When Aidan Ward answered his phone from a clearing off the side of a road in southern New Mexico, he was exactly where he wanted to be: helping a geologist friend with cave research at Carlsbad Caverns.
Ward majored in computer science and philosophy with a studio art minor at the University of Virginia. Now he works remotely as a freelance artificial intelligence trainer, a job in which he can set his own schedule. That allows him to live in a van and explore caves across the nation. He’s also gone worldwide, completing three expeditions in recent months to research and map cave systems.
Ward poses in his caving gear before descending into the Sternes Cave in Crete, Greece. The Speleological Association of Crete organized the expedition. (Photo by Alec Matheus)
“You get to go in places that most people never even think of going,” he said. “They’re these otherworldly, beautiful, dark environments that few people have ever seen before.”
It all began when the Front Royal native went on a caving expedition at Crossroads Cave in Bath County with Outdoors at UVA during his second year on Grounds. Since then, he’s fallen in love with the darkness and quiet that caves offer.
“Once you get used to that environment, it allows you to center yourself,” he said. “Nothing you’re concerned with in the above-ground world matters anymore. It’s just you, the people you’re with and the cave around you.”
What started as a hobby has transformed into a lifestyle built around exploring the world’s deepest and most remote underground spaces.
As an undergrad, he also discovered “project caving” – purposeful, work-oriented trips underground for cave surveying, science, management or restoration – and has been hooked since. Sometimes project caving entails surveying caves previously unseen by humans.
“Project caving is another level of caving, because you can shine a flashlight on something that’s never had any light on it before,” Ward said.
Since graduating, Ward has been invited to participate in several international caving expeditions. Here are a few stops on Ward’s worldwide tour:
Ward joins the U.S. Deep Caving team on the Sistema Cheve Expedition in Oaxaca, Mexico, in April. Cheve is the second-deepest cave in the Americas. (Contributed photos)
Sistema Cheve Expedition in Oaxaca, Mexico
In April, Ward joined the U.S. Deep Caving team on the Sistema Cheve Expedition, where the team set up camp 610 meters underground in the approximately 800-meter-deep Palomora Cave in southern Mexico.
Led by William “Bill” C. Stone, an internationally known engineer and spelunker who funds caving expeditions, the goal of the trip was to find a hypothesized connection between Palomora and the larger Cheve cave system, which, if found, could make Cheve the deepest cave in the world.
Currently, Cheve is the second-deepest cave in the Americas and the 11th-deepest cave in the world. Ward joined the team for the last four weeks of the five-week expedition as a member of the support team, shuttling gear and supplies to the deep exploration team.
“In the final week of the expedition, I got to join the exploration team, and I spent seven days underground helping survey a newly discovered underground river, 790 meters below the surface,” he said.
Ward hikes three days through central Vietnamese jungle with a Vietnamese-American caving team, searching for an entrance to a collapsed cave passage. The group only found boulder-blocked openings and ultimately were unable to enter the cave. (Contributed photos)
Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, Vietnam
In July, a caver named Kevin Ditamore invited Ward to join a weeklong expedition in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in central Vietnam, where the joint Vietnamese-American team hiked for three days through the jungle to find and descend an unexplored doline – a large collapsed cave passage – 200 meters in diameter and 150 meters deep.
The team was hoping to find an entrance to the cave system that caused the collapse to map the inside of the cave. But unfortunately, all the entrances were blocked by broken down boulders.
“Still, experiencing Phong Nha-Ke Bang and descending into an unexplored subterranean jungle was pretty incredible,” Ward said.
Ward explores the Sternes Cave alongside more than 40 cavers from eight countries – his largest expedition to date. (Contributed photos)
Sternes Cave Expedition in Crete, Greece
In August, Ward made his most recent international expedition to Crete, Greece, for the Sternes Cave Expedition, organized by the Speleological Association of Crete. This was the largest expedition he’s been a part of, with more than 40 cavers from eight different countries participating.
Sternes is about 700 meters deep and plummets straight down for the first 500 meters, “before opening up into a vast horizontal network of glittering white frostwork crystals, an underground river with cascading waterfalls of clear blue water and massive breakdown chambers where your light barely reaches the ceiling,” Ward said.
Sternes is the most impressive cave Ward has ever explored, he said. The team surveyed almost three kilometers of passages over the two weeks of the expedition, establishing Sternes as the second-longest cave in Greece.
