Tight squeeze at Deep Cave

Boost your cave cred (like street cred but for caves) by trying to squeeze through the alternate entrance to Deep Cave in Edwards County, Texas. Note that the main entrance to the cave is in a 3 m sink just out of camera view, but you don't get any cave cred for strolling through the big entrance.

Deep Cave is still being explored and mapped in an ongoing survey project begun in 1999 and has over 5.3 km (3.3 miles) of passages and a depth of 78.3 m (257 ft). Passages tend to alternate between tight crawls and spacious rooms with multiple leads. The cave is highly decorated with crystalline helictites, stalactites, stalagmites, columns, flowstone, draperies, moonmilk, and popcorn, and many of these formations are either partially translucent or richly colorful.

Deep Cave is located on the Deep and Punkin Nature Preserve and is one of many Texas caves owned and managed by the Texas Cave Management Association (TCMA), a non-profit cave conservancy. Some of these caves are protected as home to unique and endangered creatures. Other TCMA caves are routinely used for a variety of purposes by cavers, the general public, youth groups, and rescue training groups. TCMA also provides management, conservation, and education information to individual, groups, organizations, and governmental agencies. For more information, or if you would like to donate or volunteer, please visit their website at www.tcmacaves.org.

If you would like to get started caving in the United States (and don't worry--not all caves are this tight), check out the National Speleological Society (NSS) at www.caves.org. There you can find a local chapter, called a Grotto, where experienced cavers can teach you all about caving, gear, safety, etc., and get you started caving!

In this video, the participants are, in order: TJ Tidwell (fail although his sunglasses made it), Tom Rogers (fail although he made it up the hole earlier), Chris Lafferty (successful and also featured in the GIF circling the Internet), Caleb Mayeux (successful), Ray Hertel (fail), Ryan Monjaras (successful feet first), Mallory Mayeux (failed although she's always a success at being charming and beautiful), Caleb Mayeux again (fail headfirst), and Ryan Monjaras again. For the record, yes, Ryan completed the squeeze headfirst. Unfortunately, my DSLR ran out of space before his success was captured on video.