Caving
Going in. Sport caving and expedition caving, the deep systems of Krubera and Veryovkina, rope work and sumps, cave diving and its fatality rate, the Thai cave rescue of 2018, and the people who keep going back down.
Part of Underground
71 moments in this segment.
- - Vecsembükki expedíció 002 képeslap 1911 B.I.G. Members of Vecsembükk expedition in 1911 (Hungary). Period photograph.
- - Vecsembükki expedíció Bekey Imre Gábor 1911. Photograph showing vecsembükki expedíció bekey imre gábor 1911. Period photograph.
- - Gaping Gill: a hundred years of exploration. A 1995 film marking the centenary of Martel's first descent of Gaping Gill in Yorkshire, with Bradford Pothole Club members in period dress.
- - Cave exploration in Borneo. BBC's Expedition Borneo team splits between separate caves in search of bats and snakes.
- - 200 - Grotte de Carlsbad - Février 2010. Panorama of a part of the Big Room cave chamber in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, United States.
- - A cave rescue rope pickoff demonstrated. Phil of British Columbia Cave Rescue demonstrates a single rope technique pickoff, the manoeuvre used to reach a casualty stranded on a rope.
- - Ice Cave - Southern Alps. Original Collection: Visual Instruction Department Lantern Slides Item Number: P217:set 039 054 You can find this image by searching for the item number by clicking here. Want more? You can find more.
- - Guillermo de Anda: caves of the Maya dead. The underwater archaeologist describes diving remote flooded caves and cenotes in Mexico for traces of Maya ritual use.
- - Martel's first exploration of the Gouffre de Padirac, 1889. Extract from Bernd Kliebhan's Arte film on Edouard-Alfred Martel's underground explorations, covering his 1889 descent into Padirac.
- - Big Four Ice Caves. Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, North Cascade Mountains, Washing. A hiker scrambles near the waterfall at the far end of the Big Four ice caves. Please note that the Forest Service strongly discourages or bars hikers from entering the caves due to the ever-present h.
- - Jill Heinerth: the mysterious world of underwater caves. The cave diver describes working with biologists, climatologists and archaeologists in flooded systems few people will ever see.
- - Wara Kalap: caving exploration in Papua New Guinea. A team pushes into the rainforest of Papua New Guinea looking for giant caves and the underground rivers that resurge along the Solomon Sea.
- - Jill Heinerth becomes explorer in residence. Heinerth's acceptance speech on being appointed the first Explorer in Residence of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, World Oceans Day 2016.
- - The oldest human skeleton in the Americas, found underwater. Divers in a 140-foot-deep flooded cave in Mexico recovered a 13,000-year-old complete skeleton, the oldest yet found in the Americas.
- - Jill Heinerth interviewed at the BSAC diving conference. The cave diver, photographer and filmmaker on underwater exploration, recorded at the British Sub-Aqua Club conference in 2016.
- - Cave diving on Christmas Island for extreme life. Jill Heinerth and Dr Tom Iliffe dive unexplored flooded caves on Christmas Island, hunting organisms adapted to extreme conditions.
- - Krubera cave expedition, 2017. The Ukrainian Speleological Association's international team, led by Gennady Samokhin, works the Krubera and Berchilskaya caves in the Orto Balagan valley of Abkhazia.
- - World's longest underwater cave found in Mexico. News report on the January 2018 announcement that a roughly 350km flooded system in the Yucatan, holding ancient bones and pottery, is the longest known.
- - Veryovkina cave to minus 2,204 metres. Expedition film by the Perovo-Speleo team, who in August 2017 reached 2,204 metres below the entrance at the Nautilus sump.
- - Cave rescue divers prepare their equipment at Tham Luang. US Air Force photograph of rescue divers preparing dive equipment at Chiang Rai, Thailand, on 2 July 2018, during the operation to reach the twelve boys and their coach trapped in Tham Luang cave.
- - In too deep: the risk of cave diving. 60 Minutes Australia profiles the Australian cave diver Agnes Milowka and the narrow margins of the discipline.
- - British divers explain the Tham Luang rescue. Press conference days after the rescue in which the British cave divers describe an operation they call one of the hardest in history.
- - Four Corners: inside the Thailand cave rescue. Mark Willacy's report on the international operation, including the Australian cave divers Richard Harris and Craig Challen who sedated the boys for the swim out.
- - Rick Stanton on the Thai cave rescue. The Coventry firefighter and cave diver who located the trapped football team gives his account of the search and the extraction.
- - Colin Boothroyd on the Mulu Caves Project. An overview of the long-running British-Malaysian exploration of the Mulu cave systems in Sarawak.
- - Tham Luang cave rescue: against the elements. Documentary made in the weeks after the rescue, unpacking the seventeen days of the operation in northern Thailand.
- - Baba-mon Kawachi. Baba-mon, the branch rich in speleothems in Kawachi no Kaza-ana.
- - Mendenhall Ice Cave 2014 352. Entrance to 2014 Mendenhall Ice Cave, Juneau, Alaska.
- - The 2019 Lechuguilla expedition. Footage from an eight-day expedition surveying leads in the western branch of Lechuguilla Cave, co-led by Derek Bristol and Dan Austin.
- - The giant caves of Mulu. The 2019 Anglo-Malaysian expedition films Deer Cave, the Sarawak Chamber and the Clearwater system in Gunung Mulu National Park.
- - PBL Gnezdo. Underground camp Gnezdo (Nest) on the ledge in the Višnevskij cave on Chul-Bair mountain, at a depth of 1049 m. It was erected in August 2019, during the Ekaterinburg speleo club (SGS) and the Assoсia.
- - Inside Veryovkina, the deepest known cave on Earth. It took about thirty expeditions over half a century for Russian speleologists to reach 2,212 metres in Veryovkina in Abkhazia.
- - The 2020 Lechuguilla Voids expedition: travel to camp. The first days of the Barton Voids expedition, from the park entrance to Big Sky camp more than 1,000 feet below the surface.
- - Exploring the Mystery Room of Carlsbad Cavern. National Speleological Society convention presentation on high-adventure exploration in a rarely visited part of Carlsbad Cavern.
- - Lechuguilla Cave beyond 150 miles of passage. Caver John Lyles talks to the Los Alamos Mountaineers about exploring Lechuguilla, the deep gypsum-lined system beneath Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
- - The Black guides of Mammoth Cave. National Speleological Society talk on the enslaved and later free African American guides who explored and led tours through Mammoth Cave.
- - The Mulu caves expedition of 2019. National Speleological Society convention report on the 2019 expedition to Gunung Mulu in Sarawak, home to some of the largest known cave chambers.
- - Hidden worlds: Carlsbad Caverns National Park. National Park Service film on the chambers of Carlsbad Caverns, up to 250 feet high, and the scientists working inside them.
- - The Nutty Putty cave incident. On 24 November 2009 the caver John Edward Jones became wedged head-down in a narrow passage south of Salt Lake City; the cave was later sealed with his body inside.
- - Lechuguilla: the first fifty miles. Symposium talk on the earliest exploration of Lechuguilla, from the November 2020 event marking the cave passing 150 miles surveyed.
- - Climbing in an underground wilderness. Aid climbing technique used to reach high leads in Lechuguilla Cave, where every anchor placed is a permanent mark on a protected cave.
- - Diving the lakes of Lechuguilla. How divers work the deep still lakes of Lechuguilla Cave, presented at the National Speleological Society symposium.
- - Camping in Lechuguilla. Beth Cortright on the logistics of underground camps during multi-day survey trips in Lechuguilla Cave.
- - The Importance of Lechuguilla Cave. From a symposium marking Lechuguilla passing 150 miles of surveyed passage, on the sealed cave's rare microbiology and geology.
- - Krubera cave from 1,960 to 2,145 metres. Footage from the Ukrainian Speleological Association's August 2013 push through the deepest reaches of Krubera in Abkhazia.
- - Naica: return to the crystal cave. A 2008 scientific expedition into the Naica mine in Chihuahua, where selenite crystals grow metres long in air hot enough to kill an unprotected person in minutes.
- - How Martel shaped the future of speleology. Talk by Richard Watson on Edouard-Alfred Martel, the father of speleology, given during the International Year of Caves and Karst.
- - The Lechuguilla breakthrough. Carlsbad Caverns National Park living history programme on the 1986 dig that broke through rubble into Lechuguilla Cave.
- - Titan, the deepest cave shaft in Britain. The 141.5-metre natural shaft near Castleton in the Derbyshire Peak District, reachable only by cavers competent on big pitches.
- - Saving thirteen lives: the day of the rescue. NOVA reconstructs the final dive-out day at Tham Luang, when each boy was sedated and carried through flooded passage.
- - Vertical caving: the NCRC skills test. The qualifying vertical rope skills required for National Cave Rescue Commission training courses in the United States.
- - Descending into Greenland's ice caves. Serge Aviotte's fourteenth Greenland expedition combines scientific work on the ice sheet with an attempt on his own record for descent into a glacier moulin.
- - The discovery of the world's biggest cave. British cavers who reached Son Doong in Vietnam in 2009 return to climb the Great Wall of Vietnam and find what lies beyond it.
- - American caver Mark Dickey speaks from underground. Dickey, more than a kilometre down in the Morca cave in southern Turkey with gastrointestinal bleeding, credits the caving community with saving his life.
- - American explorer rescued from a deep Turkish cave. Mark Dickey is brought out of Morca cave on 12 September 2023 after more than a week seriously ill underground.
- - Mark Dickey says he will keep exploring caves. Days after being lifted from Morca cave in Turkey, the rescued caver says the experience has not put him off going underground.
- - Drain the Oceans: the Tham Luang cave. A 3D survey of the Tham Luang cave system reconstructs the geometry that made the 2018 rescue so difficult.
- - The Ario dream: cave divers in the Picos de Europa. Paul Diffley's film on the exploration of the deep Ario caves in northern Spain, where divers push sumps from which rescue would be impossible.
- - Collection Georges Pradines spéléologue. Echantillons de la collection du spéléologue Georges Pradines (1855-1896) et pavillon de stockage de sa collection dans sa maison de famille route de Cahors, Limogne-en-quercy (46260).
- - The British cave rescue divers honoured. Award programme telling how the Wild Boars team were driven deeper into the 10km Tham Luang complex by floodwater and how the divers reached them.
- - Inside Son Doong: a cave with a forest, a river and clouds. Filmed expedition through Son Doong in Vietnam, which is large enough to hold its own jungle, watercourse and internal weather.
- - Caving expedition, Palawan 2025. Field footage from a 2025 caving expedition on Palawan in the Philippines.
- - Thai cave rescue. NOVA follows the July 2018 operation in which international cave divers brought twelve boys and their football coach out of the flooded Tham Luang cave.
- - Inside Mount Hood's hidden glacier caves. In 2011 two Oregon cavers found more than a mile of tunnels inside the Sandy Glacier, the largest known glacier cave system in the lower 48 states, and began mapping it.
- - An introduction to caving gear. What cavers actually carry and why, from helmets and lights to rope kit, in an environment that is dark, wet, cold and unforgiving.
- - Cave divers explore the cenotes of the Yucatan. Thirty years of diving has shown that the Yucatan cenotes are not isolated wells but openings into one connected network of flooded passages.
- - A British cave rescue medical officer on the work. Brendan Sloan describes the volunteer structure of British cave rescue teams and treating casualties underground.
- - Into Earth: learning to cave dive. A Danish underwater photographer works through full cave diver training in Playa del Carmen, and the hazards the course exists to address.
- - The 1979 hostage-taking in Carlsbad Caverns. In 1979 armed men held more than 100 visitors in the Big Room, 750 feet below the surface, in one of the strangest incidents in US national park history.
- - A rare journey inside Son Doong. 60 Minutes takes Scott Pelley into the largest known cave passage in the world, deep in the Vietnamese jungle.
- - The 2025 Big Horn Mountains caving expedition. Presentation to the Meramec Valley Grotto on an August 2025 expedition to the caves of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming.