Caving – also known as spelunking in the United States and Canada and potholing in the United Kingdom and Ireland – is the recreational pastime of exploring wild cave systems. In contrast, speleology is the scientific study of caves and the cave environment.
Mammoth Cave National Park is a national park in south-central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system known in the world. The park's 52,830 acres (21,380 ha) are located primarily in Edmonson County, with small areas extending eastward into Hart and Barren counties. The Green River runs through the park, with a tributary called the Nolin River feeding into the Green just inside the park.
Colossal Cave Adventure is a text-based adventure game, released in 1976 by developer Will Crowther for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. It was expanded upon in 1977 by Don Woods. In the game, the player explores a cave system rumored to be filled with treasure and gold. The game is composed of dozens of locations, and the player moves between these locations and interacts with objects in them by typing one- or two-word commands which are interpreted by the game's natural language input system. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's attempted actions. It is the first well-known example of interactive fiction, as well as the first well-known adventure game, for which it was also the namesake.
William Crowther is an American computer programmer, caver, and rock climber. He is the co-creator of Colossal Cave Adventure from 1975 onward, a seminal computer game that influenced the first decade of video game design and inspired the text adventure game genre.
Patricia ("Pat") P. Crowther, later known as Patricia P. Wilcox, is an American cave explorer and cave surveyor active in the 1960s and early 1970s. She also worked as a computer programmer.
Jewel Cave National Monument contains Jewel Cave, currently the fourth longest cave in the world, with 215.05 miles of mapped passageways. It is located approximately 13 miles (21 km) west of the town of Custer in Black Hills of South Dakota. It became a national monument in 1908.
John Alan Glennon is an American geographer and explorer. His work has been mapping and describing caves and geysers.
Formed in 1956, the Australian Speleological Federation Inc. (ASF) is the national body representing those interested in the protection and sustainability of Australia's cave and karst environments. It has approximately 850 members across 28 constituent bodies throughout all Australian states and territories.
The Woodville Karst Plain Project or WKPP, is a project and organization that maps the underwater cave systems underlying the Woodville Karst Plain. This plain is a 450-square-mile (1,200 km2) area that runs from Tallahassee, Florida, U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico and includes numerous first magnitude springs, including Wakulla Springs, and the Leon Sinks Cave System, the longest underwater cave in the United States. The project grew out of a cave diving research and exploration group established in 1985 and incorporated in 1990.
Roger W. Brucker is an American cave explorer and author of books about caves. He is most closely associated with Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the world's longest cave, which he has been exploring and writing about since 1954.
There are a number of caving organizations throughout the world.
Karst Underwater Research (KUR) is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that specializes in the research and documentation of karst aquifers and their corresponding surface features. KUR members perform a variety of scientific processes, including mapping and cartography, radio location, photography, videography, YSI water analysis and sampling.
Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) is a scuba diving organization that provides education within recreational, technical, and cave diving. It is a nonprofit membership organization based in High Springs, Florida, United States.
The Martin Ridge Cave System is a large cave near Mammoth Cave, in the U.S. state of Kentucky. The system, composed of the interconnected Whigpistle, Martin Ridge, and Jackpot Caves, has been mapped to over 55 kilometers (34 mi), and is currently the United States' thirteenth-longest cave.
Great Onyx Cave is a cave located in Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, United States. The National Park Service offers a commercial tour of the cave.
Sydney University Speleological Society (SUSS) is a caving group based in Sydney, Australia, which aims to unite University of Sydney graduates, undergraduates, staff and all other people who are interested in the exploration and mapping of cave systems. The society fosters speleology as a science and sport and co-operates with other bodies in the furtherance of these aims. SUSS was founded in 1948 and is the oldest caving group on mainland Australia. It has been heavily involved in the exploration and mapping of various Australian cave systems since its formation. The society pioneered the sport of cave diving in Australia and was a founding member of the Australian Speleological Federation.
The Butler Cave Conservation Society (BCCS) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit Virginia corporation dedicated to the conservation, exploration, survey, preservation, and scientific study of the caves and karst in and around Burnsville Cove, Virginia.
The Fisher Ridge Cave System is a cave system located in Hart County, Kentucky, United States, near Mammoth Cave National Park. As of November 2019 it had been mapped to a length of 130.001 miles (209.216 km), making it the fifth-longest cave in the United States and the tenth-longest in the world.
Patricia Kambesis is an American caver, cartographer and educator.
Robert Gulden, nicknamed Bob, was a prominent cave surveyor and cartographer. From 1976 until his death, Gulden kept the world's best-known database of long and deep caves.
