Hurricane! Our cave rescue trip with BDART is cancelled due to high water levels and we are forced to retreat to Barton Creek to wait it out – being forced back to the equivalent of Jungle Paradise with 3 meals a day could be worse though!
The rain didn’t stop for 2 days during which the creek turned into a brown, muddy torrent which we made the most of by practicing our river crossings. We started at a deep point which came up above our waists and tried to wade out as far as we could just to learn where our limits were. This was followed by some group and throw-line practice in which we used the Barton Creek kids as ‘expendables’, letting them float off down river over some rapids to be saved by us (hopefully). We braced ourselves for the Hurricane which was meant to hit later that day by sharpening Machetes, packing our kit so that we were ready in case we needed to bug out fast and cooking lots of cake in case the cooking facilities drowned. However, the expected ‘eye of the storm’ time passed with very little rain and wind and it looked as if the Hurricane had passed us by much to our annoyance as we were all prepared for some wet and windy fun!
We finished our acclimatisation week at BC by learning how to use a Machete and clearing a few trails for practice. This unsurprisingly proved to be great fun with any excuse found to hack at something. We went over some first aid in the afternoon and learnt that we had all passed our legal tests, so far so good.
