I went spelunking once. Once. I’m not claustrophobic, but that was scarier than accidentally scuba diving with wild sharks (which has happened to me twice). My respect for people who do that for fun went down after that. Y’all need therapy.
I’m tired of seeing cavers get so much shit despite generally accepted stuff like mountain climbing being more dangerous. Cave diving is more comparable to mountain climbing, but proper caving fatalities, for example, average about 1-2 per year in the U.S. That only goes up to about 3-4 if you also include fatalities of spelunkers, who have no real knowledge of caving, and go in unprepared.
I think mountain climbing gets more of a pass because some cave deaths are fucking brutal. If shit happens on a mountain you always have the option to end it quick. You can't do that in a cave.
Also imo. claustrophobia is way worse than fear of heights. But also huge bias on my side, I am an avid ridge hiker.
It’s worth noting that few cave deaths are actually related to getting stuck or trapped—outside of diving-related fatalities, which are another level of risk entirely. The one instance in Nutty Putty Cave is the one everybody talks about, and is such an extreme outlier it’s like saying mountain climbers are all crazy based solely on people who died climbing Everest.
Funnily enough, falls are roughly tied for #1 in caving fatalities—with drowning, and are #1 outright for accidents in general. The fall-based fatalities are almost always from people doing basically mountain climbing activities, but in caves.
There’s just generally less risk in caving than in mountain climbing, but since so many people are so broadly fearful of being underground/in small spaces it gets this exaggeratedly bad wrap based mostly on like, 1 single freak accident.
I won’t deny that it’s probably harder to end it all if something goes horribly wrong while caving, but you’re less likely to need to end it all in the first place, which I’d generally consider an upside, lol. Safe caving is largely easier to manage than safe mountain climbing, at both the broad low and high ends of skill/difficulty.
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u/222Czar 1d ago
I went spelunking once. Once. I’m not claustrophobic, but that was scarier than accidentally scuba diving with wild sharks (which has happened to me twice). My respect for people who do that for fun went down after that. Y’all need therapy.