¡Hola amigos y amigas! This is a pretty broad-scale mailing, going out to those of you who were on the last trip (about three weeks ago), those of you who have been on previous trips, and those of you who expressed an interest in future trip but have not yet been able to make it for some
reason or other.

The most recent trip to the Laguna de Sanchez area in Nuevo León was March 13-20. We had me (of course) and Randy Brown (a L de S veteran), Jerry Atkinson, Wayne Bockleman, and Mary Thiesse from Houston, Justin Shaw and Trevor Tingle (also from Austin), and Michael Denneborg from Aachen, Germany. Michael was last in the area 15 years ago doing field work for his thesis. He spent seven months there!

Despite having a small group (8), and despite losing three members for a couple of days due to vehicular problems, we were very productive, surveying in 13 caves and sketch-mapping two more. The Monterrey cavers joined us the first Sunday (the famous Erick, Ramón, and Mauricio) and tried to meet up with us again the following Thursday, but our note blew away and they had no idea where to look for us.

Highlights of this last trip:

• Surveyed Cueva YMCA, which turned out to be quite pleasant, and an easy climbdown.
• Surveyed the four "M" caves, including the longest (Monterrey) which was found on this trip.
• Surveyed the cave wa-a-ay out at the end of the spur at Mesa Colorada, where I almost rode a rock to my death last July. It was named Mirador.
• Surveyed second entrances to Navidad and Mosquitos.
• Surveyed the two caves marked "leads" on the surface survey by Crow, Derek, and Patty for last December (?).
• Surveyed the biggest cave on Mesa Colorada, Oyamel, which has a complex breakdown maze near the entrance and a big rift (up to 100' high) in the back. This is likely the "horizontal bat cave" we were first told about that lead us to Mesa Colorada in the first place.
• Continued the surface survey, tying in all known caves and karst features.
• Surveyed from the entrance to my floating survey in Enrique. The second
  drop is still unsurveyed.
• Surveyed 200 m in a new cave at Camotera, which still has two good leads
  heading down. This is a real cave, unlike the fissure caves of the Mesa
  Colorada.
• Were shown a new area of pits wa-a-a-a-a-ay out on the Camotera plateau
  towards Portrero Redondo. This is where we will concentrate our efforts in
  November. I expect lots of caves will be discovered there.

Anyhow, we now have seen 52 caves and 11 FROs (for the record only), forty of which are mapped. Of those forty, four caves are not finished, and five are sketch maps only. Two caves were completely mapped in 1985 by Denneborg and company. We also have leads on several other caves that we haven't seen yet, but that Geraldo promises to show us next time. I am already planning a trip the week of Thanksgiving, November 20-28. We will camp for four or five nights on the Camotera Plateau. If interested and you can commit to the trip, let me know sometime over the summer. I want to keep the trip to a manageable number of participants, but there is more than enough to keep even a large group busy. Preference will be given to Laguna veterans, and vertical cavers with proven survey (sketching) ability, although any vertically-competent caver is welcome.

Linked to this report are four files. The first is an rtf of all the caves, their lengths and depths. Note that we have almost 5.5 km of survey after five trips, 2.5 of that in the caves! (Too bad it's not all in the same cave, though...) There is also a plan view of the entire Mesa Colorada area, with 26 caves and FROs. This is the area that has seen the most attention by us so far, and is essentially complete. There is one unfinished cave, one unmapped cave, and two caves with sketch maps only that really should be surveyed. It would be great to add a little more surface survey as well, so I could show the logging road more accurately. We will probably spend one day there in November to finish up the loose ends, and because it is such a cool place. Finally, there are two profiles from the Mesa Colorada karst, one looking North and the other looking East. Note that there is about 200 m of relief in the karst. Too bad the caves are nowhere
near that deep.

Anyhoo, it's a rambling sort of trip report, but I hope it gives you all an idea of what has been accomplished and what we plan to do in the future. Lemme know if you plan to join us in November.

-- Jim "Choque" Kennedy
jkennedy@batcon.org