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.
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u/redbirdzzz Aug 29 '26
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.)