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Mexico Mayhem in Multiple parts. Part V: Day 2 Nohoch Na Chich (Giant Birdhouse)And now for my favorite :)Before I get too carried away, I think it needs to be said but none of the video or still images (and that goes for other systems too) can truly capture the beauty that we got to see down there. The best they can do is to give but a small teaser. We arrived at Nohoch a little before Kevin and his bunch decided to grace us with their arrival :) It's a bit of a hike to the Cenote, so we decided to stage all the gear (spare batterie, full tanks etc.) before gearing up into the wretchedly hot drysuits. We compared notes with Kevin, Don and Elissa, and decided that us, being the first team in would attempt to dive Parkers line, while the second team would take mainline, and then we'd switch. All good, assuming we could actually find Parkers line, that is! This cave is truly stunning. It looks (to me) like someone went crazy with wedding-cake icing and some tabs of LSD. None of the other caves I have seen so far look anything like the first 20-30 mins of this system. Also, average depth being 15-18 feet means that even with a ridiculously-sizes camera, I can get 25-30 mins back in. Usually I try to edit videos to be 5-7 mins, and keep to as few photos as I can so people don't get bored. However, this cave is so beautiful I just could not bring myself to do it -- sorry. From what Danny was telling us when he guided us in May, Nohoch is one of the few remaining places where you can see a significant amount of the original exploration line and (until people started stealing them) the original line markers. Sadly, apparently a lot of people feel like they have to have memento's, and this is all subject to change -- very sad. Nohoch is also the land of the "reach gap" a series of terrifyingly short jumps meant to be "reachable" by hand. Above ground  Looking down on the gearing-up benches   The gearing-up hut at least provides some minimal shelter from the sun.  The only kind of "staging" tanks we are qualified to do :)  We attempted to hit Parkers line, and I *thought* I had remembered where Danny made his tie-offs, but apparently not. We paralleled the mainline for a while, but then hit a big boulder. Andy spotted a line off in the distance, and we made for it. However, it was the downstream line and not Parkers. I realized that when I reached a jump after 1-2 mins swimming. I thought initially the jump was into the mainline, but once we actually managed to find Parker's line later in the day, it was obvious the jump was onto Parkers line. The downstream line is very very nice, but is pretty small and silty, and it only took a few minutes before I called the dive on "going the wrong way" and we re-grouped in the cenote. Tying in  The cave here is much smaller than upstream  But just as beautiful    You can actually see out to the (a?) cenote at one point  Once back on the surface, we debriefed with Kevin/Don and discovered our mistake. Kevin said they would follow the mainline and place a cookie where he thought Parkers line was, so we could see if it was the same jump we had seen. Meanwhile, we decided to also follow the mainline (as we could actually find this one :) but gave the other team a 10 min headstart so we weren't all up each others rear-ends the entire time.  There is some amazing structure on the mainline, right from the start.  Huge blocks of rocky formations    and then delicate speleothems   Then there are places like this which look like clumps of "rock people" watching on ...  .... and then Jaws. Sadly he is missing his lower "teeth"   There is also the "christmas tree" unfortunately I didn't really get any good stills/video of it. It's on the right of the frame here (hard to see)  And then heaven's gate. Sadly, this is so big and far from the line that it was really hard to capture well on camera. This is about 10 mins into the cave, and is lit up by streams of light coming in from a hole in the roof. Spectacular.      More "people" -- this area beyond Heaven's gate is called Disneyland, and looks the part!     Then there's the pillar. I think that of all the spectacular formations in this cave, the pillar is my favorite. Shockingly white and simple, sitting right next to a 90 degree turn in the line (so close I am amazed it is still standing). I cannot imagine how something like this can just form in such isolation with nothing else around it. Sadly it's a bit big to easily get good video shots with this camera ...this thing has to be 20+ feet tall and about the same around as a baseball bat.    After disneyland, the cave goes quite "smooth" and gets less decorated, but then starts up again   Stuff like this just blows my mind ...  A reach gap ... is that maybe 10-12 inches? Scary.   We decided to approach Parkers line in brute force. Kevin's cookie had told us where it was. This time, instead of trying to sneak up on it (from where we could not see the mainline), we ran our line within sight of the mainline, even though it gets a bit tight to run two lines in there. We were *very* glad we did .. Parkers line is money. We also saw the jump off to the downstream line also, and the layout started to become a little less of a mystery.      The wedding cake/christmas tree. Phenomenal ...so big I cannot get it all into shot   These look (to me) like soldiers manning the battlements ...  The gazebo (with inner-gazebo) ... imagine taking this one to the beach on the weekend?   ...and then back to the cenote. Tired, but sated (for now).    This cave is absolutely stunning, and I would say should be on everyone's to do list! Sadly, we didn't get to to Alberto's line this time as we had intended to come back to No Hoch but never made it. Next time Alberto! 2:10 PM - 12/9/2007 - post comment
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