When we returned in 2003 for a 7 week field season, I spent most of the time on the small island of Savu 200 km. west of Timor. Before I went to Savu we planned on a multi-day traverse through the Oetuke river drainage on Timor because it was relevant to my project and it was so spectacular. After a several hours on a very bumpy road we arrived in the Kolbano region of south Timor and convinced a few local fishermen to help us navigate through the canyon. The first few hours were great as we worked our way up the canyon documenting the geology. We made it to what we termed the gate, where the canyon narrows into a spectacular jungle covered slot canyon by the early afternoon. My advisor and I quickly became separated from the rest of our group as we were trying to document and interpret the geology. We noticed that there had recently been a flood in the canyon leaving lots of mud holes from flood waters drying up. As I was climbing down from a ledge where I had been taking a photo I got ready to jump down and since the ground looked like a typical gravel bar I jumped. Immediately I realized that it was a bad decision as I sunk up to my chest in a quicksand-like mud. After my feet found something solid to stop me, I tried to get out of the mess by increasing my surface area i.e. lying down. This didn’t work however because the quicksand was saturated with water and I just sank some more. Luckily at about this time my advisor showed up and using his long hammer pulled me out. After I got out we looked at the exposed mud hole and laughed because you couldn’t tell that the 2 inch layer of gravel covered a mud hole.

After a quick bath in the river getting all the mud and sand off we kept going. It was getting dark and the rest of our group was long gone. At just about dark we found the group setting up camp at a wide (30-40ft) section of the canyon. I found a nice flat sand bar and quickly set up my SD Comet. As usual somebody had some gear problems. They decided not to bring their tent because they couldn’t fit it in their packs. They were particularly grateful for my light, sturdy, and spacious Comet as it provided plenty of room for us and our gear. As we were eating dinner we began hearing rocks hitting the ground by the tent. We had seen and heard monkeys all day and decided that we better move the tent a little closer to the river. With the tent as far away from the canyon walls as possible and feeling protected in the tent, we actually got some sleep in between trundling episodes.

The next morning was awesome as the geology and traverse got more and more intense. My advisor and I spent a good portion of the morning working in a geologically puzzling area. Sometime between 10-12:00 p.m. we could not longer see the group but we figured they would wait for us since they had the food, water, and the guides. Shortly after our group ditched us, the canyon grew more and more difficult to navigate with bigger waterfalls and more chokestones clogging up the canyon. That’s when we decided that our supposed guides must have taken a different route. The question that we couldn’t answer was where that route was. Well we decided to stick to the canyon because the pick up was near the top and bushwhacking out was nearly impossible. We ended up bushwhacking anyways as the waterfalls became too large to climb up. There were few that we used log ladders to climb up and one that I made a rope with some clothes to pull my advisor up. Then the canyon turned sharply to the south and narrowed to about 3 ft. wide with massive chokestones about 30-40 ft. up making the canyon more like a cave. As we started up this section we realized the only frequenters to this area were the spiders (see picture) which had spun webs across the canyon. The webs seemed to be proportionally as thick as the spiders were large. Using sticks to break the webs we made our way through the dark narrow canyon. It was just light enough inside that you could see large fruit bats flying around above us.

By the time that we made it out of the canyon the sun was setting and we were exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. So I got my filter out and started filtering the closest, what I thought to be a spring. I gave my advisor a drink and he kind of made a funny face and then I took a drink. There was definitely something not right about the water. A few seconds later we noticed that a small village of very isolated and primitive people lived just up from where we had filtered the water. That’s when we realized that a better term for this spring would be sewer.

When we finally met up with our group at about midnight in a small village in central Timor they couldn’t believe we actually went through the canyon. The locals via a translator told us nobody goes up that canyon and we responded: well, we know why.

Click here to see how Sierra Designs was used by Michael, a person in the know.