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Jamaican Caving Notes |
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Apr 1, 2004 CRYSTAL LAKE CAVE Position: WGS84 - 18 27' 24.8" N, 77 22' 37.8" W, +/- 25 m Field notes: GUY VAN RENTERGEM Cavers: G. van Rentergem, D. Roggy The rediscovery of Crystal Lake Cave, (take 2). Today was our last day at the Green Grotto complex. Before we left, I really wanted to get the location of the Crystal Lake Cave. Three days ago, Adam miraculously rediscovered this cave, which was located somewhere in the middle of the bush. During that day, it took us more than 3 hours to reach it. But somehow, I was convinced it couldn't be too far away from the Green Grotto Caves because we had made this huge turn back. So there we were. Only Dietrich and me, without a GPS. So how on earth could we get the location of that cave? Well, listen. We had a compass, a watch and also the laser disto to measure distances. The idea was to do the same trip again, as three days ago when we were with Adam, through the jungle. But this time, we would survey our route. If we finally reached the cave, we would draw our path on a paper and then we could determine the direction from the cave straight to our start point, and so survey our way back. So far the theory. How does this worked out on the terrain? First obstacle was the very dense forest. Free sight for more than 8 meters was wishful thinking. Surveying in a terrain like this would take ages. So to speed up the work, we decided to use a rougher, error prone method. We would write down our times we walked in a certain direction. If we could keep our speed constant, then those times were a good measure of our covered distance. This sounded very reasonable, but the terrain there was very rough with steep slopes, tangled trees, and with razor sharp rocks ready to cut you in little pieces the moment you fall. All this of course made our method very questionable, but it would give us a very rough guess of our location. But that was what we did! The first man chopped his way through the thick bush, while the second person held the compass and corrected the direction of the first man. He also wrote down the bearings and times in the notebook. Somehow, we managed to find our way back to the cave, after only two hours, working like horses. So far, so good. Once at the entrance of the Cristal Lake cave we drew, based on our measurements, a rough sketch of our trail in the notebook on checkered paper. One square counted for 5 minutes difficult terrain, and one square and a half was for easy terrain. So, at last we had our guess of where the Green Grotto Caves were. Now, the tricky part was to decide which direction to go for the Green Grotto Cave. My biggest fear was that we had taken the wrong direction and so missed our goal. In that case, we would be lost and maybe we would still be surveying the day you read this report. At last, we chose, after studying our rudimentery map, to go due North. The plan was now to survey this shorter distance more precisely than our first long part of the journey. This time, we would do a regulary survey measuring distance, slope and bearing. This of course would slow us down considerably. As said before, the free sight was a maximum of 8 meters. We hadn't the foggiest idea of how far it would be. It could be 100 meters, or it could be 5 kilometers. It could also be 20 km if we went in the wrong direction... Well, we were already so far. We looked at each other, took a deep breath and started with this ordeal that we had unleashed over ourselves. It was insane. That is the least I can say. It was a cloudless midday and the temperature was high. Dietrich chopped his way through the forest without complaining. I did the survey without complaining. We didn't speak and worked like madmen. Already ten survey stations; how many to follow? We felt isolated from the rest of the world. Nobody knew where we were, and nobody would find us if something happened. Twenty stations. A Red Stripe would be very welcome. Thirty stations. Chop, Chop... Hey Dietrich, are we mad? Yeah man!! Chop Chop... And then a miracle at station 35. We saw a glimpse of the path running to the wall at the lake!!! Incredible, we made it right to our starting point! We were indeed very good, or we had just an enourmous amount of luck. Well, I guess it is the last, and I should have played the lottery on that day. After putting the survey in the computer, it showed us that the Cristal Lake Cave was only 340 m South from the Green Grotto Lake. That is really close! More notes for Crystal Lake Cave, March 29, 2004. |
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