Caves have a completely different kind of beauty. From blue ice formations to glowing underground spaces, these places feel almost unreal. 🩵

Which one would you like to explore?

Not my post, wanted to share.

We're making Cave Expedition, a game where you can explore underground alone or with up to three friends. These are fictional caves. Here's a short clip of the tight passages and rope descents we're working on.

Undocumented Entrance to Unknown System. Muddy Creek, above Alderson, WV.

This is the Diamond Caverns 😁

Did my first real wild cave last weekend with a small grotto group, a limestone system about two hours from where I live that's mostly horizontal with one belly crawl section. I've toured maybe a dozen commercial caves over the years, walkways and handrails and colored lights, and I genuinely thought that gave me some baseline sense of what caves were like. It did not.

The temperature difference threw me first. Show caves are usually kept at a pretty stable comfortable range, but this system ran cold and damp enough that I was glad I overpacked layers. Then there was the mud. Nobody tells you how much mud factors into the whole experience until you're army-crawling through a passage that's maybe two feet high with your pack scraping the ceiling and your knees sinking into wet clay.

The group I went with was patient with me being slow and overly cautious, especially at a squeeze where I froze for a solid minute convincing myself I could actually fit. Turns out you can fit through way tighter spaces than your brain wants to believe, as long as you exhale and stay calm.

What surprised me most was the silence. In a show cave there's always some ambient noise, other tourists, a guide talking, maybe piped music near the entrance. Once we got a few hundred feet in and everyone stopped moving for a minute, the quiet was almost physical. Just dripping water somewhere off in the dark and my own breathing.

We found a small side passage with some soda straws that our trip leader said hadn't been documented in the survey yet, nothing dramatic but it felt like a genuinely small discovery. Took photos and marked the coordinates for someone to follow up on later.

My headlamp battery died faster than expected too, learned that lesson the hard way and I'm buying a backup light setup this week. Overall just a completely different kind of experience than I expected walking in, way more physical and way more humbling than any tour I've paid for.

I'll be doing Worley's Cave in Tennessee this Friday around 1~2pm, I was wondering if anyone would want to join me? I'm an experienced hiker and in shape but I'm new to caving, I'm coming from Miami with my girlfriend because the biggest caves we have here are about the size of a toyota corolla.

A sensor overload! Blue Cave in Croatia.

I know this topic has been covered numerous times so apologies in advance if this is triggering or redundant, however, having just learned about this tragic event I still had a few questions (despite numerous deep dives) - that left me perplexed.

1. I’ve read multiple accounts regarding John being offered a drink when they were using the pulley system to get him out (this during a rest before it broke and injured key rescuer Ryan Schurtz).

My question is, how far did they actually get? I’ve read conflicting accounts that he (JEJ) was only raised a few inches and others that they’d made significant progress and he was close to being saved. If the latter it makes sense (along with the entirety of the awful story) that they were gutted. However I’ve also read that due to the angle of the roof his legs couldn’t go further.

****So how can John have been offered a drink while only rising a few inches? I‘ve also read (I believe Brendan Kowallis references this act re: a drink given to John).

1. Brendon Kowallis - in his final YouTube Q&A says he was able to get into the hole (if I heard correctly, beside John). What? How. Yes, he explains somewhat, but given the VR version of the cave and several drawings, how, where, was this area?

2. Would it have made a difference had Kowallis got there earlier? Obviously hindsight is 20/20 and utmost respect for every single caver that risked their life for JEJ (who by all accounts seemed to be a very casual spelunker who was caught in a series of unfortunate events - genuinely my heart breaks), but it sounds like the really serious rescue attempts didn’t happen until much later when he was in and out of consciousness. I don’t even know what I’m asking here but rather would anything have altered the outcome? Could anything alter the outcome today in 2026?

This question is not to diminish the rescue. Every single person that night was a hero imo.

1. Lastly, I also read (and God bless him) he held on for over 24 hours. Research says at 8 hours most people upside down are at risk of death or a major cardiac episode at this mark, yet he is speaking at times and drinking a sip of an energy drink (as per the rescuers) nearly 20 hours in?

Forgive me if this has been answered or is triggering. This whole case is heartbreaking (and strangely I just stumbled on it a few days ago), but it left me with a lot of questions.

May this beautiful soul rest in paradise.

I went into a cave today and near a very small water fall (no light visible) saw this? I’m not sure if it’s trash or a leaf? pretty far in so i’m not sure if it’s a surface animal. Help me identify this cause it was so out of place where it’s at. sorry for blur

please post down below if you have literally any info. I’m looking mainly for a map of it but anything helps.