Cavers are what we prefer to be called, we do not like the term "spelunkers."
Spelunker has negative connotations: people who may use a single candle or flashlight to explore a cave; people who deface a cave with graffiti or break formations; people who kill the animals that call a cave their home - bats, cave insects, cave fishes, salamanders, to name a few.

Remember, taking or selling cave formations and minerals, speleothems, is illegal! Please don't buy them on Ebay and report mineral dealers who are selling them. Also, speleothems are "living" and depend upon the moisture in a cave to live and grow. In an old cave the formations will dry out and crumble. Here is an example of an illegally acquired cave mineral that was for sale.

Cavers adhere to the motto of the NSS, National Speleological Society, to
 * Take nothing but pictures,
 * Leave nothing but footprints,
 * Kill nothing but time.
We also go properly equipped. Black is the absence of light and beyond the light from the entrance or surface opening, there is no light!

Caving has a number of facets.
Some of us are sport or recreational cavers. We enjoy some quiet hours underground, moving in the three dimensional world that is a cave.
There are those who enjoy an intellectual as well as a physical challenge, "geeks:" conservation geeks, digging geeks, gear heads, rescue geeks.

Caves are a very fragile and non-renewable resource, at least in our lifetimes. So cavers are very protective of their caves. Just look at a cave that has had a lot of uncaring people visit it -- the trash in the cave, the graffiti on the walls, the broken formations. Even some in the caving community have left gates to fields open, destroyed property, destroyed cave formations and made a bad name for all of us. This is why we jealously guard the locations of caves.

We aren't trying to be mean or secretive We are just trying to ensure that we will still have access to caves, that others will be able to enjoy them as we found them, and others will have access to land for ridge walking and maybe discovering new caves to map and explore.

I am more of a project caver, digging, surveying, than sport or recreational caving. I hang out with the caves.com crew and, thanks to digging open new caves, I have been in 4 news caves in the last 3 years.

A place only a few hours crawl from the surface. Less than a dozen people have been here.   
     

A just discovered cave.