Sistema Huautla
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Sistema Huautla is a cave system in the
Sierra Mazateca The Sierra Mazateca is a mountainous area, part of the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca mountain range, located in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico. It is named after the Mazatec people, who are indigenous to the area. Geography ...
mountains of the southern Mexican state of
Oaxaca Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of Mexico. It is ...
. it was the deepest cave system in the Western Hemisphere, from top to bottom, with over 55 miles of mapped passageways.


Location

Sistema Huautla is a cave system in the
Sierra Mazateca The Sierra Mazateca is a mountainous area, part of the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca mountain range, located in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico. It is named after the Mazatec people, who are indigenous to the area. Geography ...
mountains in the Teotitlán District of the Cañada region in the southern Mexico state of
Oaxaca Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of Mexico. It is ...
. It is below the municipalities of
Huautla de Jimenez Huautla could mean any of the following locations in Mexico: * Huautla, Hidalgo in central-eastern Mexico *Huautla, Morelos in South-Central Mexico * Sierra de Huautla, a mountain range in south-central Mexico *Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca * San Mig ...
, Huautepec and Mazatlan Villa de Flores. it was long (end to end) with 25 distinct entrances and a depth measurement of from its highest known entrance to its lowest reached point. System Huautla is the deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere and the tenth deepest cave in the world; it is listed as the twenty-eighth longest at about 55.3 miles surveyed passage compared to the
Mammoth Cave Mammoth Cave National Park is an American national park in west-central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system known in the world. Since the 1972 unification of Mammoth Cave with the even-longer system under F ...
complex at 420+ miles.


History

In 1965 cavers from
Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
exploring the Sierra Mazateca mountains found several large caves; During the 1960s North American cavers subsequently gathered survey data and generated maps which showed their proximity to each other. Over time the ''Sótano de San Agustin'' was found to be connected to ''La Grieta'' and ''Nita Nanta'', and eight more cave entrances were discovered. It became clear that they belonged to one cave system, Sistema Huautla. it is known to have 20 entrances. In an expedition in 1977, the deepest point of the cave system was discovered after staging multiple underground camps, a flooded tunnel at 1325 meters, known as the San Agustín
sump A sump is a low space that collects often undesirable liquids such as water or chemicals. A sump can also be an infiltration basin used to manage surface runoff water and recharge underground aquifers. Sump can also refer to an area in a cave ...
. Subsequent
scuba diving Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for " Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Chr ...
expeditions in 1979 and 1981 proved logistically insufficient to transport equipment to explore it further. In 1994, during a 135-day expedition of 44 people, mostly from the UK and the US, 11 were cave diving using closed cycle life support systems called
rebreather A rebreather is a breathing apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of a user's breathing, exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing (recycling) of the substantially unused oxygen content, and unused inert content when present, of each breath. ...
s. They explored three parts of the sump system and discovered an upstream tunnel leading to the only known exit for the water that enters the Huautla caves, the spring of Peña Colorada. During a two-month expedition in 2013 involving 40 team members from the UK, USA, Canada, Poland and Mexico, cavers entered through Sótano de San Agustin; it took divers three weeks to reach "what looked like a calm, rock-enclosed lake about 100 feet wide", the San Agustín sump. One of them established a new record depth when stopping at 1545 meters. The new survey data gave the cave a total length of 64.2 kilometers. A navigable connection between where water enters Sistema Huautla and where it exits at Peña Colorada has yet to be found. Since then consecutive annual expeditions have been launched as part of the Proyecto Espeleológico Sistema Huautla (PESH). In 2018, an international team of 24 cavers could not find a connection of the nearby Cueva de La Peña Colorada Sump VII with Sistema Huautla during their two-month long expedition.


Geology

Sistema Huautla is a karst groundwater basin. In 1994,
dye tracing Dye tracing is a method of tracking and tracing various flows using dye as a flow tracer when added to a liquid. Dye tracing may be used to analyse the flow of the liquid or the transport of objects within the liquid. Dye tracking may be either qu ...
established Nita He and Nita Nashi as tributary caves via 1,100-meter-deep flow paths. The western hydrological boundary is the Huautla Santa Rosa Fault, in the East it is the Agua de Cerro Fault and in the North the Plan de Escoba Fault.James H. Smith, J
"Hydrogeology of the Sistema Huautla karst groudwater basin."
Bulletin of Association for Mexican Cave Studies (AMCS) n°9, 2002, 154 pages.


See also

*
List of caves This is a list of caves of the world that have articles or that are properly cited. They are sorted by continent and then country. Caves which are in overseas territories on a different continent than the home country are sorted by the territory' ...
*
Speleology Speleology is the scientific study of caves and other karst features, as well as their make-up, structure, physical properties, history, life forms, and the processes by which they form ( speleogenesis) and change over time (speleomorphology) ...
*
List of deepest caves This list of deepest caves includes the deepest known natural caves according to maximum surveyed depth . The depth value is measured from the highest to the lowest accessible cave point. See also * List of caves * List of deepest mines * Lis ...


References


Further reading

*Sides, A. G., and Sides, H., "Journey Toward the Center of the Earth," The Washington Post Magazine, August 28, 1994, pp. 14–18, 25-27, *Robert Forrest Burgess
The Cave Divers. Chapter 11 Deepest Quest
Aqua Quest Publications, Inc., 1999, 351 pages, ISBN, 1881652114. p 125-153. *Stone, W. C., am Ende, B., and Paulsen, M., "Beyond the Deep", 2002, Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY, 368 pp, *C. William Steele, Paul Steward (Editor), and Elizabeth Winkler. "Huautla: Thirty Years in One of the World's Deepest Caves

305 pages, *Tabor, James M. Blind descent : the quest to discover the deepest place on earth. 2010 Random House. 304 pages. *Jewell, Chris. 2013 "Huautla expedition, San Agustin, Mexico." National Speleological Society News 72.6 (June 2014).p 13-19. *Jewell, Chris. 201
"San Agustin 2013 expédition."
Bulletin of Association for Mexican Cave Studies (AMCS) n°25 (2014), 41 pages .


External links


Proyecto Espeleológico Sistema Huautla
(PESH) project of the
National Speleological Society The National Speleological Society (NSS) is an organization formed in 1941 to advance the exploration, conservation, study, and understanding of caves in the United States. Originally headquartered in Washington D.C., its current offices are in ...
and the US Deep Caving Team, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit
Association for Mexican Cave Studies, History
{{Recreational dive sites, cavsit Caves of Mexico Sierra Madre de Oaxaca Karst formations of Mexico