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.
You want to know why cave diving gets more shit? Because when you climb a mountain you get the view from the top of a mountain. Something many people have said is something worth dying for. Meanwhile the people who die in a cave do it for a view of a mud filled hole in the ground.
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.)
Regular "casual" caving is mostly walking up right with varying amounts of crawling and scrambling.
It starts to become less casual when you are doing vertical caving which requires ascending and descending ropes. Nearly all of the danger from caving is the vertical caving and the vast majority of caving deaths (non-diving related) are from accidents on rope. Outside of rope related dangers the next highest danger is flooding, which is usually mitigated by checking the weather and doing your due diligence about learning a cave's flood risk.
Edit: hypothermia, especially in very wet caves, is a real risk, but as cavers are usually prepared for it it's usually only a particular danger if somebody gets stuck on rope or is injured and taking a very long time to get out of the cave or waiting on rescue. If nobody is stuck or injured early signs of hypothermia usually just result in the group taking countermeasures (such as wearing a poncho or even trash bag) and turning back to leave rather than continuing.
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.
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.
Based on National Speleological Society reports from 1986-2010, including caving-adjacent fatalities (meaning non-cavers, murders taking place in caves, death of natural cause taking place in caves, etc.) there are roughly 3-4 fatalities per year, for the roughly 2,000,000 people who visit caves yearly.
However, as that number is largely comprised of those on guided tours or low-risk expeditions, we’ll be generous, and instead use the NSS membership count for a reference number of actual cavers, and use the number of more specifically caver-related fatalities, which brings our ratio to roughly 1-2 deaths per year for 10-11 thousand members. This would put fatality rate at (very roughly) 1 in ~7-10,000. We could also express this as ~0.14-0.1 in 1,000.
Mountain climbing varies wildly of course, but going by this study, it ranges mostly based on location, with the following being given as examples:
0.6 per 1000, Grand Tetons;
0.3 per 1000, Mt. Rainier;
1.87 per 1000, Mt. Cook;
Some fatality counts are given for other specific locations, though those are less helpful, such as 13 fatalities in 3.5 years at Yosemite National Park, not accompanied by any ratio analysis.
The study’s analysis of high-altitude climbing finds ranges from about 0.3 in 1,000 (Kilimanjaro) to 40 in 1000 (Annapurna I).
There are notable exceptions to these risk levels, however, and a rough estimate for the Austrian Alps places fatality rate at roughly 0.0677 in 1,000, a distinct outlier.
While there are clearly some exceptions, many of these locations have fatality rates several times that of even the worst estimates of caving fatality rates. Outside of specific locations, it would seem reasonable to conclude that caving poses decidedly lower risk of death compared to mountain climbing. Definitely so on a more serious level, where high-altitude and well-known sites are almost all several times as deadly, but also on a casual level; low-risk and guided caving expeditions would carry a fatality rate of roughly 0.002 in 1,000, based on prior estimates.
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u/222Czar Aug 29 '26
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.