Today's Stories · Cavers trapped by flood- water! · A quick fag in Horror Inlet.

A Quick Fag in Horror Inlet.
On thurday 15/2 John Taylor & Tony entered Alpazat at 13.15 to explore the end of Horror Inlet, the very far end of the system.
We sped through the first part of Alpazat with the prospect of measuring caverns explore-less to man foremost on there minds. After a brief pause at the entrance of horror inlet for a boil in the bag feed, (yum yum) the pair continued on their adventure. Whilst negotiating horror inlet, an aptly named narrow passage with a large volume of water spurting out, we had a few challenges with cascades, so we had to climb around them by traversing in the roof of the passage.

We soon arrived at the Horror Inlet pitch, which Tony re-climbed up to the bolt, and hung a ladder down for John. He then climbed up the narrow canyon to where we had to traverse in the roof as the force of the stream was too strong to stand up in.

After we arrived at San Miguel passage, we headed towards the sump that separates this cave from Sistema Cuetzalan. Finding a connection between the two is one of the most important objectives of the expedition. Just before the sump there is a choked side passage. This had opened up, Tony, excited by the chance of a major discovery, or even a connection, climbed up a narrow slot and popped out into a walking passage. This lead to a short crawl, which opened out in to the base of a 10m aven with a canyon passage going of at the top. This was very exciting as it could mean that there is a bypass to the sump and a dry connection to the main cave system!!!! This was however, the limit for this trip as we were not equipped for the climb. We then surveyed 56m back to the stream-way.

We then went to look for Roger Irrevellant's Completely Hat Stand passage, a lead pushed by Tony on the 94 Expedition, but not visited since. To get to Roger Irrelevant, we had to negotiate a phreatic maze; after several cigarettes and strong debate Tony located the route, and we soon arrived at the loose climb down to survey station H24 which is where two major leads go off.

We chose a passage and set of surveying, following a very strong draught, passing many inlets and interesting leads on the way. At 1.00 AM we decided to call it a day after surveying 598m of new passage, the end of which had two ways going off. The left-hand lead goes to a 6m high aven with a large passage continuing at the top but as yet unclimbed. The other route splits in to three separate passages, all of which have yet to be pushed.

We went back to San Miguel passage, desperate for a fag, we had a smoke stop and some food and then retreated back down Horror Inlet, had some more scran and another fag. We called down the umbilical phone line to let the people in the bivi cave know that we were on the way out and to check that it wasn't raining and we made steady progress out of the cave arriving at the surface at 0600 after 17 hours of caving. We were knackered and in need of some well earned sleep and rest.

The results of this trip were very exciting: one lead looks like it may bypass the San Miguel sump and the other lead is heading towards San Andrés the connection being 200 to 300M away.

Viva Eldon Renegades
TONY