Caves Branch River Feb 24

An entry in Rocky's Mayan Whitewater guidebook on the Caves Branch River was my initial motivation for wanting to visit Belize. Though light on whitewater with barely riffles (and light on photos to give me a sense of what to expect), it offered a rare opportunity to spend a day floating down a river underground punctuated briefly by skylights, which sounded exactly like my sort of activity. Other than the guidebook entry and a single Alpacka blog post where some guys somehow managed to string together a three-day trip in the cave system, I could find no further information other than tubing down the last cave that clearly was a very popular tourist activity for cruise ship passengers. I brought my packraft to Belize without knowing really what to expect or whether I could figure out the logistics. Once in-country it became fairly clear that landowner and shuttle logistics were going to be complicated enough that it was going to be worth hiring a guide. Luckily our group's local caving guide Marcos was able to put me in touch with someone that could guide and I convinced Amanda, Carl, and Don to join me. 

We met at the Blue Hole Visitor Center and after some shuffling logistics of spraying our car with pesticide and getting a gate key we drove through an ancient looking orange grove, the trees barely able to produce fruit with all the moss and epiphytes covering them. We crossed the Caves Branch River a couple times on approach and then parked at the jungle's edge to offload kayaks. A short 400 ft long jungle track took us to a pool surrounded by dense rainforest. While I inflated my boat Amanda managed to spot some sort of giant python working its way out of the water. Almost immediately we had to carry boats about 15 ft over boulders to the submergence entrance to the first cave. 

The first cave extended over a half-mile with great formations, interesting passage shapes, and lazily moving blue waters. There were a couple minor skylight entrances up off to our left partway through, otherwise it was solid darkness other than our lights. At one point we had to maneuver boats over a pinch formed by two large boulders, otherwise everything was completely boatable despite fairly low flows.  

First cave resurgence (and below)

All too soon we reached the end of the first cave, a particularly picturesque entrance we stopped at for a brief snack before continuing on. We floated for only above 250 ft above ground before entering the second cave, this one the longest in the system at over a mile. We paddled downstream underground to a confluence and then paddled upstream to see the true submergence of the Caves Branch River. We got a particularly nice view of the jungle and limestone cliffs from here. The submergence passage was a neat pancake shape with about 4 ft of headspace for its 30 ft width. This longest cave had a river right side entrance, and then a river left skylight before we reached the tall resurgence entrance signaling the end of the second cave. 

Caves Branch Creek submergence

Second cave resurgence

Once again we were briefly back on the surface world and sat down to have lunch on a cobble bank. I could not resist a brief swim in the pleasant waters. As we ate, Jose explained that the submergence of the third cave sumps a short distance underground and so we would have to take a 0.3 mi jungle portage trail to enter a side entrance downstream. We walked to check out the submergence anyway, another nice spot with pretty blue-green waters.

Third cave submergence (sumps)

The jungle track was easy enough for me to carry my packraft and the others were allowed to drag their boats which was about as easy. The side entrance to the third cave had particularly excellent golden light filtering between jungle, boulders, and waters. We paddled upstream a good distance to a very convincing sump wall, then turned and headed downstream. The guide encouraged the others to paddle in pitch black darkness; I was more reluctant as ramming into a sharp limestone wall in my packraft would not be as consequence free as a plastic sit-on-top kayak. 

Side entrance to the third cave

The third cave continued very linearly for 0.2 miles to arrive at a very short skylight section separating it from the fourth cave. A stairway down here was the first hint of humans we had seen. There was some more excellent light filtering through the waters near these entrances.

Window between third and fourth caves

The end of the fourth cave signaled the start of the tourist hordes with dozens of people lined up at the submergence entrance to go on a guided tube through the fifth and final cave. I was particularly thankful for everything we managed to see without seeing another person up to this point. The tourists had to sit in large inflatable tubes daisy-chained together and pulled by a guide. It looked a bit silly, like wearing GoPros on Disneyland's It's a Small World ride. This fifth cave carried on for about 0.5 miles with an interesting waterfall and cave entrance entering halfway down on the left. 

Fifth cave submergence

Fifth cave resurgence

Once out the last cave we had a 0.5 mile paddle around more tubing tourists to reach our takeout. A short stroll brought us to the shops and vendors as we waited for the guide to sort out the kayaks. Thanks to Amanda, Carl, and Don for joining in the adventure. In all we paddled about 2.5 miles underground through 5 cave systems with about a mile above ground to link them. Now with the knowledge of hindsight I could see that we visited the whole system and the blog account I saw of people making a three-day trip out of it was rather ridiculous. It was a neat trip and I really loved the long stretches of packrafting through a cave system. I am sufficiently motivated to try to find other similar trips that might be possible elsewhere in the world!

Panti Pit Expedition Feb 19-23

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.

Saguaro NP & Organ Pipe NM Jan 15-16

Unusually wet weather seemed to be limiting our local options for pleasant camping so we decided to gamble on heading towards the Sonora Desert for a full weekend. Our previous trip to the Salt River garnered a new appreciation for saguaro forests and I thought we could string together a nice trip stopping by the Quartzite rock shows and heading on to Saguaro National Park near Tucson. We drove out towards Quartzite late Friday evening to arrive shortly before midnight. My Prius scraped its way down the rutted dirt road to a slight pullout where we set up our rooftop camp in a cool 30 seconds.

In the morning we ambled into Quartzite to check out a couple of the shows, Desert Gardens and Tyson Wells. It was weird: Quartzite was bustling like 25 years prior in my youth and a lot of the ways the same. But the venders and people seemed to be quite different. Notably there were considerably less mineral dealers and more bead/jewelery/carving types. I saw some neat things but did not finding anything worth committing to a purchase other than a breakfast burrito. 

We drove on to Tucson, arriving to the Saguaro National Park West visitor center just as they closed but with time to grab a map and to take a quick loop around before searching for a camp spot. Saguaro NP is rather atypical in that it is composed of two blocks of land with the city of Tucson in between. Both sides had driving loops and a few trail options. We ended up camping on a roadside BLM block on the western outskirts of Tucson, nothing glamorous but perfectly well suited to our simple needs.

In the grey morning we drove the Bajada Loop to the Hugh Norris trailhead where we got out for a short one mile hike through the saguaros up to the first saddle. We hurried back down with the ominous view of dark water walls creeping across the distant desert towards us. 

We stopped again for a short walk to Signal Hill, which had a neat collection of pictographs including a very prominent spiral I liked. Right as we reached the pictographs it began to pour on us so we grabbed a few pictures and retreated back to the car. We finished the Bajada Loop drive and worked our way across Tucson to check out the east side of the park. 

Other than the distant views of Mt Lemmon and the moody weather, we both found the east part of the park to be even more underwhelming. The saguaros did not seem to be nearly as dense or enormous here as other places. We quickly drove through to wrap up our Saguaro National Park experience.

With a little more daylight we opted to drive towards Redington Pass a little to the north, spotting a great example of a crested saguaro right off the side of the road. 

We found the lower trailhead for Tanque Verde Falls and lightly packed for a short hike in the rain. The trail rapidly descended down through nice saguaros and other cacti to Tanque Verde Creek where we were both delighted to see a healthily flowing creek with neat bedrock exposures. It took considerable care to work my way up the slippery rocks past several smaller waterfalls to reach the main falls. The hike was spectacular and far exceeded any of the scenery in the nearby national park. I convinced Heather to try a direct way up out of the canyon instead of returning the long and slippery way we came. We meandered through cacti and carefully chose our way scrambling up through two cliff bands. As we climbed the views of the waterfalls became even better. Soon we gained the road for an easy stroll back to the car. This hike really redeemed the day. 

We had a very tasty southwest style dinner at Seis Kitchen hovering beneath a heat lamp just out the edge of the rainy courtyard as we planned our next move. Tucson was now forecast to receive considerably more rain than previously forecast. Looking at our options we decided to drive west through most of the evening's rain to camp roadside just outside of Organ Pipe National Monument. We slept cozily to the light patter of rain.

In the morning we drove south to within 6 miles of the Mexican border to briefly stop at the Organ Pipe Visitor Center to orient ourselves. We opted to take the 21mi Ajo Mountain Drive loop through the east side of the monument. We were thoroughly impressed with this national monument. Not only did it have spectacular examples of the namesake upward clustering organ pipe cacti but it also had bigger and more numerous saguaros than Saguaro NP, cementing my view of Saguaro's NP status being more linked to politics and visitation than merit. We tried to follow some of the roadside landmarks in the "no-so-junior ranger" guide but had about 50% success based on the abysmal directions ("A small cholla cactus sits just to the left of a dead palo verde on the right side of the road. By standing and looking across the cholla and just to the left of two large saguaro cacti you will see..."). The scenery was fantastic and there was a lot to see as the views evolved over the drive. The desert here was remarkably green and lush.

Near the apex of the loop we stopped to park at Arch Canyon and decided to go for a moody hike up the canyon carved through red-brown ignimbrite. The trail got considerably looser and slipperier as it turned away from the canyon bottom to climb up toward the arch. To save time I continued on up along through the intricately winding path. I made it up to the arch but it was actually fairly awkward to photograph up close with better views from the trailhead. Nevertheless it was a neat, somewhat wild hike.

We continued around to close our loop drive and then unceremoniously headed for home. We saw a lot in our couple day escape, got good use of the rooftop tent, and managed to avoid most of the regional rain. All in all a good cool weekend in the desert.

Temecula Gorge Jan 5

I like to think that I generally make good decisions but this trip ended up being one where my better judgement succumbed to the less insightful enthusiasm of others. I’ve been down the Santa Margarita River through Temecula Gorge a lot, perhaps more times than anyone else in the past five years, but at least twice as many times I have watched the stream gage hoping for conditions that did not materialize and walked away from it, at least one time at the put-in. The river only rises in response to rains, with the usual conditions requiring high intensity rains totaling over 1.5”, which means a very abrupt and unpredictable rise to some peak and a more gradual but still ephemeral decay, usually resulting in a few hours of boatable conditions. Often the peak would be forecast to be overnight, requiring 4AM wake-ups to check the current trend and decide whether it would be in range in daylight hours. This time around was different. Keith was out with sickness and so I got connected with three other SD kayakers keen for a lap. Against my better judgment they were interested in going in on the rising side of the flood pulse because it is all that would work with daylight timing. I stated that I wasn’t interested in really going in above 550cfs, the previously highest I had run it which I thought was a little too pushy to be a pleasant trip. I was interested enough to pack and meet them at the put-in after they had set shuttle. I drove through some impressively torrential bursts of rain on my way through Murrieta. 

I arrived at the put-in where I met the three. Sam was fully dressed and ready to go, Eric was on the fence, and Mike decided he was not interested. The last gage reading came in around 550 cfs indicating a steep climb from the previous reading and at the boundary of what I normally would be willing to run. Sam was raring to drum up enthusiasm and they had already gone through setting up the shuttle. I was the one with the most experience with the run, most likely to be able to lead us through the lines efficiently. It should only take us 2 hours…my judgment lapsed and I said alright, rushing to dress, inflate, and stash my boat at the Jack in the Box. I told myself you had to get the water while you can in SoCal.

We put on and I quickly noted the high flow but was not worried at this point. We turned the corner into the gorge and on we went. The features were bigger than I had ever seen, the flow more pushy. One rapid had us ferrying very hard to avoid two straining trees before reaching the channel. I got stuck on the first, pushed myself off, got stuck on the second, and barely barely freed myself without flipping. Eric hit this second tree, flipped, and swam requiring rescue assistance. It was only the second time ever that he had swam so he was now on edge and intimidated. Soon after I flipped on a small hole and the next small hole down surprised me by holding me for perhaps 10 seconds on the spin cycle until I found something to push off of. We had a sobering realization that we were not far into the run. We had a hard balance to manage: take the time to scout or portage rapids or risk swims that would slow us down further. The longer we took, the higher the flows would get.

We ended up scouting a few features and portaging a couple too. The road crossing corridor was more continuous than I had ever seen with some more retentive holes to avoid. Oddly the river left waterfall was  completely dry. The two rapids before the river right waterfall intimidated me so I portaged those along with Eric. Sam seemed in his element, cruising through everything with ease. 

We ran some more, we portaged some more. Everything was getting very pushy. We made it through the canyon’s S-bends. Eric and I portaged the long railroad crossing rapid on the left. There was a short rapid with a retentive ledge hole that seemed just as easy to portage in a pack raft and so I did. Sam convinced Eric to run it and served as safety. Eric went in, got stuck, fought the good fight, flipped and swam. Sam was able to get a throw rope to Eric but his boat was long gone. I tried running after it but this was the start of a continuous one-mile long rapid that the boat ran out with ease. So this was a considerable setback. Sam got in his boat and paddled downriver after Eric’s boat. I did a long portage with Eric on the old remnant of the railroad bed on river right, carefully avoiding contact between my boat and the prickly pear cacti. The view of the river, normally a nice pool-drop section, was thoroughly impressive as a mile-long don’t-mess-up freight train of whitewater. Eventually we caught up with Sam who was babysitting Eric’s boat beached on some mid-river willows.

We had more time-wasting antics getting the boat to shore. We did on our third try. Sam managed to forget his phone a mile up at the flip and so we waited while he retrieved it and sent a few texts with the InReach in the meantime. We got the report that the gage hit 1100 cfs and was still rising! We were fast losing daylight with lots to go still. It wasn’t looking good. We would need a clean run to make it to the cars before dark. 

We proceeded cautiously and before too long had another rapid worth portaging. At this point Eric had enough and wanted to drop his boat and hike the rest of the way out. Sam was definitely keen to boat out and that made the most sense. I would have paddled out too, gripped but probably ok but we had only two headlamps between the three of us and I didn’t think it wise to leave Eric to fend with the scrub by himself, especially considering he would have to cross the river somehow. So we said goodbye to Sam (who bombed down and made it out in 20 minutes!), I deflated my boat, and we started out sidling up and down through the scrub. In places it was dense, in places it was covered in poison oak. I had the right shoes for boating but wrong ones for hiking. We were in a frenzy to get out and so kept our drysuits on, both of us miserable sweaty messes. Eric and I chatted most of the way which certainly helped make the slow progress more manageable. Nevertheless it was a solid sufferfest. Sharing a headlamp was not ideal but worked ok. It was a long slow 1.5 miles to reach the first and only convincing place to try to cross the river. I inflated my packraft and ferried Eric across as he hung on to the back of the boat, which worked even better than I thought. Once across we deflated the boat and continued on. The gorge now started to open into the last 0.5 miles to the takeout where Eric was able to text that we were good. The final stroll was through avocado orchards where we met the other two. In all it took us 2.3 hrs to go 2 miles. It could have been much worse. Apparently the sheriff was called on us for a possible search and rescue and we had some worried friends and partners to assure. It was miserable but fine. We had a good plan and made it work. Poor Eric has to get back in there for his boat and paddle.

So I learned a series of lessons. This will be the first and last time I jump on a SoCal river on its rising flood pulse and I will try to be more conscious about the enthusiasm of others I don’t know and time investment (drive and set shuttle) swaying me into what is clearly a poor decision. I was well prepared and in control of the situation as it continued to evolve (it was certainly never a rescue scenario) but the misery did pile on. It was really neat to see the Santa Margarita at 1100 cfs, particularly the long sections of continuous rapids. Even though I had most recently come off the might Zambezi River, it was a pushy technical nonstop run at the flows I could have happily done without boating. Lots of driving, poison oak, and cleaning for about an hour of paddling. Live and learn.