![]() We rigged a ladder off some dubious, small stal on the left wall and climbed on down. About 100m in we turned a corner and had a little downclimb into a pool that was just before a 6m undercut drop into another big chamber. One team surveyed in while I photographed in behind. While crossing the room we noticed fragments of what must have been Huasteca culture pots and later a leveled platform that was typical in their rituals. A short downclimb popped us into a sizeable entrance chamber, a good 12m across and 8m high, with the stream going off in passage almost as big. After checking them both out Ruth suggested that we take the right one as it was the one going downstream, and connected into the other under the dirt we were standing on. Two separate holes about 2m across each went down into the hill with the sound of running water at the bottom of both. This led to us getting directions to a better entrance back over the hill to the right which turned out to be one that Ramón and gang had walked over to from a skylight in Sima Esteban a few weeks earlier in Feb. Unfortunately it was completely blocked by sand and other debris, probably from last years big floods. That led over to the next doling downhill to the left with a bigger stream going in. It went into a long bedding plane crawl so we went to look for a nicer one. After trying one entrance in the second doline from the road we poked into a small entrance just above (but apart from) a small stream. My first trip had been three weeks earlier to look for another infeeder to the Cueva de Guayateno that Ramón had mapped to 4.6km in a nice through trip. Having now experienced it for myself I can see that as a distinct possibility. Maybe this flooding thing put people off. Yet few caves were ever explored to their ends. Enthusiasm and cave lengths increased into the early 80's before it just died. I can now feel truly baptized in the ways of Cuetzalan just like the long line of explorers before me - a list stretching back to the early 1970's when the area was first explored by some American cavers. But that is only par of the course in Cuetzalan. Even I who had left the surface at 3pm had last seen mainly sunny weather. ![]() Or at least the affects of one as Ramón and Ruth had been in the cave since 11am and it was now 5:30pm. So there we were in Cuetzalan in the midst of the dry season experiencing a typical, occasional, afternoon thunderstorm. The water has gone muddy, the stream is in flood". Two minutes later upon arriving back at the streamway. "So about what time was it when that flood hit you guys last weekend? Oh, between 6 and 7pm eh? I guess we had better get going then, being just in front of the sump pool well past a duck is not where I want to be at that hour". Atepolihuit del Tepanahuas Atepolihuit del Tepanahuas ![]()
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