ADAM HAYDOCK

A large group of us met at the location to enter devils graveyard early in the morning so we can have time to take pictures and bounce the pit near the cave. We all entered the gated entrance and got to another drop that required a handline to get down.

13 of us went single file down the restriction and handed bags down one at a time too. We got the main room and the wow... first thing I noticed was the second drop down which required a self belay. we got down to the main level and I realized that the sloping climb down, and about a 4th of the cave itself was one large flowstone!!!!

I found that very impressive. We got to the main lower level and we set up lights to take pictures of the beautiful formations and others walked around in awe with the beauty this cave had to offer

  There was a shelf which you could walk up to that gave you a good view of the room as well as a close up of the soda straws on the ceiling. 



Devils Graveyard Cave

There was a shelf which you could walk up to that gave you a good view of the room as well as a close up of the soda straws on the ceiling.

Some other cavers found a section where they could down climb into a break down room almost 50 ft of vertical downclimb from the main room which proved to be a lot of fun to climb.

     

After Carcass Crypt we made our way over to Kerns Pit to bounce this double drop cave with a 90ft rap and another 130 ft rap after a long ledge.  

 We found the entrance which was near the road and snaked the rope down and around the rock to the next drop which brought us down to the bottom of the cave.  

This pit had some really nice water fluting with a trickle of water dripping down as we worked our way to the bottom.  It was quite beautiful and an excellent day of pit bouncing in Carcass Crypt and Kerns Pit. 

We woke up early and made our way over to the residents house where Carcass Crypt is located.  The entrance to the pit is a decent sized hole that drops about 70ft into a large room with 200 ft of passages that ends in a dry fall. Phil Goldman, Molly Goldman, Laura Oliver, and I made it over to the entrance and rigged the drop with two ropes as Laura and I were going to Kerns Pit afterwards. This was the first pit cave that we stopped into so we rigged in such a way so we could follow Laura and Molly down as we worked our way over the edge and was on rope. 

It was fantastic to get Laura on rope and down to the bottom of the cave. She was so excited so make it down and we took some photos of the cave.

 Laura Oliver and I continued to take some more photos and started to head up the rope and make our way over to Kerns Pit so we could bounce that one and make it back in good time to Chicago.  

we slept in making sure we had enough time to get inside the cave and onto the upper dog hill section.  

We made a nice slow stroll over the rimstone flowstone dam section and down the beautiful water canyon passage noticing a larger group of students from purdue inside the cave as well as running into a friend that was leading a group into the cave, keith johnson. 

As we made it down the river passage the terrain changed from river meander cut rock to canyon, slort canyon scalloped terrain with sharp cut outs in the rock and sculpture like formations made from hydrological events milenia.

  scaling up and over some natural bridge formations and some crawl unders we made it to the restriction where there is a nice flowstone that greeted us. 

We decided to turn back to find the upper dog hill section and we went down a side passage that lead up to a small dome room with a nice 15 ft waterfall. 

We continued down the passage until we got to another t-section and decided to turn back to find upper dog hill which we found right around the corner.



After Devils Graveyard we went over to Devils Drapery well and dropped into this 70ft pit cave.

Laura was able to get on rope which was a great experience for her to get over the edge and be able to check out this amazing cave from the bottom.

There was some beautiful flow stone drapery at the bottom and it was some of the more interesting drapery i have seen in Indiana.

We bounced this pit and headed back to Chicago which was a great day of caving!!

Cueva evaporada is on the other side of cueva del humo and is part of the rio camuy system. These two caves are at the upper section of the system which goes from the rio evaporada through cueva del humo and apparently we can exit cueva del humo into cueva angeles which connects to the tourist section of rio camuy and down into sistemo bocaza del infiernillo where ponor 1,2,3 exist which eventually emerges into the rio camuy river. We entered the cave which looked like the top part of the entrance had teeth fit for a monster and as we were walking into this beast of a cave the views were just spectacular from the inside out. One of the best views I have ever seen inside a cave EVER. We continued into this massive passage and came into a large room with two eyes at the ceiling the allowed light to shine in like a spot light down into the ground level. The formations looked ancient and the room echoed with the reverb of an opera house. We continued to climb up an ancient flowstone into a mountain room which appeared to end in breakdown.

 

We traversed back and up to the right to go to the second entrance which is a sink hole with vines and a large tree growing out of the sink. It reminded me of the movie santum but instead of finding a tank we found a micro rain forest inside this sinkhole.

 

It was spectacular to find this location as we were able to climb out of it to view from the top and crawl through side passages to view fossils. I was drank all my water and started to drink pats water and realized I was getting light headed from the high humidity and temperature inside this cave, luckly we were close to the entrance so we traversed back and slowly took our time coming out of this amazing cave

 We actually had a chance to sleep in a couple extra hours today due to the fact that we got a hotel room, two beds and closer to cave country in PR so we didn’t have to drive so far. We met up with Tom Miller, Jeff Kruse, Katrina Kruse, Richard, and Bro at a pastry shop near the Rio camuy. We were really excited to see these two caves because I have heard they have large passage rooms and we are going into a section of cueva humo that is not well visited. We enter the property and the landowners were a bit upset that we had a lot of cars with us but we were able to smooth that over with them. We quickly got out of their way and started our traverse around a ridge bend into the forest and down the sink hole. We walked up on cueva evaporada and it was breathing fog.  It was

beautiful to see the entrance of the cave system but we went to the other side of the sink hole where cueva del humo is. This entrance was just a little bit smaller but it must have been hundreds of feet from the bottom of the lip to the top. We all enter the cave and switchback down to the bottom of the monster system and when we finally get down we look back out and you can see the headlamps of other members making their way down to the main passage. Once at the bottom we would shine our light on the ceiling and thousands of bats the size of small gerbils fly hundreds of feet up above our heads. At times it looked like the ceiling was morphing into some kind of sci fi phenomena as you heard the wind move from their wings along with the squeaky communication these amazing creatures had. At times you can feel the atmosphere change a little or feel a slight breeze from the bats flying around. Cricket sounds echoed in the lower sections of these cathedral rooms that are able to fit 15+ story buildings. I pondered to myself how the bats could feel our light shining on top of the ceiling which would start this mass movement of bats down the passages. 

 

We started our climb up into the main hallway passage as we passed ancient flowstones possibly hundreds of thousands of years old. Everything was gigantic in this cave and I could only imagine how nature created these massive rooms. We continued down the main passage with a carbon dioxide meter and went down slopes over some water, into a more massive room and continued to traverse down this monumental passage.

 

  The guano was thick and at some points it may have even filled pits inside the cave and created bridges to get from one side to the other but we could not confirm that. We came to a restriction that had multiple pits and a Tyrolean traverse set up. The problem with this set up is that it has been there for over 20 years, most of us didn’t have vertical gear, and if the rope were to break we would tumble down one of the 25 foot pits which would not been going to be injured for me in Puerto Rico at the bottom of a pit. Not having my vertical gear and my own rope I opted to not continue and nobody else wanted to go first either. So we turned around back out of the cave enjoying the geology of the cave and all the inhabitants. Some sections you can take a step and worms would pop out of the ground after each step and other places we found scorpions lurking around under rock shelves. We climbed back out and went over to cueva del evaporada.



Adam Haydock Cueva Sorbetos Puerto Rico

We drove through a small town in Arecibo to get to the location where we would parks our cars and walk to the cave. The neighborhood had a few murders happen a few days previous so we had to park the cars and get into the rain forest quick without causing too much calamity. We walked to the Tanama River and crossed the unusually clear water to get to the entrance of the cave. Attempts have been made to block the cave using concrete but efforts have been made to open the cave which is where the main entrance is. There is a small crawl once you enter but when you able to stand, we look up and at the bottom level of this muddy cave hangs hundreds of thousand white calcite soda straws varying from a few mill
imeters to over two feet in length!!

 

The passage is very slippery and muddy but we were able to get down to the bottom and stare in awe at the shimmering calcite columns that were the size of Parthenon columns, and the chandelier rooms saturated with these white soda straws. I don’t think I have ever seen this many soda straws condensed into once cave like this ever and I am not sure of any other place on earth that has this kind of decoration.

 

  We continued to walk down the passage into a breakdown room and into a large highway like coliseum passage with a stalactite 3 stories high.

 

We viewed a pit that lead to a sump and I was told that a dive was made into this sump but it did not render any favorable results. We continued to the end of the cave where a breakdown mountain has collapsed a room but built a stairway of break down to the top leaving another 100 ft to the ceiling. We traversed back and took a side passage route to more chandelier rooms full of helectite soda straws that extended up to 6 inches from the main formation which looked like nerve connections in some of these oddities. 

 

After four hours we exited the cave and washed off in the Tanama River. This cave far exceeded my expectations and left me pondering how these amazing systems exist in the underworld of our planet. We got back to the car and headed to a hotel to eat and sleep right away to get ready for the next day of caving within the twin giants, evaporada and humo.





Entrance to Los Chorros

Day2 it can be a challenge to sleep in Puerto rico at night with the coqi frogs chirping away all night. I am not sure how many hours of sleep we got but we had to wake up 530 Atlantic time which is 330 AM central time so we could get to the other side of the island to meet up with the cavers to go caving. We got up, striked camp, and started meandering our way down the mountain to the main highway. Map quest was telling me one way to get to Arecibo, Pats Google maps was telling another way to get there, and with my experience being in Puerto rico I knew I had to trick my GPS. It makes driving interesting when GPS tells us to get off on a road and it is a completely different road than we are supposed to be on. Plus there GPS told us to go down roads that are not even there to get to a destination. We worked our way on the highway towards san juan so we can go west and ran into a toll system that we found to be very confusing.

Los Chorros Puerto Rico

Not only do they charge a lot of money but there are 4 different kinds of toll systems where they will give you a card if in replacement of giving you change, or you have to buy a pass to go through the tolls. I should have just activated the toll at the car rental and got the insurance too.We made it to Arecibo an hour early so we had to chance to casually prepare for the caving phase of the trip and organize everything in the car. Jeff Kruse showed up to the meet location and I followed him to the first cave, Los Chorros.

Boa at the entrance of Los Chorros

Los chorros has two beautiful entrances but one of them requires the use of rope to enter the system.

We parked our car and Jeff started to explain to me that last time American cavers went into this system they were getting shot at. On top of that parking our cars at any cave we are taking a risk of our cars getting broken into so we had to bring our valuables and everything else is put in the trunk. 

We came this far so we walked up the hill following the waterfall entrance and climbed up into the mouth of the cave. A Boa constrictor was welcoming us at the entrance to the cave, there were snakes, crabs, the “mango” spider (which is a large spider the size of both of my hands), and scorpions. 

 

We got into this active water system and the temp inside was 75 degrees with 100% humidity and the water was 65 degrees. It felt really warm inside this cave. We started our traverse and the wall passages were lined with formations from flowstone to stalactites and stalagmites. We had to wade in water and go under some small sections to where the cave opened up into walking river cave passage. Bats were flying gall over the place as they squeaked flew in a chaotic frenzy yet they were aware not to run into anything.

Crab in Los Chorros Puerto Rico

We meandered around breakdown and got to a section where we had to climb up into an upper passage where water carved out tube like sharp formations under our feet. It’s still amazes me how water has the power to slowly evolve rocks into some of the most amazing features over millennia.

Scorpion in Los Chorros Puerto Rico

We continued down the passages enjoying the features of the cave and came to the sump. The sump has been recorded as a dive before with dive line but I was not able to get too much more information about that. We started our traverse out of the cave and went down another couple side passages which were even narrower than the previous canyons and the torrents of water raging through these small canyon passages have created a mosaic of well defined and sharp sculptures which were beautiful to observe. I could hear my clothes tearing as I would pass by some of these formations but we walked over small waterfalls and made it to the other entrance. It was nice to see that our cars were still one piece too.

Los Chorros Puerto Rico

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