DRSS Exploration 2010

How many times in your life have you received an offer, to take an unforgettable journey into the far reaches of the earth, to make new discoveries? A trip to the moon would have been no more interesting or exciting to us than this excursion, as we slowly descended our rope, into a super huge sink hole, known only to the locals, deep in the jungle. Or when we repeatedly swapped out regulators to penetrate a mile of newly discovered underwater passage so intense and beautiful, it could change your life forever.

I’ve been blessed with good fortune since 1993, which seemed to be the official start of my sump diving and dry cave education. Marbry Hardin called and invited me to come along and help on the first Windy River Cave push, and this experience started a long list of opportunities. All you have to do is be willing to show up, trip after trip, year after year, take the abuse, and learn what you can from the masters. That’s all I did, and here I am.

It was late in June, 2010 when I received an email from Forrest Wilson, which featured a video clip forwarded from Philip Lehman, our Dominican Republic Speleological Society (DRSS) contact. I proceeded to hit the “play” button on the video clip and was immediately spellbound by a helicopter’s shadow circling a huge water filled sinkhole cut deep into the terrain below. “Man I wonder what Forrest has up his sleeve now?” Having just returned from a trip to the Yucatan, the offer to go explore the Dominican was still more than I could refuse. My wife tried to talk some sense into me, but as she spoke, my blank stare indicated “cave fever”. Forrest, our world traveler, just returned from diving Abaco and scheduled leave for Australia later that summer was obviously rigged for fun.

The stage was being set for another trip, but the flip side of that was the need to ignore life’s responsibility!

In researching the Dominican Republic, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago, one will discover that the island is shared with Haiti, covering 18,704 miles, with a population of an estimated 10 million people, and with French and Haitian interludes, the Spanish spoken there is a bit difficult to understand. The economy is largely made up of sugar cane production and advances in telecommunications. Music is of high importance, with merengue being the national song and dance and baseball it’s sport.

There was a need for sump divers having dry caving and climbing experience for this project and our goals were specifically; to take on the series of sink holes that Philip had located from the air, to dive and continue exploration work the DRSS is now maintaining, and to continue survey. With our working time frame of seven days, logic will tell you there’s too much to do in that short period of time.

It is one thing to prepare for cave diving in another country, but it’s quite another to pack bags for dry caving, climbing, survey work, and cave diving. The gear kept hitting the floor and I looked over at my pack as it began to grown. 70 meters of rope, thousands of feet of knotted line, helmets, cave boots, harnesses and climbing hardware. I’m not sure how we managed to get 4 bags over there, and keep under the airline weight restrictions. Wheels on my dive bag would have certainly helped!

See the article

See the full article by Mark Wenner published in Underwater Speleology.