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Jamaican Caving Notes |
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Mar 06, 2003 ROTA CAVE: Field notes: R. S. STEWART Cavers: R. S. Stewart, I. C. Conolley, M. Taylor The plan for this day was to find the west entrance to Rota Cave, travel through it and exit at the east entrance, and then to find and enter the nearby Rota Sink. I was fairly certain that with the positions I had for Peterkin East entrance, and Rota East, that we'd be able to find our targets without the need of a local person. Accordingly, we hiked past Liebert's, saying hello to "Daddy", the elder Mr. Maggy, as we passed, and then through the farm onto the trail that leads to Bottom Ground. The route to follow is to take the first right, after Liebert's Great Hole, down into the bottom land. The GPS got us to the vicinity of Peterkin East where we found a flag from last November marking the route up though the bush. The night before, I'd worked out the bearing and distance from this point to where the topo showed the Bottom Ground River to sink into Rota. At the flag, I set the azimuth on the Brunton, then paced off the distance. I was pleased to have the west entrance to Rota Cave come into sight within several minutes, right where I thought it would be. The entrance can also be easily found by locating the Bottom Ground River, (in fact a small seasonal stream), and then following it until it enters the cave, although this is not the easiest way to do the hike. Prior to going in, a GPS position was taken and saved as wpt's 75/76. The entrance is 10 metres, Az 90, from the wpt's. Due to the terrain, the position is non-differential, although 3D. The track file later showed the position to be stable for most of the averaging time. Going in, we went fairly quickly until we reached the main river passage. The sound of the water flowing could be heard well before we reached the large east - west hall that carries the river. The cave at this point is quite impressive. A large chamber stretches off to the east, while upstream to the west it narrows but is still sizeable. From the left the river flows in carrying the waters from Peterkin Cave and the Tangle River, (at this time not to be seen above ground in the pasture land that lies to the west of Peterkin). To the right, the waters flow through pools and little rapids, disappearing off into the darkness beyond the light of our headlamps. We began to now to work our way downstream, staying to the side of the larger pools where possible to avoid having to swim. Careful searching in the water as we went revealed Sesarma verleyi. The shining of two small, bright golden eyes in the stream betrayed the presence of a crayfish. This crayfish was apx 10 cm long, light coloured and when compared to a crayfish seen the next day in the Martha Brae River, in Windsor, appeared to be a different species. (The observation of the crayfish at Windsor seemed almost arranged. As I washed clothes in the river, it darted up and held perfectly still right in front of me, in shallow water, for nearly a minute). Bats in low numbers were in residence in the area of the junction to the west entrance. American Roaches were numerous in this section, but were absent as we went further downstream. Cave crickets were plentiful throughout. After about 100 metres of following the river, being able to keep from getting wet over the knees by keeping close to the walls, we came to a large T junction. The river here flows to the left, and to the right, large breakdown chambers rise onto dry ground. Taking the left branch, we continued to follow the river and soon came to the east entrance that we knew from June. In June, we had looked down into this river, flowing towards us from the depths of the cave, and had observed it to all drain into small passages before it could exit into the valley below. Now, we were able to see the passages dry and accessible. We had a good look, then headed back into the cave to look at the breakdown chambers at the last T junction, and then to try to circle back, and out, the small passsage on the south wall near the east entrance that had taken the bulk of the river in June. We soon reached the junction and headed up into the breakdown chambers. Here, we found a very large colony of bats, many more than what the first junction, near the west entrance, had held. The first breakdown chamber had many bats. This then gave way to a second chamber that had very many bats. We walked over large deposits of fresh fluffy guano. Carrying on through this second chamber we came into even greater numbers, the disturbance of our lights filling the air with flying bats and causing a drizzle of feces and urine to fall upon us. The breakdown chambers continued on ahead of us, but the combination of my dislike of being showered with bat excretions, and the disturbance we were causing to them suggested that we turn around. It should be noted that for reasons unknown, this section of Rota Cave is not accurately mapped in Jamaica Underground. However, a route down to the north that is shown as circling back to the east entrance can be found in the first breakdown chamber. I headed down into this to see if it was indeed the passage that I thought it to be, while Malibu and Ivor stayed up top. It was a bit of a scramble, but soon give way to a complex of little sponge-like pasages, somewhat like Marta Tick, but partially flooded. The amount of garbage that was seen through here was astounding. Bottles, bags, jugs, boots, you name it, dozens of items of washed-in garbage sat, or hung, in various spots. The passages kept heading in the right direction, so I flagged and kept going. By this time, Malibu and Ivor had begun to follow me, but Ivor was some distance back and we were soon out of sight and contact. As I reached one particular squeeze into the next void of this underground sponge, I felt a definite breeze flowing past me, blowing in the direction I was travelling. Good stuff. I went through, with Malibu catching up about this time, and saw off to the left through formations and little chambers the light of Ivor's headlamp. I called out to him, "Where'd you just come from?" I wondered if he'd gone back around to the east entrance and was coming in along the little passage we'd seen, the one I was hoping to go out. Nope, he'd come to the same spot by taking a different route west of us after we'd gone out of sight ahead of him. This whole area is very cool and very complex. Now that we'd joined up, we carried on and within a couple of minutes I could hear the sound of the river ahead of me. We soon found ourselves coming out the little passage that is just inside the east entrance chamber on the south wall. This is the passage that had taken the water in June and thus explained all the garbage that we had passed. We took a break at the east entrance, then headed out to find Rota Sink. This cave should have a high priority for bioinventory. It has a wonderful collection of inhabitants and has seen little human disturbance due to the pools and river that discourage people of the district from entering for purposes of guano mining. If it were somehow possible to prevent garbage from being washed into this system, this is something that should be seriously considered. The human detritus found here is not biodegradeable and will continue to accumulate. |
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