Cave Exploration

Caving was pioneered by Edouard-Alferd Martel (1859–1938) .who first achieved the descent and exploration of the,Gouffre de Padirac.  France as early as 1889 and the first complete descent of a 110 metre wet vertical shaft at ,GapingGill, in ,Yorkshire England in 1895. He developed his own techniques based on ropes and metallic ladders. Martel visited Kantucky and notably Mammoth Cave National Park in October 1912. Famous US caver Floyd Collins made in the 1920s important explorations in that area. In the 1930s, as caving became increasingly popular, small exploration teams both in the Alps and in the karstic high plateaus of southwest France (Causses and  Pyrenees) transformed cave exploration in both a scientific and recreational activity. , Robert de Joly ,Guy de Lavaur and  Norbert Casteret were prominent figures of that time. They surveyed mostly caves in Southwest France. During WWII, an alpine team composed of , Pierre Chevalier, Fernand Petzl Charles Petit-Didier and others explored theDent de Crolles cave system near  Gernoble, France which became the deepest explored cave in the world (-658m) at that time. The lack of available equipment during the war forced  Pierre Chevalier and the rest of the team to develop their own equipment, leading to technical innovation. The scaling-pole (1940), nylon ropes (1942), use of explosives in caves (1947) and mechanical rope-ascenders (Henri Brenot's "monkeys", first used by Chevalier and Brenot in a cave in 1934) can be directly associated to the exploration of the Dent de Crolles cave system.

 In 1941, American cavers organized themselves into the National Speleological Society (NSS) to advance the exploration, conservation, study, and understanding of caves in the United States. American caver ,Bill Cuddington. known as "Vertical Bill", developed the  single rope technique (SRT) in the late 1950s. In 1958, two Swiss alpinists, Juesi and Marti teamed together, creating the first rope ascender known as theJumar. In 1968 Bruno Dressler asked Petzl, who worked as a metals machinist, to build a rope-ascending tool, today known as the Petzl,, that he had developed by adapting the  Jumar to the specificity of Pit caving. Pursuing these developments, Fernand Petzl started in the 1970s a small caving equipment manufacturing companyPetzl, which is today a world leader in equipment for both caving, mountaineering and at-height safety in civil engineering. The development of the  rappel rack and the evolution of mechanical ascension systems, notably helped extend the practice and safety of pit exploration to a larger venue of established cavers.