Ron Zuber
rienced cave explorers I sought out to go
Bill Steele
(8072RE) (FE, LB, CM)
You’ve been caving since you were
a boy. Can you tell me about how you
got started?
As a kid I got to go in show caves
on family vacations. Early on I went to
Mammoth Cave. Those giant passages
thrilled me. I liked the smell and feel of the
rock walls and began to look at hills and
mountains differently. I wondered if there
could be caves beneath them.
At age 13 I was a Boy Scout in a
dynamic troop. We went to north-central
Kentucky for a week to explore caves our
scoutmaster knew about. In one cave I led
the way and crawled up through break-
down to find an upper level trunk passage.
It enthralled me to see a pristine floor and
know that no one had ever been there
before. Two friends and I savored the feelings
by going slowly into virgin cave. We walked
in and out in one set of footprints so it would
look like only one person had gone in but
didn’t exit. We laughed a lot about that.
I led the way with the older scouts and
we organized our own Explorer post. We
specialized in caving. Two years later I joined
the NSS with the two other most gung-ho
cavers. That was 45 years ago. I’m still in
touch with those two guys and have seen
them both in the past couple of years. They
love it that I still go caving.
Your early caving and further
development was influenced by some
legendary cavers, who were they and
why are you grateful to them?
I got to go caving with John Wilcox
at Flint Ridge with the Cave Research
Foundation (CRF) when I was 19 years old.
John is the guy who made the connection
between Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave in
1972. I learned from John the joy of being
remote in a long cave, to be very far from an
entrance, and to like it. I also learned from
him to be exact, to be completely truthful
about what you found or didn’t find. There
is a CRF saying, “Did it end, or were you
just tired?” I also picked up from him the
push caver attitude of dogged determination
and toughing it out. I remember him saying,
“When you think it’s bad, it’s not really that
bad, you’ll be home on Monday.”
You developed a sort of “sixth
sense” in cave exploration, what is it
and how did it come about?
I learned useful pointers from expe-
caving with. Richard Schreiber taught me
how to feel air flow. He was uncannily good
at it. He also taught me how to recognize
patterns in the geology, meaning you figure
out why the cave is there, and you antici-
pate where it’s going to go. That concept
played big in Huautla where the geology was
complex, and the cave threw us surprises. It
took many trips before we began to under-
stand the patterns and where to look.
From Mike Boon I learned how to read
water current in a river cave, and those
lessons were learned in Sumidero Tenejapa
and Sumidero Yochib in Chiapas, Mexico.
I also learned from Boon the plus side to
camping in a deep cave, allowing yourself
the time to find what’s there.
Some of America’s finest cave
explorers are your close friends and
caving companions. How do they influ-
ence and encourage you?
Do my caving friends encourage me?
Yes, mainly by going with me on trips I plan,
or inviting me on trips they’re planning.
We tell each other what we’ve found, send
each other articles we’ve written, and call
excitedly when we’ve discovered something
we’re proud of. It’s a rich existence that I’m
happy to be living.
I looked into it and of the 40 Lew
Bicking Award recipients since the first
one in 1969, I have been caving with 21.
There are lots of skilled cave explorers who
haven’t been nominated or lucky enough
to be honored with the LBA. I’ve been at
it long enough to have been caving with a
lot of them.
You share so much with your friends.
You learn what gear is best. I’m forever
adjusting my gear and making improve-
ments. You learn how to move through
a cave with grace. I don’t think there is
anything finer in caving than to be travel-
ing a long distance, for hours and hours,
and spending the time with good friends,
talking, laughing, marveling, resting, and
savoring the moment. I want to keep doing
it all my life.
Exploration seems to be at the
core of your being. How does your
great desire to explore and discover
motivate you?
I was 20 years old when Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on the moon.
I got to meet both of them at an event in
Chicago last year. Everyone at the event
seemed to want to talk to them. I saw people
jockeying for position to engage them, espe-
Bill consumes an unusual appetizer at an
Explorer’s Club Dinner
cially Neil. When I met him I surprised him by
telling him that I was a caver and that I knew
he’d been on a caving expedition with the
British in Equator not long after he’d gone to
the moon. He was amazed I knew that. He
wanted to talk about it. I invited him to go on
a tank haul, but he said that’s he’s too old.
When I was a kid my dad had a copy
of Thor Heyerdahl’s book Kon Tiki. In it he
talked about The Explorers Club. I dreamed
of being a member someday. I became a
teenager in 1961, the same year that JFK
vowed that we’d go to the moon. The spirit
of exploration seemed to be an American
mindset in those days. Soon thereafter I
found caving and I knew it was my niche.
I’ve been an active cave explorer ever since.
You’re a Fellow of The Explorers
Club and have recently been featured in
Jason Schoonover’s book Adventurous
Dreams, Adventurous Lives. Tell me
about the Explorers Club and this
honor.
I guess I figured you had to be up in
years to be considered for membership in
The Explorers Club. But that all changed
during the 1978 NSS convention in Texas
when Bill Stone and I asked former NSS
and Explorers Club president Russ Gurnee
to take a walk with us. We had some lunch,
and told him about our dream of organizing
a long-term project to explore the world’s
deepest cave. We had already been orga-
nizing Huautla expeditions together. What
we really had up our sleeve was trying to
understand how the world of organizing
NSS  News, June 2009 19

Bill on rope in Huautla, 1981
expeditions worked and how we could raise
money and get gear donated. We needed
thousands of feet of rope, for example.
Gurnee told us that we should join The
Explorers Club, he would sponsor us and
he would get us our required second spon-
sor. He said membership in it would give us
credibility. So we applied for membership.
I was 31 years old and Stone was 27 when
we were granted membership as Fellows.
Now, 30 years later, I’m the chairman
of the Texas Chapter of The Explorers Club.
It’s a social scene I enjoy. Last weekend I
went to Houston to one of our three annual
dinner meetings. The speaker was a NASA
astronaut who was in the International Space
Station when the Columbia Space Shuttle
crashed in 2003. He told us about being
marooned in space until the Russians were
able to go get them. I like meeting people
like that and sharing stories. The Explorers
Club is made up of people with extraordinary
experiences from a myriad of places under
the oceans, in the caves, to all corners of the
earth, and in outer space.
Jason Schoonover, a Canadian author,
contacted me and invited me to write a short
chapter for his book Adventurous Dreams,
Adventurous Lives which was published in
2007. I liked the premise: tell about your
Ah-ha moment, a point in your life that you
realized that you liked something so much
you would keep doing it. I told my Kon-Tiki
and Boy Scout virgin cave stories. I was one
of 120 “adventurers” invited to contribute.
I gave copies of the book to all my family
for Christmas.
You’ve seen and explored vast
areas, great depths and distances
underground. Where are some of those
20 NSS  News, June 2009
places?
I grew up in Ohio, not far from
Kentucky, and started caving there. I went
to college in Indiana and caved in that state,
continued to go caving in Kentucky, and
started caving in TAG in the late 60s. I
met Richard Schreiber in 1969 right after
Ellison’s had been discovered, and got in on
exploring and mapping it with him. He had
been caving in Mexico already, so his stories
piqued my interest in going there, especially
to Huautla, Oaxaca, which was already the
deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere. I
was very interested in deep caves. I had read
all of Norbert Casteret’s books and other
books about exploring the deepest known
caves in the world. I rode the wave of the
developing single rope techniques.
Off the top of my head, the notable
caves to which I contributed to their explo-
ration and mapping were Flint Ridge and
Mammoth Caves in Kentucky and I still go
there a time or two every year; Parker’s Pit
Cave in Indiana, which in the mid-70s we
pushed to be the deepest cave in the state.
Ellison’s Cave, Georgia, that was a life-
changing experience. Imagine having a 510
foot rope to climb in a waterfall and you’ve
already been in the cave over 20 hours. It
was great practice for what was to come.
In 1971 I was a senior at Indiana
University. A caver and his wife inherited
money and decided they were going to go to
Mexico and explore a big cave. They talked
me into dropping out of college and going
with them. I did, and spent six months in
Mexico. We explored Grutas de Juxtlahuaca,
which we mapped to be the longest cave in
Mexico at the time. It’s got the oldest known
cave paintings in the New World, and later
it became a national park. I’m going to that
area again next month. There are reports
of other caves.
Having made friends among the Austin
cavers, I moved there in 1976 and immersed
myself in the most vibrant caving community
in the country. From there I was active in
cave exploration in Mexico, still am, and
caving in Texas.
Almost every summer through the 70s I
spent my summers in Montana and explored
several deep caves in the Bob Marshall
Wilderness. In Texas, through the 80s and
into the 90s, I was very much involved with
the exploration and mapping of the two
longest caves, Powell’s Cave and Honey
Creek Cave.
I’ve also helped explore and map Blue
Springs Cave, Tennessee, Duncan Field
Cave, Oklahoma’s longest, and the super
deep ones: Sistema Cheve and Sistema
Huautla in Southern Mexico, first and second
deepest caves in the Western Hemisphere. In
1993 I went to Kijahe Xontjoa on the plateau
to the east of Huautla with the Swiss, went
over 1,000 meters deep, and camped deep
for five days.
Mixed with those is a trip or two per
year to TAG with my best friend Jim Smith.
Whenever I have a business trip to the
Southeast I work out being in the area over a
weekend and help him with one of his many
exploration and mapping projects.
I know you like to have fun in this
life and you like to teach young cavers
good lessons. Tell me about the great
lessons you taught my son Adam on
his first trip with you deep into Soplo
de Los Toros.
Now, that’s your fault. What kind of
man would send his 19 year-old son off to
Mexico with some old dudes? You’re asking
for him to catch on quick. You know, the
usual, he found a rock or two in his pack, he
was tricked into carrying the big coils of rope,
he went first into tight fissure pits, we teased
him about the gay Mexican waiter who called
him guapo, and so on. Your son Adam took
it all with a huge smile. You should be proud.
What’s that most appropriate
phrase you and your mates call out
when exploring passage with little air
space?
I think lots of cavers for many years
have uttered the words “The Horror!” when
the going is particularly grim. It comes from
Marlon Brando’s last words in the movie
Apocalypse Now. I published an article in
Illuminations, the journal of the NSS Arts
and Letters Section, about the origin of the
phrase “The Horror!” in caving.
The concept of the “Flat Rock” to put an
injured caver out of his misery is a good one,
which of course is a joke, and the cunning
game of rocking packs. I’m even on You
Tube talking about the art of rocking packs.
It can be found by searching You Tube for
Caving with the Girl on Top.
As an Eagle Scout, and in your
career with the Boy Scouts of America,
you’ve seen lots of developments and
changes in American youth. How
does your caving and scouting work
together?
Yes, I am an Eagle Scout. I loved
Scouting as a youth. That’s where my best
friends were, more than in sports, and I
earned three varsity letters. Scouts meant
adventure. Sports meant pushy coaches and
stress, but I was a natural at it.
I’ve had a 28 year career with the BSA.
I spent 21 years in local councils, all the
way to being council CEO, and have been
a national director for the past eight years.
I don’t mix my job and caving very much.
Being a national director at the national
headquarters of the BSA, being known there
as a caver, and having authored a couple of
documents about caving for the BSA, ques-
tions about caving naturally are funneled to
me. But officially, the policies and rules don’t
come under me now; at one time they did,
when I was the national Director of Health
and Safety Services. My position now is as
Director of Alumni Relations. I am taking
the BSA down the path of locating, recon-
necting, and reengaging our many millions
of former Scouts, their parents, and former
leaders. The main way we’re going about
that is through our newly established Web
site www.BSAalumni.org.
As far as developments and changes in
American youth, I suppose the big thing I
sense is what some call “helicopter parents,”
those who hover just above their kid’s head
to ease them through life. And I think my
own generation, the Baby Boomers, are
the culprits.
But I have great optimism for the future
as it’s going to be lived by the youth of today.
One place young adults and my caving come
together is in organizing massive tank haul
trudges to the far reaches of Honey Creek
Cave. We did one in January of this year
that took 27 people. That’s what it takes to
get all the cave diving gear and a cave radio
for two cave divers, six hours into the cave.
Probably half the cavers I recruited to do
this challenging trip were college-age. They
did great and they loved it. I hope they stick
with it. That’s all I’ve done in my life; I started
caving young, and nothing ever came along
that I liked doing as much.
You’ve been keeping a caving log
or journal for a long time. If I were to
page through it what kinds of things
would I learn about you?
That sometimes caves don’t behave
themselves, that they don’t do what you
want them to do, what you thought the
geology told you they were going to do. On
Silvertip Mountain, Montana, in 1976, we
were on the cusp of resetting the US deep
cave record, which had stood for 22 years,
but it didn’t happen. I wrote an article entitled
It Became an Obsession about the push
to connect a horror hole of a cave named
Meander Belt to the Silvertip Cave System.
We didn’t make it.
You like people, especially cavers
and other explorers. Your active partic-
ipation in many activities, gatherings,
grotto meetings, conferences and
conventions is important to you.
Besides the purpose what do you get
from all the socializing?
Being with my own kind of people,
those with kindred spirits, those who have
lived similar lives to my own, those who
speak the same language, as the cliché goes.
Besides that Bill relaxing in Honey Creek
secr et Texas cave Cave, Texas, 1986
project you won’t tell
me about, what are
some of your current
caving projects?
I’ll tell you about
that secret Texas cave
we’re exploring and
mapping, but I won’t
tell you the name of it
or what county it’s in.
That’s because that is the
wish of the landowner.
I chased per mission
for 15 years to get
into that cave, and it
finally worked out, only
Li Nita in the Huautla area just three months
because ownership of the ranch changed
prior and it became the 7th cave in the world
hands. We’ve found some great trunk
to reach that benchmark depth. Then, five
passage there.
weeks later on the same expedition, on May
Other projects include the continued
3, 1980, we managed to find a route and
mapping of Honey Creek Cave, which is
make a connection from Li Nita to Sotano
now over 20 miles long. I’ve been to Huautla
de San Agustin, creating Sistema Huautla.
twice in the past couple of years, and work
Those stories are told in detail in the caving
continues there. Diana Tomchick and I
book I have written and is just now published
have been caving in the Purificacion area
by Cave Books: Huautla.
of northern Mexico five out of the past six
Christmas holidays with Mark Minton and
Caves are important to you. What
Yvonne Droms. We have pushed a cave we
are some of the notable caves and
dug open to be over 500 meters deep now,
caving trips that give you pleasure
deeper than any cave in the USA.
when you think about them?
Also, I’m the grotto chairman for the
There are hundreds of them. Blue
Dallas/Fort Worth Grotto, and we have a
Springs Cave, Tennessee, was one of them,
grotto project to thoroughly explore and
but that’s probably because it was with Jim
map Spring Creek Cave, northwest of San
Smith. He always makes me laugh.
Antonio. I explored and mapped in that cave
The 1987 Huautla expedition when we
in the late 70s. Cavers lost access to it in
connected Nita Nanta to Sistema Huautla,
the early 80s but it’s open to us again. It’s
establishing it as the second deepest cave in
a wetsuit cave and we’re finding virgin cave
the world, was a highly important event in
and mapping it.
my life. We almost lost someone, but it had
a happy ending.
Yo u r a c c o m p l i s h m e n t s h a v e
Caves are important to me and I can’t
earned you the respect and admira-
restrain my enthusiasm for them. What
tion of many of us. What are some of
surprises me is when cavers and work associ-
your awards and recognitions you’re
ates tell me that I’m a storyteller. I don’t even
most proud of?
realize that I am. I like telling about them
The Lew Bicking Award was a big deal
because caving gives you such interesting
to me. I recently wrote and published an
tales. Often people at work just shake their
article about still caving hard like that 30
heads in disbelief.
years later. Being an NSS fellow. Going to
the podium at the 1988 NSS convention and
Is it true that you did Sotano de las
receiving a Certificate of Merit on behalf of
Golondrinas on knots? Twice?
the Huautla Project. And being a Fellow of
Three times. Lots of people have.
The Explorers Club, those are major recogni-
tions of my non-professional life.
Have you ever had any unusual
meals while caving in Mexico?
There are certain moments that
There’s a restaurant in Oaxaca City
stand out in any person’s life. What are
cavers go to that puts a big heaping portion
some of your special caving moments?
of fried grasshoppers on every plate. I like
I have two dates in my caving which are
them and end up with the ones that my
burned into my brain, one of which is: March
friends won’t eat. I wrapped a big pile of
29, 1980. On an expedition I co-led with
them in a napkin to munch on later and there
Bill Stone we explored the first 1,000 meter
were little grasshopper legs in the truck for
deep cave outside of Europe. We discovered
NSS  News, June 2009 21
the rest of the trip.
One time at Sotano de las Golondrinas,
a cave named after a type of bird that lives
in the gigantic pit, a couple of local Indian
boys were whipping long sticks back and
forth in the air near the pit edge early in the
morning. They were hoping to knock a bird
out of the air as it flew up over the lip of the
pit. When they got one, they built a little fire
and cooked it. I asked them if I could have a
bite. How could I not?
But the most unusual food caving has
led me to would have to be at the Explorers
Club Annual Dinner. I’ve read newspaper
articles that talk about the strange foods
they serve at the reception preceding that
dinner. I’m going to that event in New
York City soon. I’ve read that there will be
Madagascar hissing cockroaches on cracker,
tarantula tempura, and who knows what all?
It’s fun to stand there with your friends and
take pictures of people trying weird things.
Organization and leadership is
important in any endeavor. What
would you tell me about leadership and
teamwork in caving?
Like we tell them in the Boy Scouts,
you can’t be a good leader unless you are
a good follower. Leadership is a burden. It
means that you are working to accomplish
something through others. I think of caving
projects I’d like to accomplish, and then it’s
a matter of rounding up the people to make
it happen. Enthusiasm is a big part of it.
Take the recent trips into Honey Creek Cave
for example. Cavers have been going with
me on 17 hour-long, hard trips, carrying a
heavy pack with a scuba tank or a Pelican
case full of regulators, sinking in mud up to
their thighs and struggling through it for an
hour, crawling for hundreds of feet at a time,
stoop-walking for a mile, and waiting on the
cave divers for hours. You can’t motivate
people to do that; they have to come to you
already motivated. What you do is call it an
epic trip, historic caving, and lead the charge.
There’s a reason Alexander the Great rode
the fastest horse out ahead of everyone else.
We cavers challenge ourselves
based on our personal curiosity, needs
to push ourselves and physical and
mental abilities. Many of your discov-
eries are the result of you and your
team pushing to the very limits. In your
challenging caving have there been any
close calls.
Well, like I sometimes say, “So far I’ve
made it out of every cave I’ve ever been in.”
My three closest calls, by far, were being
marooned on a ledge 120 feet off the floor
in Meaderbelt Cave, Silvertip Mountain,
Montana, in 1976, which I describe in detail
in the aforementioned article It Became an
22 NSS  News, June 2009
Obsession, the flood in Sumidero Yochib,
which I describe in my caving book Yochib:
The River Cave, and the stove mishap
in Sistema Huautla, when a liter of fuel
caught fire and so did my clothes, in the
deepest underground camp ever done by
Americans. That’s fully disclosed in my new
book, Huautla.
In each one of those cases my day was
ruined. But like I heard a climber say one
time, “If you keep climbing, eventually you’ll
get hit by a rock.”
What’s that feeling in your gut
like to go farther, go deeper, go places
where no person has ever gone?
Farther, deeper, where no person has
been: that’s the most satisfying feeling I
know. The utter remoteness, the thought
of what all you have to go back through to
resume your “other life.” It’s not easy, and
it’s especially hard in Texas anymore to find
virgin cave, but I am, and it’s something to
live for. Cavers are fortunate that we get to
do it over and over again.
In order for an activity to be
considered true exploration, findings
must be documented and shared with
others. How do you do this?
The main way is by mapping caves.
There is a code among cavers that if you
explore it, you are obligated to map it. Then
you’ve got to draft the map or get it drafted,
and archived. I call cave survey notes “the
trophy.” It’s like the scalp an Indian warrior
holds up and yells. It’s your results. Also, I
write caving articles and books, and I enjoy
doing that. Even for our secret Texas cave
there is a detailed trip report of every trip
we’ve taken over the past seven years. Two
copies are safe in two different locations.
When that project ends a copy of those
reports, the original survey notes, and
the map will be deposited with the Texas
Speleological Survey in Austin. It’ll be
marked Not For Publication, but kept safe
for the future.
In my explorations I seek knowledge.
I strive to know a cave through what I call
“Full Speleology”. You see, I’m not a cave
scientist, but I have the respect of them. That
came about by consulting with them, inviting
them to go caving with me and doing every-
thing in my power to see that a cave I have
explored gets fully studied by all disciplines.
Speleology includes the sciences and arts of
cartography, archaeology, geology, biology,
zoology, sociology, hydrology, meteorology,
paleontology, and there are a couple I’m
not thinking of. I’m proud to say that I have
aided and encouraged all of these areas of
study in the cave projects with which I’ve
been associated.
Reading your book Yochib: The
River Cave had me on the edge of my
seat and I couldn’t put it down until
I finished it. Wow! What are some of
your other publications and what have
you got in press now?
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Wait until
you read Huautla. It’ll give you nightmares.
“Those guys did what?” you’ll be saying
out loud.
I co-authored the chapter about Sistema
Huautla in Encyclopedia of Caves with Jim
Smith. I wrote the chapter about Caving
in the Boy Scouts of America Fieldbook,
the 3rd edition, published in 1984. I’ve writ-
ten numerous articles in the NSS News,
the AMCS Activities Newsletter, the
Explorers Journal of The Explorers Club,
Illuminations, and many different grotto
newsletters. These days most of my articles
are submitted to the Oztotl Caver, the
monthly newsletter of my grotto, and the
Texas Caver.
I’ve got a picture of skinny you on
Silvertip in the 70s sporting a thick,
dark head of hair and beard. The last
time I saw you we joked about our
lightening hair color and expanding
girth. With three granddaughters I
know you’re getting older. What are
your aspirations for the future? What
would you like to do?
Sort of a bucket list? I turned 60 years
old last fall. I still like long, hard caving trips.
I went through a spell of my knees hurting
10 years ago, but they’re fine now. I went
to the doctor and did what he said.
I want to keep going caving often. I want
to maintain the momentum to explore Texas’
longest caves to their bitter ends. I want to
keep returning to Sistema Huautla. There are
more caves there to be explored. I honestly
believe what the late, great Swiss speleologist
Phillippe Roullier said when he went there,
“it’s the world’s most magnificent cave.”
I want to go 1,000 meters deep in a
cave at age 70. I want to live to be 100 years
old. I told my doctor that and he said I’m
the first patient of his to say that. I couldn’t
believe it. And he’s working with me to make
it. I’m 3/5 of the way there.
I want to cave hard in difficult caves, on
long, arduous trips in my 70s, maybe 80s.
I want to lose ten pounds, but I like having
my reserve “Already chewed” as I like to say.
And I want to learn to play the fife and piano.
I want to meet my great-grand kids. That
could happen in 20 years. I’ll be taking them
on a tank haul and rocking their packs.