SALTPETER CAVE

“It took me 20 years to relocate La Salitrera (Saltpeter) Cave,” remarked Don Pancho Leautaud. “If you ... visit it, I think you’ll agree it was worth the search.” With a few directions and a topo map, it took us only three hours to reach the little ranch house near the cave, on a sizzling hot afternoon in late May of 1988. As we stepped out of the Jeep, a ranch, hand approached us.

While in the USA we might have had to do some explaining as to why we were on someone else’s property, here we were immediately welcomed with no questions asked if we could wait about two hours, said the man, he’d be happy to show us the cave entrance.

Meanwhile we could enjoy a swim in the river over yonder. We glanced over yonder and asked if that upside-down-bottle-shaped hill, 400 meters high, was the cerro marked La Salitrera on, the map.

“That’s it,” he said. “And the whole thing’s hollow.” This comment we tool to mean that it contains a cave. But later, we began to wonder...

The three of us, Jesús Moreno, Larry Monroe and I, wolfed down our sandwiches, crossed the barnyard and headed towards the hill. Following the ranch-hand’s uncomplicated directions, we promptly became lost and soon found ourselves standing at the edge of the high steep cliff.

Straight down below us could see what looked like a wide, dry riverbed, on the other side of which there was another cliff sporting a big orange scar pockmarked with holes. The only problem was that we had no rope along and none of us could fly. So we backtracked almost all the way to the farmhouse and scouted up the trail heading to the river which, further down had not only water, but even fish in it.

Like typical mad dogs and true cavers. We overcame the temptation to splash in the stream (The temperature was a good 100ºF in the shade), and stubbornly pushed on until we reached the orange scar. Above us me could see the spot where me had been standing earlier.

Just bellow it, the entire upper portion of the cliff was covered with open-air stalactites!

“Kind looks 1ike limestone,” me muttered as we scrambled up our side of the riverbank towards the first hole we could see. This went nowhere, and we were working on a second one when our friend the rancher appeared.

“Wel1, you’re practically there,” he said and pointed toward the main entrance a little further on. Pleasantly cool air was blowing out of the seven-foot-high Skylight Entrance as me hurried into it to escape the scorching sun. We didn’t get far, for we mere immediately stopped by a formidable drop, a good nine meters straight down.

Sunlight streaming through this aptly named entrance bathed the beautiful room below us. There were outstanding formations every-where! The on1y problem was that we had come prepared for a horizontal cave and the only way, we could see to get down below was over a network of long skinny wooden poles evidently placed there who knows how long before by treasure hunters.

“If Don Pancho could do it, so can we,” we mumbled as we lit our lamps and began crawling along the decrepit-looking tree trunks. This Indiana-Jones bridge brought us over to a far ledge where we found a diagonal log with a few notches in it. “Hmm, obviously the waydown ... lets hope it’s not too quick ... “ After that, another rickety bridge got us down to the floor.

Only later did we learn that Jesús, who we thought had a mere cold, was actually battling a fever precisely during these moments and had nearly blacked out while crawling along one of those wobbly sticks. The safety standards of Mexican treasure hunters leaves something to be desired.

A few minutes later we were standing below a large dome a good 30 meters (100 feet) high, admiring dusky stalactites on the ceiling and checking the perimeter for leads.

From here the entrance, lit by the late-afternoon sun’s rays, was truly spectacular. 0ff to one side of the room, through a low-hanging curtain of flowstone, we found a ten-meter-wide passage. We walked along it admiring gaudy displays of white flowstone on the dark walls.

At one point we came upon another of those infamous long poles, leaning against the cave wall. A short distance above its upper end there was a hole in the ceiling, which, was about nine meters high. Through the hole we could see several horizontal poles, obviously lying on the floor of a room above us.

Beyond the poles, bats were darting back and forth. “Those treasure-hunters must have been plumb loco.” We decided wondering how they could have got up that pole without breaking their necks. Ninety meters into the passage the center of the ceiling rose dramatically to maybe 40 meters (130 feet) and the whirl of countless batwings filled the chamber.

We were now walking on a layer of extremely dry powdery guano, which reminded Larry he had forgotten his mask. We all tried not to breathe too much, and proceeded deeper into the cave.

On the other side of a hole ten meters deep we came to the end of the passage and arrived at a special treat for those who brave the guano ... there on the right, standing all by itself, was an enormous white stalagmite in the shape of a bell about seven feet high and perfectly proportioned. Next to this most unusual formation we left a cave register so visitors can write vivid comments like “WOW” about the bell.

Backtracking to the Dome Room, toe found two more exits from the cave, and one very beautifully decorated and the other providing us with a sane way to get in and out of the cave without climbing any rotting poles.

On our way back to the farmhouse, we stopped to enjoy the cool, drinkable water of a spring that feeds the little river below the cave. We also ran into a CEO contingent backpacking in the camp near the spring. That night, after making a hot soup for ailing Jesus, we sat atop a hill near the ranch watching a typical dry-season fire burn up another hill like ours, all the while enjoying a wild serenade from hundreds of large cicadas in the bushes around us.

Next morning we surveyed the cave with the CEO gang’s help. Just about the time we finished, Mario Guerrero showed us a two or three-meter-high vertical passage not far from the Easy Entrance. “I climbed up to a point where I could see several horizontal passages which seem to be right above the roof of the Dome Room,” he said. Of course, we immediately thought of that pole-crossed hole we had seen in the ceiling ... and of rumor Don Pancho had mentioned, about a way of getting inside the cave from the top of the hill.

Certainly there must be a “second floor” to the cave and perhaps there’s some truth to the claim that “the whole darn hill is hollow.

We returned to La Salitrera Cave on October 15-16. The rainy season had turned the trickling spring into a regular Niagara and had left the river wide and deep enough to swim in.

Inside the cave, however, we found no indication whatsoever that water had got in during the last six months (perhaps putting a damper on the likelihood of a vertical entrance on hill top). We did find, a good distance from the main bat colony, a small group of vampire bats which occasionally produced a “black drizzle from their roost high on the ceiling of the Dome Room.

A few meters from this shower, one of the vampires lay dead on the floor. While visiting the Bell formation, we collected a sample of the non-vampire guano for Doctor Amado González Mendoza of the Social Security Medical Center, who is studying the presence of histoplasmosis spores in soil (and now guano) samples taken from all over Jalisco.

We then spent considerable time and effort in throwing a rope over a huge formation near the ceiling of the Dome Room so that Jesús and Susy could climb up to investigate what we hoped were passages leading to the “second floor.” Unfortunately, the Mezzanine that Jesús eventually reached led to dead ends. Mario’s passage and the Second-Floor Window still remained unchecked.