Extremeophile wrote:This may be through literature, online forums, grottos, unaffiliated cavers, etc. Whatever the path there's generally a hierarchy where step #1 is you learn the importance of cave conservation. The combined knowledge of learning about a cave's location, traveling underground, using ropes to descend and ascend, and learning the routes through a complex cave, all come much, much later. The point Andy and Aaron have made is that it's hard to imagine how someone gets to step #179 without learning step #1.
I don't mean to ramble on and on about this, but my own case may help to expand your imagination. I had visited 31 caves (according to my imperfect memory, and not 50-foot long things such as I spend most of my time with now), many of them multiple times, learned the basics of SRT, explored 5 vertical caves, learned the nature and location of Ellison's and several other deep caves, all before I knew that the NSS existed, before I had ever met or spoken to another "caver". The first two cavers I corresponded with, one via email, the other by letter, gave me a lot to think about. They told me what books to read, how to ridgewalk, how to collect specimens, not to go down without up gear. They gave me the locations of caves in three states, including vertical and "closed" ones, even though I readily admitted to being inexperienced and unaffiliated. They invited me to visit them and cave with them and they told me to keep caving. These well-known and well-respected cavers never said one word about conservation. When I bought and read On Rope, I learned a lot about vertical caving, but absolutely nothing about conservation. When I wanted to learn more about surveying and vertical gear and started using this forum, I wasn't forced to learn about conservation. My point is that an education in conservation may not in practice be the #1 that you think it is. Hopefully, most people who are willing to devote much time and practice to exploring caves are the sort who care about the cave environment, but we shouldn't be surprised if some of them haven't been trained according to the current modus of clean caving, or if some are careless vandals.
No, I haven't explored Ellison's, but that is a product of my limited material resources and my personal timidity, not because I can't gain the needed skills. I sure hope to see it some day, and I'll be very sad if I see a lot of graffiti at the bottom.