Sotano de las Golondrinas – May 2008
Trip Report by David Ochel
I had wanted to “do Golondrinas” for quite a while. Summer 2007 I
bought a rope and slowly started planning. Early this year, an
extended Memorial Day weekend was set as the date. When the day of
departure came close, Joe Datri and Gary Franklin were the only ones
left from all the folks that earlier had expressed interest in going.
At the Grotto meeting on the Wednesday before the trip, Alex Benavente
spontaneously decided to join us as well. Being originally from San
Luis Potosi and knowing his way around the caves in the state, this
naturally put him into the position of becoming our tour guide for the
trip.
We left Austin, Texas on Saturday morning and were on the road by 8
am. We had decided to cram all four of us into my little Tacoma
XtraCab, for gas-saving reasons and because we were not totally sure
that we would be able to make it up the mountains without a 4-wheel
drive vehicle. (Turns out that one could probably make it with a 2-
wheel drive and high clearance, as long as it doesn’t rain a lot.)
Everybody, including the truck but excluding Gary, had the necessary
papers already. Luckily and a bit surprisingly, there was no waiting
line for getting Gary’s tourist card in Nuevo Laredo, and off we went
into Mexico, staying on highway 85 because it reportedly has the best
(and fastest) roads. By 3:30 pm, we had made it through the moderately
heavy traffic in Monterrey. We stopped for dinner in Ciudad Victoria
and made it into Ciudad Mante shortly after 9 pm. We had a few beers
in a bar aptly named “La Cueva” and then went to bed in our hotel room.
After breakfast on Sunday morning, our little group was back on the
road and made it to Aquismon before noon. Following a brief stop in
the town center, we headed up the mountain in order to check out the
situation at the Sotano. Not much (apart from a lot of wood
construction – signage and additional platforms) was going on, and
after paying our 10 pesos each for visiting the cave, we talked to the
two guys who seemed to be in charge. (The mentioning of “we” talking
to locals in this trip report usually refers to Alex doing the talking
and then translating for the rest of us.) We were told that we could
drop the rope into the cave at 10 am and had to be out by 3 pm, and
that it would cost us 40 pesos per nose – more or less consistent with
what other recent trip reports said. We agreed to meet one of the
locals at 9 am the next morning – he would carry our rope the
relatively short but steep path from the road to the cave (and back)
for 150 pesos. After staring down into the Sotano for another while
and checking out potential rigging options, we decided to head towards
Guaguas.
We spent about an hour at the regional Sunday market that we ran into
on our way, finally made it to the entrance to Hoyas de las Guaguas
(also spelled Huahuas on local signs), and decided to pay the 35 pesos
each for rappelling into it. I had brought 200 m of 9 mm rope that we
carried down and up the trails to the cave with the intention to rig
the low side of the entrance pit (about 180 m) – due to it being
afternoon already, we were only going to drop the entrance and not
continue down into the rest of the cave. Back in Austin, we had heard
several warnings about potential beehives in the entrance and were on
the lookout for them. Indeed, we could see bees swarming in and out a
small crevice on the left-hand cave wall (when looking from the lower
side), but agreed that using the right one of the two easily
accessible rigging spots on the lower side should be far enough away
from them. Using natural anchors, it took a little while until I had
rigged the drop with a rebelay to my satisfaction, keeping the rope
from rubbing on the ledge. Once Gary and Joe had followed me down, I
climbed back up to release Alex, who had stayed on top to watch the
rope. By then, it looked like the bees had already gone to sleep.
While I was climbing, a local muchacho came by and told Alex that it
was time to leave the cave – which we did, as soon as Alex had made it
down to tell the others to come back out. Watching the returning
swifts diving full-speed into the pit made me wanting to be able to
fly like them, too. We arrived at the truck past 9 pm and started our
drive back to Aquismon, but not before having a lengthy encounter with
a drunk Huastec who accused us of stealing rocks from the cave. Since
Gary (also known as “el hombre peligroso” on this trip) had been the
last one coming back up the trail, sweating under the burden of his
heavy cave pack, it was obvious that he must be the one carrying the
stolen rocks in his pack.
Monday morning came, our rope sherpa arrived in time, and by 9:30 am
we were busy rigging to natural anchors on the low side of the Sotano
de las Golondrinas, a drop of approximately 330 m. Philip Rykwalder
had told me about an elegant rigging solution that Matt Oliphant had
used when they went there together the last time: Wrapping the rope
with ample padding around a big boulder that is overlooking the pit,
and anchoring it to another big rock further back. It worked like a
charm – the 10 mm Talon rope was hanging free and there was even room
to get on and off it without any hassle or changing over from and to
another access line. No need to set bolts or trust other people’s
bolts. By 10:30 am we were finally ready to lower the rope down the
pit, and shortly after I started my descent. Gary and Joe followed.
Alex – who had already shown up with a knee bandage on Saturday–
decided to give his knee a break and watch the rope, instead of going
for a new personal Golondrinas record. We did not time our descents,
but it felt like Joe and Gary took their time, while all three of them
claimed that I was speeding on my way down there. (It did not feel
that fast to me – I touched down pretty slow and smoothly.)
I started frogging back out solo once Joe hit the floor, about half an
hour past noon and after having had ample time to explore the bottom
of this beautiful cave. It took me about 70 minutes – I guess a rope
walker and/or more training might be in order for next time. Due to
our given 3 pm deadline coming closer, Gary and Joe decided to frog
out tandem, which took something between 2.5 and 3 hours. In the
meantime, I had prepared a little haul system, and by the time when
large numbers of birds started their descent into the cave and a
surprisingly big crowd of Mexican tourists showed up to watch their
return, the rope was back in its two cave packs. No complaints about
missed deadlines from the officials, and after mastering the climb
back up to the truck and stopping for a couple of beers up in the
mountains, we were on our way to Xilitla for a late, but excellent
dinner.
Tuesday was tourist day. We spent most of the day visiting Las Pozas
de Edward James, and then drove towards Rio Verde and camped at Media
Luna, a small park outside the city and a great place to swim.
We visited our last cave on Wednesday just off the highway towards San
Luis Potosi, in the Valle de los Fantasmas, where Alex knew some caves
he had been visiting years ago. Looking for Llantas, a pit with a 60 m
drop, we first ended up mistaking a nearby, shallow sinkhole for it
and decided that it must have been filled with trash and debris in the
years that had passed. This lead to us rigging Encino Rojo instead, a
little pit just deep enough to make my 30 m rope not reach the bottom
by a couple of meters, and with an average diameter of maybe 3 m and
some flowstone to admire – good enough to briefly drop down for a look
without taking any backup gear? When it was my turn, I arrived at the
end of the rope realizing that I had forgotten to bring the footloop
for my frog system with me. This resulted at first in a foolish
attempt to turn my chest harness into a footloop, which would have
worked over the short distance if I had not relied on its plastic
buckle to hold my entire weight – standing up in it resulted in the
buckle popping open and the harness falling onto a ledge out of reach.
Now without both footloop and chest harness, and not much rope below
me to turn into a loop to stand in, I finally ended up using a 50 cm
or so piece of Prussik cord that I was carrying on my harness as a
rather short footloop. Lesson learned. We went to take a brief look
down the “real” (and very impressive) Llantas pit that Alex had
located in the meantime with the help of a local passerby, and then
hit the road.
Around 5 pm, we dropped Alex off in the periphery of San Luis Potosi,
where he was going to visit with his mother, and then continued North
to Saltillo, stopping at a hotel around 10:30 pm. Thursday morning we
got on the road around 8 am and, taking the toll roads towards Nuevo
Laredo, made it to the border in 3.5 hours. Our 1700 mile-long trip
ended shortly before 4 pm in Gary’s driveway back in Austin.
Notes on gear and preparation:
* The Talon rope I bought from PMI seemed to suffer from sheath
slippage – I knew that there was a problem that had supposedly been
fixed by summer 2007, but in contradiction of my memory I may have
bought my rope before the problem had been fixed. This resulted in
about a meter or two of very loose sheath right below the spot where
Gary, Joe and I had gotten off our racks, and in the chest ascenders
noticeably pulling down the sheath for few millimeters after grabbing
the rope while climbing out. Not a big deal all in all. Apart from
that, I thought that the rope was noticeably less stretchy than an all-
Nylon rope and very nice to climb on.
* I was using an ABC chest ascender, and while I like the metal
trigger that you pull on in order to disengage the cam completely (vs.
the plastic one on newer Petzl crolls), it happened about half a dozen
times while climbing out of Golondrinas that the cam would stay open
(in the “thumbed down” position) after moving the ascender up the rope
and sitting down, instead of grabbing the rope, resulting in some
cursing and fiddling on my end. I was wearing a loose shirt that would
wrinkle a little bit. The trigger, which has a slightly inward-bent
shape, would rub against the shirt, and due to the much weaker spring
(compared to the Petzl ascender) that pulls the cam into the closed
position, it would just stay there instead of being pulled back and
grabbing the rope. Very annoying – I am going back to using Petzl’s
croll.
* Both Gary and Joe complained about their legs falling asleep during
the descent into Golondrinas – fortunately not more than that. This
didn’t happen to me. (Maybe because of my speedy descent?) A general
precaution against this could be to rig a footloop to your rack that
you can occasionally stand up in to take weight off the leg loops of
your seat harness – I heard this recommendation from several people.
Also, per Philip’s recommendation, I was wearing bike shorts under my
normal shorts, which provided for a very smooth ride.
* I believe that the trip into Guaguas on the day before Golondrinas
served as a worthwhile real-life check/preparation (getting used to
long drops, elevation, etc.) for everybody. I made Gary, Joe and
myself climb the Golondrinas rope in its full length in the treadmill
back in Austin to be sure that we would be able to climb the distance,
but this is of course not quite the same as looking down a deep pit.
--
David Ochel - mailto:[email protected]
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