On July 19, 1997, Susy and I took a group of cavers - including several novices - to the foot of a hill called El Tapanco (The Attic). Here we did some ascending and belaying practice and exchanged anecdotes about close shaves in caves: situations that could have been prevented if this or that safety rule had been followed, such as wearing a helmet, carrying three sources of light, only using vertical gear you are familiar with, etc.
Next, we began our hike up the hillside, weaving our way through the ubiquitous dominguilla plants (which sting like nettles) and collecting limestone rocks covered with fascinating fossils. Near the top, we came upon a strange-looking carnivorous plant whose bright red, horizontal flower lies upon the ground and sports on its side a circular "death pit" lined with hairs that allow insects easy entrance but no exit.
The hole we were looking for is called El Sótano del Tapanco (literally, The Attic's Basement) and it's located near the top of the hill just beside a large karst outcrop which displays some of the finest "prickly rock" you could ever hope to avoid sitting on. From atop this point you can see lush, green limestone hills in every direction and looking straight down, a steep precipice that would offer a challenging workout to any climber desirous of shredding clothes and skin on the razor-sharp wall. The pit entrance is a hole about one by two meters wide immediately opening into a long fissure beneath the surface. A second hole, a few steps away, is only a few inches in diameter, but offers a dramatic view of the upper part of the pit where sunlight casts deep shadows on long, vertical formations covering the walls.
Borrowing an idea mentioned by the Brits on the Cavers Digest, I had brought along several lengths of airplane cable, which allowed us to rig directly off an abrasive rock with no need for padding. The floor of the pit is only 16m below, but we had hoped (from the sound of rocks tossed in) that there would be a second pit right next to the first. In fact, it turned out there was one, but choked with rocks a few meters further down. One more feature of the sótano was a very long tree root only an inch or so in diameter, which ran straight down from the very top of the pit to the bottom. "It looks strong enough to climb," exclaimed one would-be Tarzan, giving the root a few tugs, which resulted in a shower of small stones and dirt.
About an hour later, a member of the crew, named Sonia, had jumared her way up the rope -on her very first ascent of a real pit- to a point about 10m above the floor. At this precise moment, two of us happened to be checking her progress, peering down from the entrance and the small "peep hole." I was the one doing the peeping and saw, to my horror, a very large stone detach itself from the wall about a meter above the climber, a stone that neither she nor the rope had touched. The lozenge-shaped stone was at least two feet long, six inches thick and a foot and a half wide: the size where wearing a helmet no longer makes any difference. As if I were seeing it in a dream, it did a very slow flip in the air as it came straight at Sonia. In my mind's eye, I saw Sonia ripped from the rope and the three people at the bottom -whose headlamps I could just barely discern- crushed and battered.
But, incredibly, the rock disappeared from view and Sonia was still there, alive but bleeding from the back of both hands. Of course, all three of us shouted to the people below, who quickly replied they hadn't been touched by the deadly missile. Later I congratulated those three individuals for having followed the cave safety rule of never standing below a person on rope. "Er, well, actually, we had all been standing right there underneath her, but then we stepped over to the far end of the crack to have a look at some formations."
It hadn't previously occurred to me that roots can grow behind huge chunks of rock in a very solid, stable-looking pit and create a life-threatening hazard. It now seems obvious that suspicious looking spots ought to be carefully checked out by the first person bottoming the pit and that, in general, roots running up the side of a pit should be left in peace. Sonia emerged from the Sótano remarkably unpreturbed, with only scraped knuckles and a few bruises on her legs. The rock had barely grazed her on the way down. It had also missed the rope entirely... that is, until it hit bottom where it turned our unnecessarily long 60m line into two 30's. The three who had been at the bottom were profoundly moved by the experience and, reckoning they had been given a nearly miraculous second chance at life, immediately renamed the pit Volver a Nacer (Rebirth).
As for me, I emerged from the experience with that dramatic scene of the slowly falling rock forever imprinted in my memory and with yet another cave safety rule to pass on to all concerned: Don't Boot That Root!
John Pint