ADAM HAYDOCK

CUEVA LOS CHORROS

February 07, 2013

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.

Los Chorros entrance

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.

Quapa

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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RIO BLANCO & RIO ICACO CASCADE CANYONING

February 06, 2013

Adam Haydock Rio Blanco river canyon Puerto Rico

Pat and I woke up early Thursday morning so we could get to the waterfall cascade hike before the afternoon when flash floods typically can happen. In Puerto Rico flash floods can happen at anytime but since we went in the dry season the threat of flash floods was minimized. We got a ride to the bottom of Rio Blanco which is called “EL Hippie” this has a pool of water with a canyon right above the first waterfall.

Rio Blanco Puerto Rico

We ascended the jungle trail until we got to the drop in of the Rio Blanco. The boulders were large and slippery, very slippery. One wrong move and you can slip crack your bones wash down the river over a waterfall or get keyed in with the swift current in some sections. We wore 5.10 canyoneer boots which have a sticky rubber that will give good traction even with slippery conditions. I wanted to be extra careful taking pat upstream as swift water is not something he is familiar with and this hike is not for beginners. (you have been warned).We made it to the confluence of the Rio Cubuy and the Rio Icacos which had a series of large swift water waterfalls, hydraulic boils and deep water swims which required traversing at times to make sure we had the right angle of approach. Some boulders we had to use webbing and help each other to counterbalance ourselves to leverage the other over boulders.

Adam Haydock on the Rio Icaco river canyon Puerto Rico

It was beautiful to be immersed in the rain forest swimming in 65 degree water with the temp at a humid 75 degrees. We kept going until we got to the main waterfall. This water fall you can see from the road 10 miles away and according to the map is 500 feet up and it looked like it was on a 30 to a 40 degree angle at points. We had lunch and decided to flank the falls to the right. We found ourselves bouldering over rocks and thick vegetation that had skin irritation properties, thorns, and in between these slippery rocks were small cavern like holes where one wrong foothold you can go tumbling down stuck in a very hard to reach jungle. “And this was going so well” I said before we found ourselves in this hell hole. We decided to turn back and quickly lost our traverse so we have to overcome each boulder, negotiating and planning each step and we moved. One step I took my foot went through the shrubbery and caught myself before slipping into one of these nightmares. Knowing the river is to our right we made a b line to the river and found ourselves half way up on a boulder that acted as a shelf over the waterfall, “how did we get so lucky” We got our bearing and continues to ascend the waterfall to a section ¾ of the way up and had another break to talk about what just happened and to continue our plan.

We continued back to the right and found the section was too slippery so we went right and WHAA…found a small trail through the other side of the river. This section of the rain forest felt like a highway compared to the left side. We made a hasty climb to the top and meandered around the bend to descend back into the water on top of the water fall. We continued to encounter smaller waterfall challenges but were able to overcome those challenges and make it to the pipeline trail in good time. Wow what an amazing hike that was cascading route finding, planning and great team work. We followed the easy pipeline trail to the top of the road where we walked back down and got back to our camp. We dried everything out and re packed everything for the next section of the trip (the caves).

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PONOR 3 & CUEVA CLARA

February 05, 2013

Cueva Clara Puerto Rico

Last day of caving we checked out of the hotel and went to the pastry shop to meet up with the rest of the cavers for the day. Pat and I had a conversation about swift water techniques. Pat was concerned about swimming in the cave so I made a flotation device out of my backpack for him so he will be able to float safely while traversing this cave. Ponor in Spanish mean Losing River and this cave is known to have extreme flash floods. It is a part of the inferillo system which is a connection to the rio camuy system. We parked our cars and entered into the cave and quickly saw a lot of garbage on the ceiling including a refrigerator and other heavy debris only very strong water could carry through this system. The cave was not very decorated but we were told there were a sprinkler a beach area and a pond with a waterfall so we were interested in checking this out. We got about 500 feet into the cave to a location where there was a pile of garbage, a dead animal, chemicals on the surface and drug bottles floating around. From the time we spent in Puerto rice we managed to get some open wounds and on top of the flash flood dangers and swimming proficiency we decided to turn out of the cave and headed to the commercial section of the rio camuy at the state park

Cueva Clara Puerto Rico

The commercial section was interesting to be in because everyone was clean well rested and excited to take a trolley down to the commercial cave. It was a bit expensive to get in but it was very interesting to see this section which turns out to be a very beautiful section of the cave system and where we would have washed out of if we got caught in a flash flood. We took this trolley down and was talking to people around us about where we have been which peaked their interest since this was a lot of their first times in a cave. The trolley took up to the entrance and it was another nice entrance (pavement of course) which took us around and inside the large dome room. The light inside the cave gave a nice overview of the size and mass this room has which was another nice aspect of going to the commercial section of the cave.

Cueva Clara Puerto Rico

We made it around to the river portion and exited the cave relaxing and pondering how nice it would have been to have a trolley take us down some of the other sections of the system. We made it back up to the visitor center and I soon found myself surrounded by a classroom full of children asking me questions about caving and the sections of the rio camuy system we have been into. Apparently the people we were talking to were teachers and they wanted us to talk to their students a bit about our adventures and what caving is like. Once we left the location we headed back to the el yunque to live out the last day of our vacation, relax a bit and traverse the rio cubuy.