Bonnie Crystal ascending out of South America Pit, a large and open 70 meter freefall pit that led to a short horizontal passage with a tight blowing lead.

About this Expedition
     I joined this reconnaissance expedition led by Steve Knutson during the summer of 2004.  For several years Steve and others had been doing expeditions into an area of the Andes on the rim of the Amazon basin and had found a large concentration of very deep pits (some in excess of 200 meters deep).  However, none of these caves had been leading into any sort of main drainage system for the area.  Our goal was to begin exploring the region slightly further out toward the Amazon in a promising local syncline.  We discovered a number of new caves and deep pits.  Several of these caves contained significant water and airflow.  This leads us to believe that a main drain system does exist and that these caves must be feeding it.  We pushed one cave (Windy Rift) down several drops to a depth of 300 meters before it became too tight.   This did however make it the deepest known cave in the area.  The expedition participants were Steve Knutson, David Cole, Bonnie Crystal, and myself.

Windy Rift Map

A portion of an NSS News article on Peru that I wrote

Photos