What comes to mind when you think of cave diving? Do you think of the shows you watch on the educational channels where they go into dank, dark and murky caves with a string so they can find their way out and come back with treasures? What exactly is extreme cave diving?

Cave diving exposes you to risks that you would not come across on a leisure dive (an open or ocean dive) and risks that could be life threatening if you are untrained and unprepared. Cave divers are not overly concerned with injuries, as they are completely conscious that the only injury that could occur, death is permanent. This is a big reason why cave diving is considered an extreme sport. You can’t get much more extreme than the prospect of death.

Pushing to the depths of the watery darkness when you are told you can only go this far is a great draw to the daredevils of extreme sports. Part of being extreme is being told the confines and not only moving past them, but also pushing past them. For most, that typically does not occur on the first try. There are several attempts and possible injuries before this is accomplished. What happens when that border has been claimed? You start all over again to push it even farther.

Cave diving in its extreme, is the knowledge that you may be the first one to either go to a particular cave or find something no one else has. In addition being the first to achieve anything has an adrenaline rush all its own. Cave diving presents the challenge of testing the boundaries of your skills and making sure that you have the highest technical advantage to survive the elements. Cave divers find unique elements that you will not see in typical ocean diving or underwater diving such as the formation of stalactites and stalagmites along with possible archeological finds.

Another characteristic of cave diving that makes it extreme is not only the perils of the dive, itself but also the return. A cave diver has to be ready for many unknown elements. One is the capacity to keep their wits when everything around them is telling them something different is happening. Another is learning the depth of the dive. Yet another is the return that can be quite long and complex, as their body has to readjust to breathing air and not mixtures of oxygen and nitrogen. These thrill seekers like the sensation of gravity as they return to solid ground. If this were not enough to excite the senses, the absolute fact that nature has the ultimate control, can send the adrenaline soaring. A wrong step taken along any part of this dive can have death-defying consequences – consequently the reason cave diving is extreme.

Extreme cave diving is done in a passageway that has no overhead air pockets and is flooded. If the equipment should malfunction, you can’t simply stop. You have to continue the dive and return to the surface, which means you are still submerged. This is one of the reasons you have to be master over your senses. They body has a way to dominate reality when it perceives a threat of any kind and it takes great control to persuade your body that what it is experiencing is not the true reality.

Cave diving is not performed with a direct descent, but rather what is called penetration diving. This means that the diver has no space to simply do a vertical ascent to reach breathable air if they were to have a complication with the dive. Cave divers are trained in technical diving, but this does not lessen the rush they get from going beyond the limits.

Extreme sports of any kind are accepted for the sheer fact that you have gone into unknown territory and survived and not only survived, but finished the task more confident in yourself and your abilities. This self-confidence spills over into all other areas of your life as well. You faced the unknown, you did what others thought could not be done and you came out a better person for it. For the cave diver what could be more thrilling than looking death in the face and conquering it?