22 Kilometers, 41 Dives and the Lessons We Learned Along the Way
When I first wrote about PURE, the project was still very much an experiment. The idea was relatively simple: create a cave exploration and survey project that was not built around a small, closed group of highly experienced explorers, but around a wider community of cave divers who wanted to participate, learn and contribute.
At the time, I didn't really know where that idea would take us.
The response surprised me. Suddenly, the challenge was no longer finding divers, but figuring out how to turn people with different levels of experience, schedules and motivations into a team capable of producing reliable work.
Sistema Ponderosa became the testing ground for that idea.
One thing I was clear about from the beginning was that this was not supposed to be a race for kilometers. Quality mattered more than quantity, and the purpose of PURE was never to see how much cave we could survey as quickly as possible.
Which makes the final result somewhat ironic.
By the end of the project, our teams had surveyed more than 22 kilometers of cave in 41 dives.
The interesting part for me isn't really the number. It is how a community project involving divers with very different levels of survey experience became organized and efficient enough to accomplish it—and what we learned in the process.
This is the aftermath of PURE.
Building the Team
From the moment PURE was born, we decided that participation would be limited to GUE divers. Interest was greater than I expected. We started with around 15 divers, eventually growing to approximately 25 members, with additional interest coming from divers around the world who wanted to travel to Mexico and participate.
In practice, PURE remained very much a local project. Most of our members work full-time in the diving industry, and planning often meant sending messages the evening before to see who suddenly had a hole in their schedule. It worked surprisingly well locally, but made integrating traveling divers difficult. It wasn't that we didn't want them—we simply couldn't reliably promise when the next project dive would happen.
The next challenge was experience. Although most participants were Cave 2 divers or above, being an experienced cave diver does not automatically make someone an experienced cave surveyor. In many ways, that was exactly the point of PURE.
Fortunately, we had a core group of around five experienced surveyors who became mentors within the project. Whenever possible, we paired newer surveyors with them so they could learn not only how to collect measurements, but how to recognize questionable data, record useful information and understand the process behind producing a reliable survey.
As the project progressed, the dynamics changed. Dives became longer and more complex, and we also wanted to investigate possible extensions. More experienced surveyors increasingly needed to work together. This created an interesting balance between two objectives that sometimes competed with each other: teaching people and completing the project efficiently.
Commitment was another interesting lesson.
Some members joined at the beginning and stayed until the end. Others showed enormous initial enthusiasm but never actually made a project dive. And, as probably happens with every exploration project, a few became particularly enthusiastic when the possibility of having their name associated with the final map came up.
Then there were the surprises.
A couple of divers joined halfway through and quickly became some of our most dependable members. They weren't concerned about getting the most exciting assignment; if work needed to be done, they did it.
Some of the people who impressed me most weren't necessarily our strongest surveyors either. There were divers whose data made me scratch my head and send them back to the same section—sometimes more than once. But they went back without complaint and collected it again until we had something we could trust.
Twenty-five names on a list don't make a community.
What matters more is what remained. New friendships formed, new buddy teams developed, and people gained confidence and experience in survey work. Out of those 25 members, perhaps six or seven now form a particularly close group who continue to work together and are enthusiastic about future projects.
A community isn't defined by how many people are in it, but by the relationships that remain when there is no longer a project asking them to show up.
And if that group continues to grow in the future, even better.
Making Every Dive Count
So, how did we manage to complete approximately 22 kilometers of survey in just 41 project dives?
First, I'm not even sure whether 41 dives should be considered a lot or a little. Could we have finished it in fewer dives? Probably. Could we have done a better job by slowing down? Also probably. Could some of the survey have been more precise? Definitely.
The objective was never to set a speed record. What we needed was a system that was simple enough to work with many different divers, but methodical enough that we could keep track of what had been done, what still needed to be done, and—perhaps most importantly—what needed to be done again.
Having the previous Ponderosa survey from 1998 gave us an enormous advantage. We weren't going into the system blind. We could use the existing survey to divide the cave into identifiable sections and build our assignments around them.
Ponderosa also gave us something that many cave projects don't have: options. The system has 17 known cenote entrances. We eventually had access to only to four of them during the project, but fortunately they were very well positioned. Combined with DPVs, this meant that even our furthest working areas could generally be reached within about 50 minutes of scootering.
We divided the cave into sections and created an assignment system in Google Drive. Each assignment contained information about the area, expected difficulty and required equipment configuration. Buddy teams could look through the available assignments and choose something appropriate for their experience, equipment and, at least in the beginning, what sounded interesting to them.
Of course, as the project progressed, the menu became smaller. Eventually the exciting choices disappeared and what remained was simply whatever nobody had done yet. Unfortunately, the cave doesn't resurvey itself, so somebody still had to go.
Towards the end of the project, the dives actually became more complex—not because there was more work left, but because previous teams had left breadcrumbs everywhere. Small sections needed to be checked, surveyed, resurveyed, rechecked and occasionally doublechecked. Instead of one main objective, a single dive could involve several small tasks scattered across different parts of the system.
For these dives, preparation was crucial. We printed the relevant sections of the map and marked each objective A, B, C, D, E and sometimes beyond. The day before, we discussed the route, visualized and memorized the objectives, and planned around gas, distance, DPV burn time, dive duration and our own endurance. Before entering the water, we reviewed everything once more.
Having the plan already in our heads made these complex dives surprisingly efficient. By the end, some felt more like underwater scavenger hunts than survey dives—but every remaining breadcrumb eventually had to be collected.
Managing 22 Kilometers of Data
With a system this large, mistakes are inevitable. Add multiple teams, multiple survey devices and many people handling the same project data, and organization above water becomes almost as important as the work underwater.
We had to resurvey parts of the resurvey. We deliberately overlapped certain sections so we could compare results, and when something didn't make sense, the only honest solution was often to go back underwater and collect it again.
Data management became one of the bigger challenges of the project.
One of our members, Jonathan Dekhtiar, introduced us to SpeleoDB, a new collaborative survey-data management system that was still in beta at the time. Instead of passing around different versions of files and hoping nobody overwrote somebody else's work—or discovering that an important piece of information had simply disappeared—we could maintain a versioned history of the project and keep track of changes much more effectively.
PURE effectively became one of the real-world testing grounds for the developing platform, and we were very happy to be guinea pigs. Cave-survey data management is a subject big enough to deserve an article of its own, so I won't go much deeper into it here.
But while the old survey, the access points, DPVs, assignment sheets and data-management tools all helped us work efficiently, I don't think any of them are the main reason we completed the project in 41 dives. The biggest factor was the divers themselves.
Efficiency Is a Team Skill
There is a huge difference between being able to cave dive and being able to work efficiently as part of a cave-project team.
You need to manage your equipment without it becoming somebody else's problem. You need to maintain awareness while task-loaded. You need to read the cave, remember characteristics and intersections, collect information and still know what the rest of your team is doing. Standardized equipment and procedures certainly help, but ultimately it comes down to the people using them.
One of the things I have found most valuable throughout all my exploration projects is working with teammates I know well enough that very little needs to be explained.
When I pull out the survey device and my wetnotes, my teammate already understands what is about to happen. While I start collecting data, someone else can install the jump, organize equipment behind us, illuminate the area, look for possible leads or identify nearby tunnels that might require another look. Nobody needs to stop the dive to discuss every small job. The team simply keeps moving.
And yes, like everyone else, I have my favorite dive buddies. I could pretend that every possible team combination is equally efficient, but anyone who has spent enough time doing project dives would know I'm lying. As my buddy Patrick Picard would say: “underwater telepathy”.
This becomes even more important as dives get longer, more complex or more task-loaded. Having somebody beside you who understands what needs to happen—sometimes from nothing more than a look—is incredibly valuable. I'm not necessarily talking about emergencies or problem solving. I'm talking about the hundreds of small actions during an ordinary project dive that either make a team flow or slowly waste time.
Good equipment matters. Maintaining it matters. DPVs matter. Rebreathers can dramatically change what is possible. A clear plan, a backup plan and knowing exactly where you are going and why you are going there all matter.
But none of them compensate for a poor team.
Looking back at those 22 kilometers and 41 dives, I think that is probably the biggest reason we were able to accomplish what we did. The technology helped us get there, the organization helped us keep track of it, but the efficiency came from capable divers learning how to work together.
A good, fit teammate remains one of the most valuable pieces of equipment you can take into a cave—and fortunately, it doesn't need batteries.
Mental Endurance
Something my friend Patrick pointed out to me during the project was how much mental capacity these dives actually require. We often talk about the physical demands of long cave dives—hours in the water, scootering, carrying equipment, and maintaining enough stamina to perform until the end—but the mental endurance is just as important.
On a complex project dive, you need to keep the plan in your head, know what comes next, remember small details and stay aware of what the rest of the team is doing. At the same time, you are navigating, managing gas, equipment and time, observing the cave, and constantly making small decisions. There isn't much room to mentally switch off. And the mental work doesn't necessarily finish when the dive does.
When entering and reviewing the survey data afterwards, being able to recall what actually happened underwater—where a line ran, what an intersection looked like, why a measurement seemed unusual, or what you noticed around a particular station—can be extremely valuable.
I was present on roughly 80% of the project dives, and even now I can recall most of the individual sections of the cave and many of the details associated with them. I don't think this is simply a matter of having a good memory. When you repeatedly plan a route, visualize it before the dive, work through it underwater and then process the information afterwards, you build a surprisingly detailed mental picture of the system.
Being present for the first hour is relatively easy. Being just as sharp several hours later, after multiple tasks and changes of direction, is something different. Mental fatigue can turn a simple task into a mistake, or make you forget the one small objective you traveled an hour to reach.
For me, this became another important part of efficiency: not simply being physically capable of completing the dive, but having enough mental endurance to remain useful, aware and reliable until the very end—and to still understand what you did when you sit down with the data afterwards.
Lessons Learned — What I Would Do Differently
Looking back, there are definitely things I would organize differently if we started again tomorrow.
Being the leader of an exploration project sounds like a dream—and in many ways it is—but keeping people motivated while still moving the project forward isn't always easy. Decisions have to be made. Sometimes certain divers stop being invited to particular assignments. There are dives nobody particularly wants to do, but somebody has to do them—and occasionally that somebody is you.
For me, this was an intense period. I was running a dive center, teaching full-time during high season, managing PURE and its data, while simultaneously participating in another exploration project with limited access.
My days off became Ponderosa days: cenote at 8 a.m., water around 9, and hopefully back at the shop by 2. Of course, a planned 2.5-hour dive occasionally became 5.5 hours. My visiting family learned this firsthand, patiently waiting at the cenotes and even helping us create some of the project imagery. Fran and I also managed surprisingly few project dives together simply because coordinating our schedules was almost impossible.
I don't regret any of it, but I learned that a project leader's time and energy are resources that need to be managed just like gas, DPV burn time or anything else.
More Teaching
If I restarted PURE tomorrow, I would put considerably more emphasis on education: more workshops, land drills, clearer instructions and structured mentoring. I would also spend more dives personally working with newer surveyors, rather than sometimes teaching through corrections afterwards.
There are still many project members I wish I had dived with more. Hopefully there is enough cave left to extend the list of my favorite buddies.
Clearer Expectations
I would also establish clearer project rules from day one—not necessarily stricter, but clearer about participation, commitment, completing assignments and taking responsibility for the data collected.
The same applies to data management. Everyone should record information using the same conventions, and the complete workflow should be established before the first dive: how data are recorded, named, stored and entered.
One rule in particular would be non-negotiable next time:
**The dive isn't finished until the data is entered.**
Preferably the same day, while everything is still fresh.
More Communication
Finally, I would organize regular team meetings to discuss not only assignments, but what was working and what wasn't. We had some great BBQ evenings—food turned out to be a surprisingly effective project-management tool—but towards the end we became less consistent about getting together.
I would want more direct feedback from the divers and more opportunities to give feedback as well. In a project built around community, problems shouldn't have to travel through three other people before reaching the person who can actually address them.
PURE should still be fun and voluntary. But if I started again tomorrow, I would put more structure around that freedom.
PONDEROSA BY NUMBERS
These numbers are certainly an achievement, but they only describe the measurable part of the project. For me, what PURE left behind is much harder to put into numbers—and ultimately more important.
What Remains
At the end of the day, we achieved what we set out to do: Ponderosa has an updated survey and, almost 30 years after the previous one, a new map. Today that map hangs at one of the most visited cenotes in the area. I see it almost every day, and I'm especially proud when I see cave divers standing in front of it planning their dives. Even better is when they recognize one of us and congratulate the team. It is a simple but very rewarding reminder that the work is actually being used.
We didn't significantly extend the system, although we did find some new passages. Ponderosa is somewhat like Swiss cheese: many tunnels could eventually be connected to something else, creating an increasingly dense spiderweb without necessarily adding much value. Instead, we focused on improving what was already there. We simplified navigation where possible, corrected misplaced markers and replaced a considerable amount of deteriorated guideline. In a coastal cave, more than 30-year-old line doesn't always age gracefully—sometimes attaching a survey device was enough to turn it into spaghetti. Visiting almost every corner of the system allowed us not only to understand Ponderosa extremely well, but hopefully to leave parts of it a little safer than we found them.
We also documented areas that have become unstable or effectively undiveable because of collapses, and these are not represented as diveable passages on the final map. At the other end of the spectrum, we encountered some exceptionally beautiful and highly decorated sections that we deliberately chose not to highlight. Not everything we find needs additional traffic.
It is also important to recognize what this project was and what it wasn't. This was primarily a line-survey project, not a full cartographic documentation of 22-plus kilometers of cave.
Producing detailed passage cartography at this scale, particularly in a system as complex and interconnected as Ponderosa, would be an entirely different project. Within those limitations, I am proud of what we produced and hope the new dataset will remain useful for many years. But the map isn't the only thing that remains.
We built new friendships, new buddy teams and a small but strong group of people who now know they can work together. Divers who had little or no survey experience had the opportunity to learn, make mistakes, go back, try again and understand the process. We proved to ourselves that with a capable team, good preparation and a common purpose, an enormous amount of work can be accomplished.
Maybe that was the real achievement of PURE after all.
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Emőke Wagner is a Hungarian cave diving instructor and explorer from Sopron who holds a 2013 human-kinesiology degree from Semmelweis University. After several years in healthcare, she turned professional diver, teaching in the Maldives (2014-17) before moving to Mexico to pursue caves full-time. A GUE instructor since 2016, she teaches Cave, DPV, Tech, and Recreational courses in English, German, Spanish, and Hungarian. She has logged 4,200 dives—over 1,200 in caves, 500 decompression, 300 wreck, 700 DPV—and has mapped more than 55 km/34 mi of new passage with a record penetration of 6.37 km/3.96 mi. Her exploration spans Mexico, Florida, France, and Hungary with roles in MCEP (2018-20), BEL (2020-23), Cocom (2024-25), and, as project leader, PURE (2025). Major exploration zones include Chuup Ich, Akalche, Yax Chen, La Concha, Abejas, and Cocom. Blending academic rigor with field skill, she promotes safe technique and conservation while mentoring the next generation of cave divers.
