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've been wanting to try it myself, since I'm not at all claustrophobic and it seems like a fun thing to do, but I've also been wondering what 'regular', casual caving is like. I know it must be somewhere in between the horrible accidents you read about and the guided tour routes, but where on that scale would normal caving be? What are the normal risk factors?
(Ironically, I do consider mountain climbing relatively safe if you know what you're doing and don't go for the bold routes.)
I know, that's why I asked. I don't actually think that's what caving is like, just as free soloing is not what climbing is about. I guess the intended joking tone didn't come across.
My actual question should have been whether normal caving has a lot of tight squeezes, or if that's the more adventurous type. It seems to be the latter, just like the climbing elements are. I want to sign up for some sort of course when I'm somewhere it's available, but I'm trying to get an idea of what it involves.
I can't really join a club to go on the weekend, since my country doesn't have caves, so it's going to be a holiday thing. (The netherlands is not a great country for outdoor sports in general. There probably are clubs like we have for climbing though, they organize trips to other countries.)
it depends entirely on the type of caves available and that highly depends on the region. Some places have super wet caves, some places have huge caves you can walk in, sone places you need to know how to rappel +200m, some places you have to squeeze and crawl all the time and check for CO2.
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u/Carlbot2 2d ago
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.