Airman's cave. v1

First of all, I moved to Texas to do a Masters in Ocean Engineering at the University of Texas Austin. (HOOK 'EM!) So, this chapter of MaineMountainMen is from Austin.
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This morning, JP (a fellow engineering student) and I got up before dawn to head down to airman's cave. This cave is right in the middle of the Barton Creek greenbelt. For those non-Austin readers, it's only about 5 minutes from downtown.

First picture (above) is the approach, up the creek bed and to the left. It's been dry here for a while. Hot, too. The sun had just coming up around 7AM and it was already ~90 degrees F.

JP is excited that it's only 90° out.


I'm new to this whole caving thing (don't call it spelunking). You need knee pads, elbow pads, lights, helmet, and clothes that can get dirty for this one. It's about a kilometer of crawling on your stomach... sounds fun... right?



After suiting up, we were already sweaty and quite ready to get into the cave. Here's JP going in. Inside it's about 60°. Much nicer. Except...
for a heaping mat of daddy long legs. And I do mean heaping. They were perhaps in some mating school?

Here are the spiders just after the entrance to the cave. The dark mat further back in the picture is comprised of more spiders. See second photo below. The tunnel is only about 2.5 feet high, so we had to slide on our stomachs, hoping not to disturb the herd (by the way, what do you call a mass of spiders?)


Not long after passing what could have been the gauntlet, we arrived at the birth canal. This is a passage so narrow that you have to go through with BOTH arms out in front of you. I didn't have both arms out in front and I got stuck. After squirming around for 10 minutes or so and extricating myself, I decided perhaps a more novice cave would be better for starting off my caving career and I convinced JP we should go eat breakfast. Here's JP in a wider section of the "birth canal". (this cave is old hat for JP, he's been in pretty far before)
After turning around and making it past the spiders again, we snapped a parting shot and headed to Kerby Lane for biscuits and gravy.

Patagonia

I woke up late today, and thought, I'm in Patagonia: a day here without an adventure is a day wasted. I waited out the mid-day heat and left (walking) from an apartment on the edge of Coyhaique (Chile) to climb a nearby mountain. Even at 3PM it was 80° out. Photo one is the route. I need to figure out the name of the mountain, but it's in between the Makai, to the right, and a range they call El Divisidero behind on the left. The route starts on the right. It's mostly steep hiking up slides, but includes a 30' solo up nice rock and an 80' solo up grade 5 crumbly rock. Above that is mixed animal paths and exposed crumbly ridge. Decent was via rock slide and bush-wack on the east side. There are no real paths, except those made by sheep. Fortunately sheep take the good routes, unfortunately sheep are 3' tall.

60' up the crux, the rock in my right hand split in two and I realized that I was going to have to find another route down. That added an element of excitement to things.
Looking back at the route and crux:


The summit was beautiful, but time there was short as I needed find a safe decent route. I opted for a rock slide that worked well. The bushwack below the slide was brutal. In Chile, they have these stiff burrs that really get you, and they're everywhere.
Summit shot:
The climb was great. Made it back around 8:30 (still light out). Here's some cool lichen I saw on the way down. I've never seen it before (in US or here in Chile), but there are so many lichen species, chances are slim that it's new. If you know what species it is, let me know.
Also, check out www.seascapemodeling.org/patagonia for more pictures from my trip down here. I'm working near the Melimoyu Volcano for the Austral Summer as the scientist in residence for the Melimoyu Ecosystem Research Institute.