"Huautla: Thirty Years in One of the World's Deepest Caves." C.
William Steele. Cave Books, Dayton, Ohio; 2009. ISBN
978-0-939748070-9. 6 by 9 inches, 269 pages, hardbound. $24.95.
The typesetting is amateurish, the color and black-and-white
photos were indifferently prepared for printing, and the cover might
charitably be called cluttered. I can tell the text got a lot of
editing, but it could have used a little more. Still, it reads well
enough.
That said, this is an important and valuable book. Way too few
first-person accounts of exploration by American cavers have been
commercially published. Sistema Huautla was the first of the deep
caves in southern Mexico found and explored, and it is essentially
tied for deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere. Steele was one of the
principal explorers in the caves in the Huautla area during the late
seventies and early eighties and as much time as he could spare from
work and family since. He was on the trips in the spring of 1980 that
made Li Nita the first thousand-meter-deep cave outside of Europe and
then, barely a month later, connected it into Sótano de San Agustín to
create the Huautla system. Being short-roped and trapped deep in San
Agustín for several days in 1977 and the famous 1994 diving expedition
from the point of view of those on the surface are among the other
tales in the book.
This is a personal narrative of Steele's trips to Huautla, based
on the logs he has kept of all his caving over the years. It is not
meant to be a complete history of the project, and I probably made a
mistake by leafing back to try to understand what was going on. (The
worthless maps scattered throughout the book don't help.) Take it for
what it is, and just sit back and enjoy the stories of hard caving in
deep caves.--Bill Mixon
----------------------------------------
Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.
----------------------------------------
You may "reply" to the address this message
came from, but for long-term use, save:
Personal: [email protected]
AMCS: [email protected] or [email protected]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit our website: http://texascavers.com
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
