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‘Sistema Huautla‘ is a deep cave located in the Sierra Juárez mountain range in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca. It is the deepest known cave in the Western Hemisphere and the 8th deepest in the world. First explored in the 1960s, Sistema Huautla is now known to have 17 entrances and over 40 miles of interconnecting passageways reaching a depth of 5,069 feet.

History of Exploration
In 1965, expeditions to this mountainous region of Oaxaca, Mexico revealed huge potential for deep caves. The following year several dramatic entrances were discovered by a team of Texas cavers near the tiny village of San Agustín Zaragoza. Suspicions of a super cave were confirmed. Since the initial discovery of Sistema Huautla, roughly 30 consecutive seasons of heavy expedition work took place, mapping out and piecing together the system as it is known today. Despite all of the major discoveries, including a depth achievement of -1475m, there is still a major piece missing from the puzzle: a seemingly unattainable 5.5km section of passage that essentially divides the entire system into two separate halves – where the water enters, and where it exits. Sistema Huautla has been described as the "most remote place ever reached inside earth."

San Agustin Sump
The San Agustin Sump, a flooded tunnel marking the deepest point in Sistema Huautla, Oaxaca, México, was discovered in 1977. The sump lies at a depth of 1325 meters and requires the use of multiple, staged underground camps in order to reach it.

New Species
In recent years, biologists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have entered the cave searching for cave-adapted animals. The UNAM crew have discovered three new species of tarantulas, two new species of so-called daddy longlegs, and one new species of scorpion. Based on the biological samples they collected, the UNAM crew estimates the caves are possibly four to five millions years old. Steele encountered a Talus Cone, a pile of debris indicating there was once an opening to the surface, that contained bones that looked to be a mammoth.

Proyecto Espeleológico Sistema Huautla (PESH)
Proyecto Espeleológico Sistema Huautla or PESH is an international group of deep cave explorers, primarily from the United States and Mexico, devoted to the exploration and scientific documentation of Sistema Huautla, the deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere, located in the Sierra Mazateca in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Their quest is to leave no question marks on Sistema Huautla’s map. Bill Steele, the expedition co-leader, described Sistema Huautla in Men’s Journal last year as “probably the greatest cave on Earth. It’s already the 8th deepest cave on the planet, and it’s longer than the top 16 deepest caves, which means it’s huge. And there’s so much more we haven’t discovered. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Mission of PESH

 * To seek the deep
 * To explore, survey and conduct a comprehensive speleological study of the Sistema Huautla area caves
 * Annual expeditions from 2014-2023
 * Goal of reaching 100 km in length
 * Goal of reaching 1,610m in depth, a vertical mile
 * Support the underground research of Mexican scientists

This year’s expedition plans to push on into unexplored portions of the cave system and hopefully add to its record depth. But there is more to the expedition than the quest for new records. PESH has undertaken a ten year program of exploration that will expand and refine the map of Sistema Huautla as well as study the geology, hydrology, archaeology and paleontology of the caverns and the biology of creatures and organisms living deep within the earth.