I'd be glad to polish this up for
publication (after the NSS Convention). An
interesting addition, or perhaps a separate
article, would be the saga of Geoff
Robertson. He got lost near Cuesta and spent
several days wandering aimlessly through the
jungle until finally hearing trucks on the
highway and making his way out several kilometers
south of where he started. A fairly large rescue
effort was underway, but of course by then he was
nowhere near where we were looking.
Mark
At 12:08 PM 7/14/2011, mark.al...@l-3com.com wrote:
Thanks for the interesting historical perspective on this video, Mark.
If anyone would like to add or elaborate on
Mark's comments (and supply pix, if available),
I would like to run this as a "Carbide Corner" piece in the next TEXAS CAVER.
I think it would make a very entertaining
article and I can always use more articles like this (God, could I?!).
Thanks,
(The other) Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Minton [mailto:mmin...@caver.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 10:56 AM
To: texascavers@texascavers.com
Subject: Re: [Texascavers] video of caving in the El Abra
The trip when this video was made took
place in December 1974 as I stated. The mine
road was just being completed. In fact, when we
first arrived we could not drive quite all the
way to the top. We camped on the road for a
couple of days while the road crew finished the
last bit to the crest. It is written up in
various trip reports in AMCS Activities
Newsletter No. 1, p. 1, 3, 5, 6 (Jan.,
1975). That was a very active time for El Abra caving.
The rope-climbing practice was indeed in
the front yard at Kirkwood Central, as Logan
surmised. In the early chopping sequences, the
guy following Logan with the beard, glasses and
receding hairline is Tom Ramsey (Ohio). I think
one of the women was Nancy Sayther (who climbed
the tree). Joe Maskasky, who made the movie, is
the guy who picked up the fer-de-lance and later
wore a black helmet and dropped a pit. I think I
also got a glimpse of Terry Sayther and Andy
Grubbs. Harold Goldstein is the guy in the
yellow helmet doing the big pit (Cuesta) and
later seen without a helmet (balding).
There was no GPS in those days, and
there was little vertical relief in the jungle,
so landmarks were difficult to come by. There
were also no topo maps at a usable scale. The
route was based on a hand-drawn map that Neal
Morris made based on aerial photographs (and
which the choppers consult in the movie). In
order to stay on course, we chopped very straight
lines from one huge sinkhole to the next, where
we would then take a new compass bearing. The
first person, in this case Logan, would chop just
enough to get through. Subsequent people chopped
more and more of the vegetation out of the way,
and the last person had a saw or ax to cut down
larger trees. The result was almost like a
tunnel through the jungle. We constantly took
foresights and backsights along the trail to stay
on course, since a small error early on could
result in missing the next sink entirely. It
worked remarkably well. (In some earlier cases
people flew over the intended route in a small
plane and flagged it by unfurling rolls of toilet
paper. Choppers just looked up and followed the TP in the tree tops.)
The jungle was so thick that a few
meters from the trail you couldn't even tell
where you were. It was also quite
uncomfortable. Almost everything had thorns or
stung or bit. There was also no
water. Occasionally there would be an especially
tall tree, which we could climb high enough to
see over the canopy. Sinks and large pits could
be seen as the canopy sloped down around
them. Smaller pits were found randomly, only if
they were almost directly in our path. Sendero,
the deepest single drop in the El Abra, was found
this way. No telling how many more are out there
that no one will ever find. When we wanted to
check a promising area, someone would sit in a
tree with a whistle and act as a beacon so that
people fanning out into the jungle could find
their way back to the trail. If a trail went
unused for more than two or three years, it
essentially disappeared back into the
jungle. Trail maintenance was an important
activity for several years when caving was popular there.
Mark
At 07:43 AM 7/14/2011, Gill Edigar wrote:
>Bill Russell was walking along just ahead of the
>camera for a while during one of the 'jungle
>chop' sequences. I kept thinking I got glimpses
>of Joe Sumbera bearded out but never got a good
>enough frontal shot to say positively. I was
>nearly 3000 miles away in Virginia at the time
>but it was news of these jungle chops and
>cave/pit discoveries that encouraged me to
>resign from the Army in March '75 and return to Texas and Mexico caving.
>--Ediger
>On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 11:39 PM, Logan McNatt
<lmcn...@austin.rr.com> wrote:
>Wow Mark, that video sure does bring back some
>memories! The rope climbing at the beginning
>has got to be at 1307 1/2 Kirkwood, the old
>Kirkwood Kaver Kommune in Austin. I'm pretty
>sure that's my 1961 Ford Fairlane parked out
>front. In the jungle chops, that's me in the
>brown Stetson hat and the sleeveless Army shirt,
>wielding a machete. All those El Abra jungle
>chops were excellent training for the years I
>lived in Belize, and introduced all of us to
>fer-de-lances, boa constrictors, army ants,
>parrots, soyates (ponytail palms), mala mujer,
>and many awesome pits. I'll never forget
>watching Frank Binney make the first rappel into
>Sotano de la Cuesta, and about 30 feet down
>exclaiming "Oh ****!!!!" We all thought
>something was wrong, but he just said "No, you'll see". And we did.
>I hardly recognize anyone else in the video
>except you, Mark. Just looked through the old
>AMCS Newsletters, and there was a huge trip in
>Dec 1973/Jan 1974. Could it have been that one
>rather than Dec 1974? Not sure if the Otate
>Mine road was open that early, though.
>Thanks very much for sending that link, and
>thanks to Joe and Harold for making it possible.
>Logan McNatt
>On 7/13/2011 9:59 PM, Mark Minton wrote:
> Harold Goldstein, aka King of the
> Hlocuts, has digitized and posted on YouTube an
> old Super-8 video shot by Joe Maskasky back in
> December 1974. It depicts a trip up the newly
> opened Otates Mine road in the Sierra de El
> Abra, during which a new, shorter trail was
> chopped to Sótano de la Cuesta (-217 m, a
> large, open-air pit with a 174-m entrance
> drop). "Only one more chopping day until
> Christmas!" Along the way several noteworthy
> caves were discovered, including the difficult
> Cueva de Diamante (eventually pushed to -621 m)
> and Sótano de Sendero (-223 m with a 217-m
> entrance drop). (See early AMCS Activities
> Newsletters.) Several venerable Texas cavers
> in their earlier days make appearances. How
> many can you recognize? The movie is grainy,
> discolored and without sound, but will be
> entertaining for old-timers familiar with the
> area and the times. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S90zQBj17kI>
>Mark Minton
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Permanent email address is mmin...@illinoisalumni.org
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