Several passages off of Knots Landingled to a dry upper level complex named theDarth Vadose Maze, which eventuallypinched. But a small hole at the bottom ofThe initial passages in Cueva de la Lloronadescend very steeply. (Peter Sprouse)the Knots Landing room carried on throughstoops and crawls to open into RagtimeBoulevard. This linear passage averaged 5meters in diameter, and sloped steadilydown through sculptured flowstone and bedrockto another drop. A window one meteracross dropped into what appeared to be avery large passage. OUt of rope, the eagercavers had to turn back at that point.Meanwhile, Paul Fambro, Roy Glaser, ErikaHeinen, and Peter Sprouse had begun theirsurvey back at Lasso-up Drop, and they wereable to map through several crawlways thatwere the smallest passages so far. Theyeventually tied their survey into the leadteam's first point. Total length of thecave was then 919 meters, with a depth of273 meters.REl'URN TRIPThe PEP cavers returned to Lloronaduring the week of 12-19 October 1985 withOpposite: The Blue Flowstone Roan at -300 meters in Cueva de la Llorona. (Peter Sprouse)90