He was a strong climber and diver, but he wasnt a squeeze freak like some of the others. When he resurfaced on the other side, he was in a fast-flowing canal of clear water. We were afraid the Kentucky Club was another casualty. Fifty-four cavers from thirteen countries, forty-three of them men and eleven women, would pass through the camp that spring. Gala had been this deep in the cave once before, in 2009, but never beyond the pool. When cavers become cave divers, they usually die because of it, Stones friend James Brown told me. It was a wise business decision. On his first trip to Mexico, in 2001, Gala nearly died of histoplasmosis, a fungal infection acquired from the bat guano that lined the upper reaches of a nearby cave. An hour later, he signalled for Gala to stop. Restaurant menu. But when he looked again his headlamp picked up an odd texture in the wall to his right. There was a gap in it just below the waterlinewide enough for a person to squeeze through. Cave of the Sleeping Sharks is ideal for scuba divers looking for something different to impress their dive buddies. Tonatiuh was the godly governor in what the Mexica referred to as "the era of the fifth sun" - a period still unfolding that is predicted to end in destruction by earthquake. The place was well known to many other dignitaries passing through as well, especially after bartender, Lorenzo "Lencho" Hernandez reportedly created what became their signature drink, the Margarita, in the 1930s. It was only mid-March now, but the weather wasnt always predictable. There is no rescue, period. To climb straight back to the surface, without stopping to rig ropes and phone wire, would take them four days. When Casteret held his candle up to its walls, the flame flickered over engravings of mammoths, bison, hyenas, and other prehistoric beaststhe remains of a religious sanctuary some twenty thousand years old. Theyd spent most of the first month hauling gear up the mountaina muddy three-hour hike from a farmhouse in the valleyloading the heaviest items on burros and the rest on their backs. If they hung hammocks from the wall beyond Sump Four, they could bivouac there and explore the cave for another three weeks before they ran out of rope. [14], https://www.natgeotv.com/asia/explorer-the-deepest-cave, Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia, "2021 Sistema Cheve Expedition: Initial Report", "Exploring Sistema Cheve: More Than Records at Stake", "Blind Descent: Into the Deepest Caves on Earth", "El Sistema Cheve, uno de los systems de caverns max profundas del mundo (Oaxaca)", "Body of Caver Who Died March 1, Pulled to the Surface", https://web.archive.org/web/20150223022436/http://www.oaxaca-travel.com/guide/natural.php?getdoc=true&lang=us&doc=home§ion=&atractivo=11.05.04.01, http://nssmembersforum.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=Business&action=print&thread=12, https://web.archive.org/web/20160304001603/https://books.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/caverace/week1/index.html, https://web.archive.org/web/20150223034127/http://www.cancord.com/blog/to-hell-and-back-beyond-sump-4-to-the-core-of-the-sierra-juarez-part-1/, http://articles.latimes.com/1992-11-01/news/mn-1695_1_cave-exploration, https://web.archive.org/web/20150223024058/http://speleogenesis-info.isth.info/directory/karstbase/publication.php?id=8771, http://montanismo.org/2003/sistema_cheve_la_caverna_mas_profunda_de_america/, https://books.google.com/books?id=LpTIIZ_GpAC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=sistema+Cheve&source=bl&ots=UQ4GqN1P2e&sig=b7cphwPyjN31sO_9h7G2dEeO_vc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oFnRVLSJLIP7ggTznYHwBw&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBzgU#v=onepage&q=cheve&f=false, https://web.archive.org/web/20150223003447/http://hennessyhammock.com/articles/scientific_explorations/, http://philippelopes.free.fr/SistemaCheve.htm, https://books.google.com/books?id=KDy2AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=sistema+Cheve&source=bl&ots=RVsky8wozh&sig=HsBkRm1rAKshd4pHF4g_cQ2RFus&hl=en&sa=X&ei=A1vRVM7TMYOfgwSAq4PgAg&ved=0CB4Q6AEwATge#v=onepage&q=Cheve&f=false, https://books.google.com/books?id=vPVJlRi91bwC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=sistema+Cheve&source=bl&ots=0XgMDPA0V_&sig=zyWAlHf9UKo9DCLqeuOnvnVKkVw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=A1vRVM7TMYOfgwSAq4PgAg&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBDge#v=onepage&q=sistema%20Cheve&f=false, https://books.google.com/books?id=MY0PAQAAQBAJ&pg=RA1-PA270&lpg=RA1-PA270&dq=sistema+Cheve&source=bl&ots=2FHSDMsKxG&sig=B7Qimo8i6ZrEuoGv2ytM0yo9Ex4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=A1vRVM7TMYOfgwSAq4PgAg&ved=0CCsQ6AEwBTge#v=onepage&q=sistema%20Cheve&f=false, https://www.petzl.com/apex/Web_NewsDetail?animationId=a7Cw0000000PBj3EAG&l=gb&language=en&localCountryCode=US&tab=Community&universId=a3120000000HMf4AAG&userFriendlyUrl=%2Fen%2FSport%2FNews%2F2017-5-3%2FChris-Higgins-Explores-Cueva-Cheve-and-Nita-N-Tau&userFriendlyUrlOrig=%2FGB%2Fen%2FSport%2FNews%2F2017-5-3%2FChris-Higgins-Explores-Cueva-Cheve-and-Nita-N-Tau, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chev_Cave&oldid=1134010062, This page was last edited on 16 January 2023, at 15:42. There is no glory in rushing into something like that and losing a friend. And three had physical limitations: James Brown had gimpy knees, a Mexican diver named Nico Escamilla had a pulled groin muscle, and a veteran diver named Tom Morris had torn a rotator cuff. Its going to be a slow bumble down the cave, with double dinners when we get to camp. They made a quick snack of crackers and energy bars, while Rickel checked van den Bergs heart rate again. Short is one of the sports premier practitioners, with experience as far afield as the Sahara and shipwrecks off Guam. Covingtons feet caught on the cliff as he fell, tumbling him onto his left arm, causing compound fractures. You could take this place and drop it in Chicago, Boston or New York and it'd feel about the same - with the exception of the few nods to their Mexican heritage, like the giant, dust covered, stuffed Hawk perched facing the bar (which has probably been there since opening). But you have to come back out, too, Short told him. A week underground followed by ten days on the surface. I found a reference to this particular cave in a motorist's guide to Mxico. $100. To be honest we weren't sure what we'd find when we made the trek to the Kentucky Club. Zuzia had spent much of her life watching people disappear into holes and remerge weeks later. Charco is a place to make even cavers claustrophobic: the first camp is a twelve-hour crawl from the surface, mostly on your belly. So he doesnt always react to them well. Then again its hard to avoid tension in a sport that takes such a mortal toll. This mountain is really cool, as it has a giant cross at the top and has been a pilgrimage site for Mexicans for years. Every depth record is provisional, every barrier a false conclusion. From a point of view of future exploration, complicated is todays understatement.. Stones team had to establish four camps underground, each about a days hike apart. . They were doing both. No other cave in the world has such proven depth (though geologists suspect that some caves in China, New Guinea, and Turkey go even deeper). He wouldnt have a problem going down the cave. There's a long bar reaching out in front of you to the dark recesses in the back. As he treaded water, lifting his face up to breathe, bits of soft white debris drifted toward his mouth and got caught in his hair. There were a handful of flat screen televisions scattered around, each tuned to ESPN. And the price certainly couldn't be better. The greatest find of the survey was a turquoise mosaic tablet that was discovered in Chamber 1 of the cave, named the Cueva Chev Tablet. The cave is not recommended for beginner divers due to its depth. To fine-tune the teams diet, hed modelled it on Lance Armstrongs program, aiming for a ratio of seventeen per cent protein, sixteen per cent fat, and sixty-seven per cent carbohydrates. He had the whiskered, weather-beaten look of an old lobsterman. Underwear is worn for weeks on end, the bacteria kept back by antibiotic silver and copper threads. High-tech gear tends to be fragile and finicky. When we began going at 17 or 18 years old, the main strip (Juarez Avenue) was made up of bar after bar; it was a 3 lane, one-way street lined on both sides with flashing neon signs and rhythmic beating from speakers pointed out to the street. The crawling was fairly uncomfortable, he allowed. With his rapid-fire talk and glasses that seem to magnify his eyes, he could pass for a street preacher or a pamphleteer. Wide-open tunnels can fork into a maze; white sands swirl up to obscure your view. Shorts team peered up at the opening for a moment, then slowly put on their gear. It just is not worth it.. In the tightest fissures he had to take off his helmet just to turn his head, or strip down to his dry suit and wriggle between walls for hundreds of feet. Tel : 951-166-6172. Six feet four but only a hundred and fifty pounds, he could squeeze through a crevice six and a half inches wide. In the spring of 1990 and 1991, three archaeological chambers in the cave were excavated by a team of speleologists and archaeologists from the Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia (INAH). The tunnel followed the stream for a couple of hundred feet, then dipped below the waterline. Its always like that at some point in an expedition, Gala told me. The record would bounce between France, Spain, and Austria (where one of Galas teams went below fifty-three hundred feet at Lamprechtsofen in 1998), before settling in the Republic of Georgia, in 2004. And something more rare: it was beautiful. They razed Juarez Avenue, getting rid of virtually anything that could be used by the cartels and forever changing what we used to know. Half a dozen brownthree large, three jumbo!, As far as I know, is the only job hes created., Get another cab, Dad. Weve lost most of our divers! Then he shouted at Short to join him. [2] The main cave apparently ends in a terminal sump. We can burn as many calories as a Tour de France rider every day underground, he says. An El Paso private investigator, Johnny Cash, encouraged by Gloria, his receptionist, takes a charity case investigating the disappearance of a young woman in Juarez, Mexico. Where did the water go a million years ago? In Georgias Krubera Cave, in the Western Caucasus, great chimneylike shafts plunge as much as five hundred feet at a time, with crawl spaces and flooded tunnels between them. 2023 Cond Nast. Apr 1 - Apr 2. . This is evident from the array of local and Mexican celebrities whose portraits line the walls and who were kept tipsy here. Bulky packs are a torture to get through narrow fissures, and every ounce is extracted tenfold in sweat. When Gala ducked his head underwater and looked around, the chamber looked sealed off. People often misunderstand, Short told me. Praise Heaven, no one can give France lessons in this matter of epic achievement, Casteret wrote, in his preface to Chevaliers book. They would have to work fast, resupplying the camps themselves and exploring the new tunnels without backup divers. In the classic French caving books of the nineteen-thirties and forties, Ten Years Under the Earth, by Norbert Casteret, and Subterranean Climbers, by Pierre Chevalier, the expeditions are framed as manly jaunts belowgrounda bit of stiff exercise before the lapin chasseur back at the inn. El coordinador nacional de Becas para el Bienestar "Benito Jurez", Abraham Vzquez inform que durante el mes de marzo se suspender la entrega de las tarjetas para . In the off-season, he was a technician on a Norwegian oil platform, dangling high above the North Sea to weld joints and replace rivets. He had expected Gala and Shorts reconnaissance trip to take less than six hourstwo hours to dive the sump, two hours to look around and find a camp site, and another two to swim back and call inyet nine hours had passed. He wanted to go down there. And we counted about five bars on the whole of Juarez Avenue from the bridge to the main square just blocks from the cathedral. 0:04. A hairless Sphynx cat with a gang tattoo who gained international attention after being found wandering alone inside the Cereso No. It was wide open at the top, but pinched tight as soon as you went down. Yet the signs were there all along. A good caver is one who forgets how bad it really is, he said. It was like getting hit in the head with a two-by-four, Stone told me. A torch lit adventure and water park in Riviera Maya where fun knows no limits. This pattern repeated itself for blocks, broken on occasion by the rare souvenir shop or bank or some other random business. The stream passes between piles of rubble and boulders, their shadows thrown into looming relief by your headlamp. Chev has what cavers call a Hollywood entrance: a gaping maw in the face of a cliff, like King Kongs lair on Skull Island. Gala and Short were a good match: one quiet, the other loquacious; one expert at climbing, the other at diving. What the fuck am I doing here?. Galas voice fell soft and muffled in the mountains belly, husky with fatigue. This sump was more than thirty feet deep, and it seemed to go on and on. 01 Mar, 2023 22:09. . And apparently the Kentucky Club was one of the finest. 1:01. The camps down there were just a few damp tents on rubble, clustered around a propane flame. Oh, crap! Then the voice of Bill Stone, the leader of the expedition, broke over the line. But he has a certain personalityits abrasive, and what I really wanted this year was harmony, and I got it. Stone had planned to join Gala and Short for the last leg of the expedition, to see the very deepest regions of the cave. This is an excellent route leading to the cave. Pie de la Cuesta 7175. Chev feels more alive than most. There, in a cloud forest in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, lay the staging area for an attempt to map the deepest cave in the worlda kind of Everest expedition turned upside down. The drug war this town saw closed many of the businesses in the cross-fire: as the tourists stayed across the border many of these businesses slowly faded away. Theres always a shouting match between Bill and me, with someone almost crying. But over bourbon that night and coffee the next morning, they slowly hashed out a plan. Across the chamber, thirty or forty feet away, a huge borehole stretched into the darkness. (If you want to see something fun, use Google Map's Street View to see what Juarez USED to look like, it was recorded in 2009). At some point, the Mexican Government clamped down. They seemed built for solitudepale, phlegmatic creatures drawn to deep holes and dark passagesyet they worked together as a selfless unit: the naked mole rats of extreme sport. Incredible Tolantongo Caves from Cdmx. * Only dinner service A la carte service Access under reservation Dress code: Elegant casual Kitchen closes at 11:00 pm Kids allowed Smoking area Private vaults No corkage Base camp, base camp, base camp, he said. The dark and dangerous world of extreme cavers. Then some gravel got clogged in a fissure at the bottom of a pool, flooding the chamber behind it and trapping seven people in the cave below. Stones newest obsession was a set of methanol fuel cells from a company called SFC Energy. The yo-yo logistics of deep caving required that they return to the surface to rest and reprovision, but they had every intention of going back down. But Gala couldnt bear to wait. The truth is they had nowhere better to go. 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