An artist rendering of some photos from the 1995 National Geographic
article on Huautla. This mural had been painted on one of the stores in
the village of San Agustin.
About
the Huautla Project
Sistema Huautla, in southern Mexico in the state of Oaxaca, was discovered in the 1960's and soon became the deepest cave in the western hemisphere (though Cheve has now taken this distinction). Exploration continued throughought the 70's, 80's and 90's. It is perhaps the most complex of the world's deep caves with 17 entrances and numerous independent deep routes and has a current total depth of 1475 meters. One missing piece of the puzzle has been Sotano del Rio Iglesia which was a cave in the area that had been explored in 1967 (and was fleetingly the deepest in the hemisphere) but had never been connected into the system. In 2007 we embarked on an expedition to push leads in Rio Iglesia with a team that included a number of the old Huautla hands. After two weeks of caving we had surveyed 2 km of new passage and on a long two-man push to the bottom of the cave Yuri Schwartz and I succeeded in connecting the cave into Sistema Huautla. A more detailed story will follow, as I'm currently working on an article for the NSS News and AMCS Newsletter.
Sistema Huautla, in southern Mexico in the state of Oaxaca, was discovered in the 1960's and soon became the deepest cave in the western hemisphere (though Cheve has now taken this distinction). Exploration continued throughought the 70's, 80's and 90's. It is perhaps the most complex of the world's deep caves with 17 entrances and numerous independent deep routes and has a current total depth of 1475 meters. One missing piece of the puzzle has been Sotano del Rio Iglesia which was a cave in the area that had been explored in 1967 (and was fleetingly the deepest in the hemisphere) but had never been connected into the system. In 2007 we embarked on an expedition to push leads in Rio Iglesia with a team that included a number of the old Huautla hands. After two weeks of caving we had surveyed 2 km of new passage and on a long two-man push to the bottom of the cave Yuri Schwartz and I succeeded in connecting the cave into Sistema Huautla. A more detailed story will follow, as I'm currently working on an article for the NSS News and AMCS Newsletter.
