Caving in the Atacama

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I have been here in San Pedro de Atacama for 3 week now. Most of this time has been spent underground mapping caves for the Earth-Mars cave detection program. The first week was spent finding caves in the region. This task was given to the mapping team, which I am the leader of. The first few days were spent figuring out which strata of rock the cave were formed in. We had directions to seven caves from a former group of American cavers who had visited the area back in 2003-5, however these directions were extremely vague and had been recounted from memory, needless to say they were useless to our endeavor. The mapping team started by visiting the tourist cave at Valle de Luna. We took note of the unique strata that the tourist cave was located in. We located, with the help of a park official, another cave in the area, we now had an idea of what to look for in finding caves in the Cordillera de la Sal, the formation we knew the caves the previous expedition had found caves. Over the next few days the mapping team found several more caves, most were the caves that the previous expedition had found.
Our next task after locating the caves was to map the largest caves for volume. All members of the mapping team, Me, John Dedecker, Dan Ruby, and Cristina Colpitts developed a method to calculate the volume of these caves. We will all be publishing a paper on this methodology in the near future.
Mapping these caves took 5 days each and was extremely dusty work. We found dust masks at a local hardware store. We also mapped 2 cave anomalies during our stay.

The sensor team accomplished all of there goals, which were to place sensors in the caves and cave anomalies. This team was lead by expedition leader Jut Wynne, and composed of team members Pete Polsgrove, Tim Titus, and expedition doctor Linn Hicks.

On second to last day in San Pedro several of us got to take a short trip out to the salt lakes south of San Pedro. Pete Polsgrove, the team microbiologist, used this opportunity to collect samples.

Overall the expedition in the Atacama was successful, the mapping team preformed flawlessly and professionally. We accomplished all that was expected of us and more. I look forward to working with everyone on this expedition in the future.

I have included pictures in this entry of caves and other locals in the San Pedro region.

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Photos

The church in San Pedro
On the plaza

Tapistry
Weaving, located in the museum.

Tapistry
Weaving, located in the museum.

Salt Landscape
Me ridge walking

Mapping Team
Salami sandwiches again!

Passage
Me in a salt encrusted passage.

Salt Landscape
Salt bedrock erodes in to step like formations.