Why I‘ll Never Go Caving

If you were subscribed to my newsletter about a month ago, you’ll recall my article about the dangers of high-altitude mountain climbing, and why I’ll never find myself on the summit of Mount Everest.

The same is true for the deepest and darkest crags in the ground.

I’m talking caves and caverns.

Many people are drawn to caves because of their natural beauty and mystery.

Caving is like high-altitude mountain climbing’s ugly stepsister. That is, there’s about the same amount of danger, just in a different form. There are probably dozens of ways to die in a cave, but I'll only be talking about a few.

Tight Spaces

In 2009, a young man named John Jones went caving in Utah's Nutty Putty Cave. After exploring the twisty passages, John crawled toward the deepest part of the caves, at some point making a wrong turn into a tight space which is aptly called the Birth Canal.

To make a long story short, it ends with John being stuck upside down in the Birth Canal, passing away after hours of rescue efforts.

In short, this is one of the many dangers of caving.

Source: The Nutty Putty Cave Rescue & the Death of John Jones – One Rescuers Perspective (article below)

Some caves have wide, spacious passages, allowing multiple people to walk through at a time. They may even have paved paths and elevators leading to the bottom, making exploring easy for most people. However, other caves have tight spaces that may be less than a foot wide, requiring cavers to keep a level head while they maneuver themselves in very specific ways if they wish to make it to the other side.

It's all too easy to find yourself stuck, and panic makes it worse. Many cavers have been done in because panic made them forget how to get unstuck and eventually, they succumb to exhaustion or even worse, they suffocate alone in the dark.

Article: The Nutty Putty Cave Rescue & the Death of John Jones – One Rescuers Perspective

Floods

Caves are especially dangerous during rainy weather.

On the surface, a few inches of rain pose little to no risk to your safety (unless you live in the American Southwest, where nobody can really drive in the rain). You can pull out an umbrella, and your car's tires should have enough tread to drive on wet roads.

However, while a few inches of rain seems like a minor inconvenience on the surface, it may be a matter of life and death for a caver several hundred feet underground.

Many caves have systems of lakes and running streams throughout, and can create stunning views for people who are drawn to the depths. When it rains, these same waterways are prone to flash flooding, even though there's only a few inches of rainfall that day.

Floods often occur with no warning, due to such a large volume of water collecting all at once, bursting through the small spaces. This is what happened to some Russian researchers who were exploring Veryovkina Cave, the deepest cave on earth.

The water begins to climb... (Source: https://explorersweb.com/natural-wonders-veryovkina-cave/, photo taken by Petr Lyubimov)

And, the water follows the cave's passageways, instead of spreading out over a wider area like it does on the surface, which means that many paths to safety are also flooded.

If it weren't for their experience and quick thinking, the team of researchers would have been swept away by the flood, like others who succumbed to the same fate.

Article: Epic flood sends cavers scrambling for their lives: A National Geographic photographer recounts his fight to escape the world's deepest cave.

Foul Air

Caves often contain a different composition of gases such as CO2 and a smaller amount of oxygen than would typically be outside of a cave. This build-up of poisonous gases occurs in vertical caves, where there's low air flow through that passages. There may also be decaying plant or animal life in the area that contributes to these pockets of gases.

Even worse, CO2 is a colorless, odorless gas, which you can't detect until it's too late. You'll know you're in a pocket of CO2 when you start getting headaches and losing consciousness. Or, you can buy yourself a dandy air quality monitor, which I'm sure they sell at your local Walmart. Those can be a bit expensive though, so there are other ways to see if you're in a pocket of foul air.

According to this article, you can light a match, and if the flame begins to diminish, then you're in a pocket of foul air. After all, fire needs oxygen to grow.

Conclusion

Even though the thought of caving scares me, it has nothing on how scared I am of cave-diving, which has many more hazards. After all, cave-diving takes all of the dangers of exploring caves and then moves them to an underwater environment. I until I write that article, I'll just explore caves on YouTube, from the comfort of my couch.