Although I was not part of the '94
Huautla expedition, I think I can provide some
useful commentary. Ian Rolland's death while
diving the sump in San AgustÃn was the result of
a diabetic incident, not the result of obsessive
pushing or the inability to "keep up". (He was
diving solo.) Nor was it due to a fault with the
rebreather; the same unit was used later by
Barbara am Ende without incident on her dive
through the sump. Hid death did, not
surprisingly, have a significant impact on team
morale. It is quite possible that there was
insufficient man- or will power to go back and
clear everything out of the cave by the end of the expedition.
It is also likely that at the time, the
organizers expected to field a return
expedition. In long-term projects like that we
often leave gear staged in the cave for future
use, especially ropes. As it turned out there
was no return expedition, so in retrospect the
gear looked simply abandoned. The ropes may not
have been left high enough, or there may have
been an unusually high flood one year that
damaged them even in a traditionally secure
location. However I must admit that batteries
and open diving cylinders could not have been
expected to be of use even as little as one year
later, so there was little logic in leaving
those. I am also saddened to hear about that.
Mark Minton
At 12:22 AM 3/17/2013, Mimi Jasek wrote:
In fairness to all concerned with both the '94
expedition and the current one, I believe this
thread needs to stop now, and should never actually have been started.
Since one of the main leaders of the '94 one is
, I believe, deep underground on the current one
and can not be reached for comment, the original
post seemed almost a cheap and damaging shot at
the amazing work of many people and a whole
organization. Posting it without having a
rebuttal comment to post with it seems
irresponsible and very poor journalistic behavior.
Besides that, no one I know who has ever had a
life lost on a trip ever gets over it, nor would
ever want that event to be repeated.
With great respect to all involved,
Mimi Jasek
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 16, 2013, at 10:03 PM, freddie poer <[email protected]> wrote:
It would be nice to hear some justification for
the garbage left behind from the previous
trips. What ever happened to the "haul it it,
haul it out" philosophy? Maybe it was too much
work? Maybe the pace just took too much out of
the participants? Possibly no one else would
see it ever again. Any of the 94 crew care to
elaborate? Maybe it is okay to trash the cave
for for the immediate goals of the expedition?
Is there any good explanation for this? Maybe
the approach of the almighty expedition cavers
needs to be re-examined. I personally know of
several cavers who were "dropped" from the
Texas based expedition cave trips because they
could not keep up with the pace set by a select
few individuals. Maybe the problem is with the
leaders of such expeditions. After all, when
you are actually endangering the lives of the
people involved, or in some cases, having
fatalities on your trips, it may be time to
re-evaluate your methods. It is not necessary
to trash the cave or kill people to conduct an
exploration. Safety and conservation first.
Egos should come in a far second to anything else. Anyone care to comment?
--- On Sat, 3/16/13, Mixon Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Mixon Bill <[email protected]>
Subject: [Texascavers] Huautla progress report
To: "Cavers Texas" <[email protected]>
Date: Saturday, March 16, 2013, 5:05 PM
From a participant in the British cave-diving expedion to Huautla in Mexico:
> I was with the advance team who were mainly
tasked to get the cave rigged to the
bottom. We rigged down to the 620 depot and
then set up and moved into camp 3 for four
days. We also had Jason Mallinson, the lead
diver with us just itching to get in the
sump. On the seventh day (from the start of
the expedition) Jason and his gear arrived at
the sump and he dived. He is a top diver and
relined sumps 1&2 in a single dive lasting
1.5hours, his first dive. Since then the rest
of the team have moved the other four divers
gear to the sump in preparation for a week
long camp beyond sump 2. There are five
divers going through both to push sump 9 and
to climb the Rio Inglesi falls. I think they
went through on monday and tuesday this week
gone, so expect to hear some news by next wednesday.
>
> The one thing that shocked me, in an
otherwise fantastic cave, was all the trash
and gear abandoned by the '94 team. At the
sump was the remains of the dive platforms,
much of which was washed into the sump. There
were composite cylinders with the pillar
valves removed and now full of silt, blatant
abandonment. Nalgene bottles of batteries
which had imploded due to flood pressure and
now leaking acid. At Camp 3 there were around
30 nalgenes with all sorts of crap in them
from minging sleeping bags to leaching
Kodachrome film. There was also the rusting
remains of the hydo generator, a huge cable
drum of untouched fibre optic cable and
rusting gas cans. Also, of course, were the
rounds of rope, often knackered, piled high at
pitch heads. We started pulling some of it
out but don't know if the derig team will be
strong enough to do it all. Until this trip
to Mexico I had been impressed with the
conservation ethics of the Americans who caved
in Mexico, 'take nothing but photographs,
leave nothing but footprints', now needs a little rephrasing!
--Mixon
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