I just recently got in to caving.
Information about caves in my region is kept secret by a speleological group - so basically, if you don’t pay to join their group, you can’t learn about our caves.
I accessed a file system on their website used to store notes from their meetings, intended for members only. Going all the way back to 1997, I found a member-written handbook detailing almost every interesting cave within a 500km radius of me.
Many caves in my region were used for mining bat shit in the late 19th and early 20th century. Ladders, timbering and other paraphernalia still remain, in some cases.
Pic related is the first cave I visited, in late November. It’s in an extremely remote location. What you can see is the beginning of a 300ft near-vertical pitch. A huge colony of a specific bat species once lived here - now locally extinct.
I’ve visited a few others, since then. I was also not able to locate one, even using GPS coordinates.
Most recently, I climbed in to a very steep and crumbling hole in the ground without any equipment other than my headlamp. I remember reaching the bottom, some 300ft in, and looking back to see that where I’d come from looked almost directly above me. I had to stop and calm myself for a moment as I realised it was going to be much more difficult getting out than it was sliding in. When I did get out, though, I was dripping in sweat and covered in dirt - but the feeling of accomplishment was pretty based.
