Ear to the ground:
“It was a lot more fun when it was just drunk people.”
– Ska Trivia Night participant bemoaning the increased level of competition
This week, Eginoire joined an international team of divers, cavers and assorted speleophiles in a quest to be the first to successfully complete navigation of one of the world’s deepest underground cave systems, Mexico’s Sistema de Huautla.
No, we’re serious.
Forget Fort Lauderdale. We’re talking “Huautla 2013: Cave. Dive. Explore.” Hey, at least it’s in Mexico.
For the uninitiated, which is probably about 99.9 percent of the nonspelunking population, the cave system, formed by an underground river, is near the town of Huautla (pronounced “whot-la”) de Jiminez located in the state of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. (It is also home, curiously enough, to the world’s largest natural psilocybin forest.)
And while the system was recently dethroned as the Western Hemisphere’s deepest (that honor went to the nearby Sistema Cheve) Huautla is billed as among the world’s most complex. Carved out of the limestone Huautla Plateau, the system spans 9 km (about 5.6 miles) as the crow flies, consists of 17 entrances, countless routes and had been charted to a depth 1,475 meters (just shy of a mile for us gringos).
And that’s where the 2013 expedition comes in. In 1994, American Bill Stone and others were stopped just short of the crux move: “The Mother of All Sumps,” aka Sump No. 9. (Again, for those who never hope to spend any extended periods under ground, a sump is a water-filled cavern within a cave that makes Shelly Winter’s underwater scene in the “Poseidon Adventure” look like a kiddie pool.) The hope is to re-emerge from the cave’s heretofore unexplored downstream end.
Anyway, up to that point, Stone, who invented a special breathing apparatus for such deep-water excursions, had traversed 6km of cave, including eight submerged underwater passages.
Needless to say, shlepping a team of divers, their equipment and support crew past all of these obstacles is a monumental task. And while Steve won’t be donning the wet suit for the Mother of all Sumps, he will be tasked with documenting the historic expedition. And keeping his camera dry.
In the meantime, Telegraph multitalented freelancer Page Buono will be filling in for Steve, who is expected to dry out and return to work the week of April 7.
We wish him the best of luck and hope he hits up the magical forest after, and not before, the four-day subterranean stint.
“It was a lot more fun when it was just drunk people.”
– Ska Trivia Night participant bemoaning the increased level of competition
Cave Man
It may not be everybody’s idea of spring break, but for longtime Telegraph photographer Steve Eginoire, it’s a dream come true.
It may not be everybody’s idea of spring break, but for longtime Telegraph photographer Steve Eginoire, it’s a dream come true.
This week, Eginoire joined an international team of divers, cavers and assorted speleophiles in a quest to be the first to successfully complete navigation of one of the world’s deepest underground cave systems, Mexico’s Sistema de Huautla.
No, we’re serious.
Forget Fort Lauderdale. We’re talking “Huautla 2013: Cave. Dive. Explore.” Hey, at least it’s in Mexico.
For the uninitiated, which is probably about 99.9 percent of the nonspelunking population, the cave system, formed by an underground river, is near the town of Huautla (pronounced “whot-la”) de Jiminez located in the state of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. (It is also home, curiously enough, to the world’s largest natural psilocybin forest.)
And while the system was recently dethroned as the Western Hemisphere’s deepest (that honor went to the nearby Sistema Cheve) Huautla is billed as among the world’s most complex. Carved out of the limestone Huautla Plateau, the system spans 9 km (about 5.6 miles) as the crow flies, consists of 17 entrances, countless routes and had been charted to a depth 1,475 meters (just shy of a mile for us gringos).
And that’s where the 2013 expedition comes in. In 1994, American Bill Stone and others were stopped just short of the crux move: “The Mother of All Sumps,” aka Sump No. 9. (Again, for those who never hope to spend any extended periods under ground, a sump is a water-filled cavern within a cave that makes Shelly Winter’s underwater scene in the “Poseidon Adventure” look like a kiddie pool.) The hope is to re-emerge from the cave’s heretofore unexplored downstream end.
Anyway, up to that point, Stone, who invented a special breathing apparatus for such deep-water excursions, had traversed 6km of cave, including eight submerged underwater passages.
Needless to say, shlepping a team of divers, their equipment and support crew past all of these obstacles is a monumental task. And while Steve won’t be donning the wet suit for the Mother of all Sumps, he will be tasked with documenting the historic expedition. And keeping his camera dry.
In the meantime, Telegraph multitalented freelancer Page Buono will be filling in for Steve, who is expected to dry out and return to work the week of April 7.
We wish him the best of luck and hope he hits up the magical forest after, and not before, the four-day subterranean stint.