The extreme cavers: don’t watch these videos if you’re claustrophobic

Last month, 15-year-old Jacob Sanders found himself stuck deep in the belly of a dark cave. He had stripped down to his underwear, his naked torso bleeding from scratches. And he was shivering from the cold.

But he wasn’t afraid. His uncle, Calvin Sanders, and his dad were nearby, and they were confident they could get him out. In fact, they’d helped him into the tight spot, hoisting him through a small crack in the ceiling to push deeper into the Pacific north-west cave, further in than any human had ever been before.

But now, without a boost or anything to push off of with his legs, he was struggling to squeeze back through the space, similar in size to the opening of a dog door, but lined with sharp, rough, lava-made basalt rock.

“I first took off my hoodie to fit through,” Jacob explained on a recent video call from Washington state, where he lives.“I was covered in blood and scratches from the cave walls. And my belt loop got stuck. And I couldn’t really breathe. So I had to take my belt off. And then my pants got stuck, so I literally started to take off my pants and everything.”

(Warning: do not watch the video below if you are claustrophobic.)

Eventually, scratched up but smiling, Jacob made it back through to his family. The scene didn’t make it into a video on Caveman Hikes, their YouTube channel chronicling Jacob and Calvin’s often claustrophobia-inducing caving excursions, but it’s similar to the scenarios that have helped their videos go viral.

In the video called “The worst claustrophobic caving you will ever see”, for example, Calvin, a 46-year-old military veteran and experienced outdoorsman, and a small team of expert cavers use a drill to chip away at a long passageway before wedging themselves in to