In a small Belizean village there is a wooden shack that houses a spartan convenience store. Beneath that shack is a culvert pipe planted in the ground near the bottom of a sinkhole with chickens running loose around. Down that pipe is Panti Pit, a sequence of 8 rappels totaling 350 ft, the only known way into this 8+ km cave system that has been explored over the course of several years in annual expeditions. This formidable entrance series makes it one of the few demonstrable virgin cave systems in the area as most other entrances had abundant evidence of Mayan use and later visitation by hunters and landowners. I had been having a particularly long hiatus from project caving and recognized it as something I had been missing, so I was very appreciative to get an invite to join this expedition, the Boundary Fault Karst Project. Belize was already of interest to me based on my visits to nearby Chiapas and a strong desire to float through the Caves Branch System about an hour's drive away from the expedition base. The timing of the expedition was such that I could not join for the full two weeks but with careful planning I was able to get away for a week, which I figured was better than nothing. Thankfully it was well organized which made planning easier and I was able to contribute by obtaining lidar data access for the project area through archaeologists and Belize's Institute of Archaeology, which the expedition operates in agreement with and owns all data collected.
Upon landing in Belize I immediately noted the humid tropic temperatures that were a welcome reprieve from our [mild but still cold] socal winter. Our expedition was based along Barton Creek, a short 2 minute walk from Barton Creek Cave, a prominent resurgence important to both ancient Maya and modern tourist. The setting was pleasantly jungle-y with coconut and banana trees, colorful vegetation, growler monkeys most nights, and apparently toucans even (I did not see but others did). About a dozen participants stayed at a house and bunkhouse, a little rundown but otherwise plenty comfortable. Dinners were particularly social and we spent a chunk of each evening planning out what groups would be assigned different tasks the following day. The cave commute to get to the end of survey, sweaty climb up 350 ft of rope, and need to clean, decontaminate, and ideally dry clothes and gear generally meant that most people adapted to a day on, day off schedule for Panti Pit. The combination of mud and survey priorities meant that I came back with very few pictures of the cave itself.
With a day at the start to help calibrate distos while the entrance series was rigged and a day at the end for a guided trip through Caves Branch, this meant only two days underground in Panti Pit. My first trip in was shorter. Eric, Amanda, and I headed down the drops into the D passage, the main mid-level dry (but muddy!) passage heading downstream, to survey a weird maze area branching off. As sketcher I found this multi-level maze to be cruel reintroduction to sketching after a several year hiatus but slowly we worked through it. We closed all of our upper level climbing leads in this area but were turned back from the low leads due to high carbon dioxide levels. I was suitably sweaty and more exhausted than I expected by the time I reached the entrance. Overall this first trip did not give me a very positive view of the cave and the leads we surveyed seemed to be low quality. Fortunately this view would change.
As a rest day Don, Fredrik, and I drove around to check a few leads visible in the lidar imagery. This involved driving through the Mennonite area and meeting a friendly farmer that led us to a cave with his two kids in tow. It was a very promising stream sink with an entrance chamber. We climbed down to a lower level where we could see where the water drains during floods but unfortunately it was clogged with boulders and trash and had high carbon dioxide as well. Driving on we checked out the non-carbonate rocks on the flank of Pine Mountain Ridge and then stopped into a butterfly farm. Here a friendly caretaker led us to a pit entrance cave. A short entrance drop led down a slope to a small room with a second tight drop leading into a larger room below. We saw some bats and some Mayan pottery but no convincing way onward. On the hike back we checked out one additional karst feature, a stream sink that became too tight. We did not make any amazing discoveries but I did gain a lot of confidence in the quality of the lidar data and its ability to scout for karst features.
For my second survey day, three different groups headed to the edge of the map in the upstream C passage, which was a particularly long commute but with much more exciting leads. This involved traversing over a very pretty "boots off" flowstone area, swimming through a series of beautiful lakes, a low airspace ceiling sucking section, and a further wet knee crawl section before emerging in walking passage. This was way more interesting, sporty, beautiful, and satisfying caving than the previous trip I did- I saw the appeal and potential of the cave this time. While waiting for others to catch up I noticed evidence of water formerly flowing down a side lead tube, then heard the roar of a creek in it! Carl and I went for a quick scout finding the tube soon emerged into a sizable stream passage with several promising leads. Brian, Daniel, Amanda, and I ended up being assigned to survey this passage. The nearest survey station was 50 m back along the passage so we began doing tie-in shots when we realized the tie-in station was actually the last station and the end of the map! This survey was much more satisfying to sketch. My survey team was a little disfunctional and distracted and we ended up finishing a bit earlier than we expected anticipating a slow journey back out of the cave. We surveyed down the tube, up a side lead, up to a stream sump, up a slope to a muddy climb, and down the stream passage to where it became swimming, racking up a few hundred meters of nice passage. Thankfully I got to be one of the first people up the ropes and felt a lot less fatigued this time around.
The expedition continued for an additional week after I left. Despite adding nearly 2 km of survey to the cave, it sounded like the best leads had fizzled by the end and there are talks of new goals and new approached for next year's expedition. I did not get as much actual caving in as I thought I would but it was a great reminder of how much I enjoy project caving. It was a great group of people, many from socal that are a further nudge that I should be more involved in the local caving community. A special thanks to Brian, Doug, and Carol for organizing and inviting me.
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