The Bastard tree. We promise to find out the indian and scientific name for this kind of thorny plant that grows all over the region, before the expedition is finished. As a matter of fact cavers consider it their second enemy after rain and warm beer. Qualification as a bastard tree simply requires a thick layer of razor sharp thorns and a location anywhere a hand hold is required. Usually it's a sign that an interesting cave is arround. The thorns are mean, painful and extremly sharp.

The bastard tree and the pitch.
Today we had only one thing in our minds; to head south west in between Coahuatichan cave and "Sin Nombre" where we had spotted that set of caves yesterday evening.

Paz, Lugger and myself entered the first cave, with Geordy and Charley on the surface. Lugger lead the way, scrambling down a slope for 20M to the top of a 7m shear drop. He rigged a ladder down the pitch and started to climb down. "It goes!" he shouted and untied himself and scurried off down the passage. Jonathan and Paz soon followed him down, surveying as they went.

We were all very excited because this unsurveyed cave looked quite large. Suddenly the cave stopped and...bingo! A big black hole was there in front of us. Lugger took a stone and proceeded to perform the drop test. The stone took about just under 3 seconds to fall down. According to our calculations, this means that the pitch we were faced with, is about 35 to 40M deep. We were not expecting to find such a long pitch so we didn't carry enough ladders nor the other gear necessary to go that far down.

We'll be back to push this cave but we are quite happy because we have discovered about 80m of previously unknown cave, ending in a good size pitch with a large passage at the bottom. Before leaving I decided to have a quick look inside the other caves we had found yesterday. Unfortunately, the first two we checked out were blocked close to the surface.

In the entrance of the final cave was a bastard tree. I had to struggle with it for a while until I had thorns all over (and had said "Bastard!" several times) but managed to get through. I carried on down my ladder for about 8 meters to a tight slot which I eventually managed to struggle through. The reward was finding a rift about 7 meters deep, where the drop test made a big water splash.

I want to come back and descend these pitches and explore inside these cave another time (but very soon please!!). The day's results were very promising and on the way back we were relaxed, wondering about how we should name the new caves.

We bantered about a new thread of names based on weapons of mass destruction as we had Charley, our nuclear submariner, with us but I guess this won't be too popular.

Cavingly,

Jonathan