Hi, I'm forwarding a summary from Bill Stone about the last few weeks at J2.
Cheers, David -------- Original Message -------- To all J2 2009 Participants: The last of the derig crew for J2 2009 is down the mountain. All personnel are out safely with no accidents, although there were a harrowing 4 days when several team members were trapped beyond the Surprise Sump and out of food -- 5 dived through the sump on Scuba after 3 days to get food and emergency rescue diving gear... but that's another story. The final push was 19 days underground, beginning on May 5. Jose Morales and myself spent 7-1/2 days of that time at Camp 4. Quick summary: Sump 3 was explored for 170 m and definitively connects to the head of Sump 4, carrying flow into it. Sump 4 saw 3 exploratory dives. The first surfaced into an infeeder tunnel at 170m penetration but was not passable. The second dive searched the north and east walls of this tunnel looking for possible continuations. The main tunnel was 8 to 12 m wide by up to 12m tall. The continuation was discovered by Jose in a 5x5m tunnel on the north wall about 105m into the sump. On the third dive in Sump 4 this was pushed to 350m penetration in 8 to 10m wide x 5 to 8m tall borehole. Jose surfaced in an airbell but the tunnel continued shallow below and appears to be rising. Another very large airbell was discovered at about 200m penetration that appears to have dry borehole heading east and west about 5m above the water surface. At that point we ran out of diving consumables -- had we been able to muster two more duffels of replacement gas, absorbent, and dive line from the surface I am certain we would have cracked the sump. But by this time the team was down to 8 and there was no backup team on the surface. The most striking thing about the final diving push from Camp 4, and the reason it took us so long to figure out what was going on is that the cave took a totally unexpected turn and now heads predominantly on a 240 degree heading, almost perpendicular to Cheve... with a current closure gap of less than 1 km !!!!! Altogether we mapped about 600 m of underwater tunnels in addition to the dry cave surveyed by Matt Covington and Marcin Gala. The result is a complete change in direction to the cave. Meanwhile, Yuri Schwartz and Sergey Tkachenko worked on climbing leads from Camp 3. They climbed all of the major dome leads that had remained from 2006. All either connected back into the main passage or ended in breakdown. While Yuri and Sergey were completing the final climb Jose and I met with David Ochel, Vickie Siegel, and Nikki Green and began the derig upwards to Camp 2A. It was after 2 days of hauling that we reached Surprise Sump and found it closed.... Jonas later indicated that he believes we had an early onset of the rainy season this year. Rains persisted for four days and abated to heavy misting. By this time Yuri and Sergey had packed Camp 3 and arrived at Camp 2A. They and David Ochel graciously volunteered to return to Sump 2 and retrieve two of the side mount carbon tanks, hoods and masks to allow for an emergency egress through Surprise Sump. I did the exploratory upstream dive and set up a phone link. Then Jose and I shuffled people through on the 9mm safety rope we had installed. Sergey, Yuri, and Vickie dived through in addition to Jose and myself and we then move the egress operation to Camp 1. We left a drysuit for David Ochel and he and Nikki Green (who cannot dive) remained at the bivouac while we sent a team to the surface for a full helmet dive system and food. Thanks to the new Michie phones we were able to keep hourly contact with the entire team and just prior to the surface team returning with the emergency dive gear the sump broke with 10 cm of air space. David then pulled 9 duffels of derig gear (in addition to the four Jose hauled earlier) and we had everyone out on the upstream side of the ex sump. It took 2 more days to derig to the surface. We expect to finalize the survey data in the next week and will announce a new depth and length for the cave at that time -- we reached a depth of 20 meters in Sump 4. Vickie Siegel will be drafting the formal J2 map (with Last Bash) over the summer with help from other team members who have interest. I will be working over the next 8 months with Marcin Gala, Matt Covington, and Jon Lilestollen as time permits to help with planning a return effort, mainly to connect Last Bash and bypass the Surprise Sump in 2010 in preparation for a more rigorous return to Sump 4 in 2011. Before leaving we spent considerable effort and successfully secured the political situation on the mountain that should benefit the 2010 expedition. Although 2009 extracted an extraordinary price in sweat for the meters of passage gained, I am extremely optimistic that what was done this year has set us up for a major breakthrough. I would like to personally thank each and every one of the participants who helped make the 2009 J2 project happen. The team dynamics were excellent and I hope that we can maintain that achievement in the future. Sincerely, Bill Stone Leader Proyecto Cheve May 27, 2009 from Nautla, Mexico -- David Ochel, mailto:[email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
