Trip Report
"Now This is Different"
Learning About Sistema Purificación
Thanksgiving 1998 (November 21 - November 29)
by Dale Barnard
Crew: Gill Ediger, Christa McLeland, Christy Quintana, Aimee Beveridge, Denise Prendergast, Justin Shaw, Dale Barnard, Bev Shade and her two trainees, Eddie ______ and Vijay ______, Pete and Colin Strickland, Will Rupley, Don Cooper, Russ Johnson, Curtis Vaughn, ____kid____, ____parent1____, ____parent2_____
Now this is different: Time losing its meaning. The distant past surfacing. The recent past disappearing. Home becoming some faraway place, like something no longer relevant. The future becoming like a less frightening place to go. A little interdependence amongst cavers can go a long way to wake us up to a larger sense of purpose in this world.
For nine great days, nineteen cavers did not need to question their purpose. Cavers need each other for safety, inspiration, ideas, and for the freedom to be a little strange. Organized mostly by Gill Ediger, we embarked on a learning trip to Sistema Purificación in Tamaulipas, Mexico, strengthening the caving community as we went.
Seven of us rode with Gill in his new Dodge diesel truck and its great homemade camper shell. It did not take us long to develop climbing maneuvers for boarding the vehicle, needing only to clear about four feet in a single bound before settling onto the bench seat that looks out over the cab of the truck. With Gill were Christa, Denise, Aimee, Christy, Justin, and me. Our gear fit comfortably, with room to spare for another person or two. Those of us in the back felt a bit separated from the cab riders, but hip-to-hip, a sense of cooperation developed quickly. Typically, we would shove one person way in the back behind the bench seat with the gear to make a little more sitting room. It seemed to be the job of this rejected rider to remind the rest of us how comfortable it is in the back on the pillows and sleeping bags. Still, the hip-to-hip camaraderie seemed to overwhelm this minor benefit and we had to reluctantly trade off riding in back.
The drive to Reynosa flew by in a few hours, only to be contrasted with a particularly tedious border-crossing. With fast new computers in place, the process is now slowed down to about one-and-a-half hours. Thankfully, Colin brought a hacky sack. A few hours into Mexico, we stopped at the traditional Rio Corona Bridge camping area for the night.
The next morning, we shopped the market and the modern grocery store in Victoria, making sure to bring enough beer and tequila to relieve the anticipated caving pains, and enough food for six days and the special Thanksgiving feast.
Around noon, we headed up the mountain to PEP. We bounced up the road for about six hours, dragging the truck's differential as we went, finally arriving at the field house in Conrado Castillo just after dark. Here, we were greeted by Bev Shade and her two trainees, Eddie and Vijay.
This field house exceeds the typical living quarters of the locals in the area. The new extension, designed by Gill and built by many cavers, includes a large table with benches, cubbies and shelves for food along every wall, a permanent propane stove, a wood stove, twin sinks, and even a balcony. The old half of the field house now serves as a gear room, with each caver claiming a different cubby, and the old kitchen building now serves only as a shower room for sun showers.
The tiny village of Conrado Castillo is nestled near the top of the mountains in pine forest at an elevation of about 2000 meters. They generate a small amount of income from selectively logging the area. With the logging regulations, the forest shows few scars from cuts, a nice contrast from other parts of Mexico I have seen. For their food, they raise pigs, roosters, and a little of the usual agriculture.
I enjoyed pitching my tent once and then leaving it set up for six nights. Some locals had been hired to level several tent spots, although with nineteen cavers on this trip, not everyone got a nice spot (sorry Justin!). Each morning, hot water simmered on the stove for individuals making coffee, and surpluses of eggs and pancakes fed more than their preparers. Seven o'clock became the usual wake-up time for most of the camp, with the exception of Bev's crew. In case the roosters didn't wake us up, Aimee, Denise, and Christy's giggling would ensure it. Usually, giggling would lead to a snide remark from Pete or Will, and I would deny my participation, which somehow led to more giggling. I think that secretly, the giggling livened us all, and we knew that we would miss it after the trip. I wonder if anyone will miss Will's snoring?
During the week, Bev and her crew worked mostly on connecting Cuchilla to Brinco by siphoning a sump and digging for hours and hours. Although some progress was made, a breakthrough has not yet been realized. They tended to live on a different schedule than the rest of us, typically exiting the caves after midnight and then sleeping late into the morning. On Thanksgiving morning, they returned to camp after sunrise and Bev slept until late afternoon, entering the field house all blurry-eyed just in time for the feast.
On our first morning in Conrado Castillo, Gill led most of us to about a dozen cave entrances in the area, including two large ones, Borrego and Brinco. Later, Pete Strickland led many of us into Brinco for an orientation trip. We passed packs in a cooperative chain down the steep, exposed, free climbs, made a side-trip into the helectite passage, and then turned around in the chaining room. Pete and a few others remained in this room to dig an obvious lead, while the rest of us relied on Christa to show us the way out. Back at the field house, we rigged a tree and practiced looking foolish on rope.
The second day, some of us surveyed a thirty-one meter pit that Gill knew about called Tecolotita, named for its beautiful resident owl. Others spent some time digging in a water cave that may soon replace the village's current water source.
The third day, many of us returned to Brinco with wetsuits, ready to go beyond the changing room. Pete Strickland brought his video camera and three powerful lights. After changing into our wetsuits, we passed up through the flow stone Chute and then the Crack of Doom. We climbed, swam, and crawled for a few hours, finally turning around at Flowstone Falls. Periodically, I practiced my cave photography with two flashes and a manual camera while Pete set up his video equipment. We speedily exited the cave, having to tolerate itchy wet suits, tired muscles, and one caver's trouble with creating bad air (we won't mention Justin's name). We reached the waning daylight after a challenging eight-hour trip.
Thanksgiving morning, Colin, Justin, Don, Denise, and I hiked around some karsty areas, finding some small caves that were mostly plugged with pine needles and other debris. Justin, Colin, and Don continued looking for caves while I hiked with Denise down some roads to get a better feel for the area. Gill had told us that most of the caves lower in the valley were plugged, and our hike confirmed this. We poked in several small caves, none of them going more than about five meters. Somehow, we found our way back the field house, rejoicing at our orienteering skills and denying that we had ever doubted ourselves. Meanwhile, Justin and Colin had discovered a nice cave with a 30+ meter drop that may have been unknown to cavers thus far. Its close proximity to the field house may make it a popular vertical training cave for newbies.
While we were hiking, many cavers prepared gift packages of staple foods to distribute to each local family. With arms and packs full of heavy foods, they set off to meet each family in person. From their later reports, it sounded like an enjoyable undertaking and it was well received by the locals. Throughout our week in Conrado Castillo, cavers gave small gifts to the locals, such as batteries, shoes, and paper for the school. Gill donated some money to help repair the collapsed roof on their school building.
By mid afternoon, cavers were scurrying around the field house preparing the Thanksgiving feast. Spirits soared, sarcasm ceased, and I got a sense that everyone felt genuinely thankful for such a fine day with so many great people. The table was cleared of everything except colorful floral displays that we had gathered nearby, and the flickering candles made me feel nostalgic. My mood was soon interrupted, however, when someone proposed a heartily received toast to spending Thanksgiving without our dysfunctional families. Conversation soon led to the sharing of our favorite aspects of Thanksgivings past. For about an hour, I lost all sense of time, thoroughly enjoying the company, the incredible food, and the sense of belonging to a community. I wrote some of this while sitting at the table:
In this home away from home, tonight our spirits shine
With something special, almost sacred, something larger than our lives
So we long to preserve this communal night.
If we could only find a purpose, so strong it would not die,
To help us face the struggle to keep this fire alive.
As they believe at the Kerrville Folk Festival, it can be this way always.
On our last full day in Conrado Castillo, most people went for what sounded like a great hike up to the top of the mountain on the massive karst pinnacles. Christy, Justin, and I went to Cuchilla. Since Justin had done the rope drops in Cuchilla a few days earlier, Christy and I sat back while he rigged the entrance drop. We descended about five rope drops, the longest of which was about 25 meters, crossing several rebelays and redirections. I had to polish up my technical skills since I hadn't done any of that fancy rope stuff in over a year. Cuchilla is a beautiful cave, mostly vertical, that begins at a mountain pass, and apparently ends with a dig lead that Bev is working on that might connect to the Brinco system.
After exiting the cave, we hiked the two kilometers back to camp through the dense night fog, reminding me of the feeling you get when scuba-diving in cloudy water. When we reached the field house, they seemed to be surprised at how long we had been gone. What they didn't know is that we had spent two hours just looking for the cave.
Russ and Curtis had been gone a surprisingly long time in Brinco. They had only gone in to derig a hand line and carry it out. A search party formed, despite Gill's confidence that they knew what they were doing and were not lost or pancaked at the bottom of a pit. However, on their way out the door, the "lost" crew returned. They had not been lost at all--just enjoying the cave longer than expected.
We packed up our gear to prepare for an early departure the next morning. Miraculously, we departed on-time at 8:00 am. As we bounced down the mountain, we began planning our next trip to Mexico. We sang lots of songs and celebrated the week at the field house. Once in Victoria, we ate in a restaurant and then hastily shopped before making a run for the border.
We reached the border crossing in Reynosa well after dark. With a truck full of seven people and our gear, we dreaded being searched. In hopes of harnessing the power of positive thinking, I made up my usual lie about never being searched. We opened the sliding doors on both sides of the camper shell so that the inspectors could easily see in. We were greeted by a man with a friendly smile who looked up at the five of us crammed into the bench seat with disheveled hair and hopeful grins, cocked his head slightly, and said, "Now this is different." We chuckled a bit and thought about what we had been doing the past eight days and realized, this really is different. He waved us through without a search and we were on our way again.
Three hours shy of Austin, Gill found us a place to sleep for the night: The middle of a newly-constructed highway. Of course, the highway was not currently open, but as we lay stretched out on a large tarp, we envisioned the various ways that we might get run over. Christy admitted the next morning that she had calculated that, based on sleeping arrangement, Denise would be the first one to be hit if a vehicle had come down the road. I would have tried to instill some shame in her for thinking such a thought, but I had calculated the same thing.
The next morning, our thoughts arrived home before our vehicle did. People began talking about having to go to work the next day, drying out their tents, or arranging for someone to pick them up from Gill's house. I knew that when we departed in so many directions, we would once again be faced with making decisions only for ourselves, figuring out how to make a living, longing for more vacation time, and communicating with our dysfunctional families.
It took about a day before my thoughts brightened once again, now remembering some of the details of the trip: I miss recruiting a group of people to hike to the spring to fill water containers. I miss sitting around the table while people cooked their dinners. I miss the jokes around the campfire and laughing ourselves to sleep. I miss waking up to Aimee's giggling. I miss talking to the locals in Spanish. I even miss being crammed into Gill's camper with crazy people. Now, the slides are being developed and we have planned a social gathering as a follow-up to the great adventure. We will cook milanesa, show slides, and go caving, reminding ourselves that the community amongst cavers is in tact, and knowing that even with all of the joys of such an adventure, we have only just begun.
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