Thursday was the last day of caving for the expedition. We returned to La Llegada to continue working
on leads in the this large segmented tube system. The teams improved the hike time out to the
cave, making the distance in 40min. This
was largely possible because the trail had been beat in two days before and
also because the overcast skies reduced the temperature by 5C.
Bob, Rick T., and Eli headed back up flow to continue pushing
their leads. They surveyed several
hundred meters before running out of time.
They also left several vertical leads that will require rope and
vertical gear. No one wants to
contemplate carrying such things out to the cave....
Aaron, Rick H. and Scott headed down flow to continue
surveying a lead that we had left just two days prior. The passage was large and going, but a review
of the survey data on Google Earth suggested that the cave would come to an end
soon. Indeed it “ended” after just three
additional survey stations, but it wasn’t the end. Scott managed to climb
a very sketchy wall to a ledge and then make his way along an upper passage to
a point 10m beyond our survey. Here he
found a vertical drop requiring the aforementioned rope and vertical gear. We now have 4 leads that will require gear in
La Llegada. Sooner or later a team will
need to carry the additional weight of ropes and climbing gear to check these leads
(all of which are very promising). The team cut over 750m of new trail in to the jungle.
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| 10m deep jungle covered lava trench leading to one of the La Llegada entrances |
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| Rick H. (foreground) and Scott make their way out of La Llegada and to daylight |
Both teams continued surveying until we reached our exit
times to make the 4:30 rendezvous. For the hike out of the jungle. We all made good time on the exit and were
met by the first taxi truck driver at 5:30.
The drive back to town was uneventful, with a nice sunset to end the caving
for the expedition.
Once back in town, we discovered that Geoff and Batgirl had
returned from Isabela and their adventures there. They surveyed three caves while on the
island, including one cave that is biologically significant. The cave required almost 400m (round-trip) of
crawling on a’a lava.
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