Mike’s main passion is caving! He was first introduced to caving in the Yorkshire Dales by his dad at the age of 6 and has been hooked ever since. He has extensive experience of caving in the Yorkshire Dales and elsewhere in the UK, and has been involved in helping to produce a number of guidebooks including Northern Caves, and Not for the Faint Hearted – a selection of 50 of the hardest caving trips in Yorkshire. He has had the pleasure of discovering brand new cave in the area, both through caving and cave diving, and has taken part in exploratory and sporting caving expeditions to France, Spain, Montenegro, Slovenia, Greece, Mexico, Vietnam and the Republic of Abkhazia. Highpoints include descending (at the time) the worlds deepest cave – Voronya – at just over 2km depth, and helping to find new cave in Hang Son Doong – the largest cave in the World in Vietnam.

Mike is also passionate about mountaineering, having climbed a number of 4,000m peaks in the Alps, Sea Kayaking, and Ultra-marathons, with completed races including the 108 mile Montane Spine MRT Challenger (2018, 2023 – 1st place) and the Northern Traverse (2022) – a 190mile foot race following Wainwrights Coast to Coast route. Mike is a current member of the local cave and mountain rescue team for the three peaks area. Mike is also a part-time Geophysicist.

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Steph is also a highly passionate caver, and was introduced to the sport back in her homeland of Ireland. She has caved extensively in Ireland, discovering lots of new cave in the process, as well as the Yorkshire Dales. Steph has had the pleasure of taking part in a number of foreign exploratory and sporting caving expeditions to France, Spain and elsewhere. She is a founder of the Ario Caves Project, an exploratory caving expedition to the Picos de Europa mountains of Northern Spain hoping to find one of the deepest caves in Europe, and has taken part in expeditions there since 2011, continuing the impressive work of the Oxford University Caving Club. In 2017, a film made about the expedition by Hot Aches Productions won the Peoples’ Choice Award at the Kendal Mountain Festival. Steph is also a keen mountaineer, having scaled a number of 4,000m peaks in the Alps with Mike, sea kayaker, and ultra-marathon runner. She currently has the women’s record for the 108 mile Montane Spine MRT Challenger, which she has now won twice. Steph is a current member of the local cave and mountain rescue team for the three peaks area, for which she was the first woman underground controller. She is currently in her first year as a trainee Clinical Psychologist at Leeds, and hopes to incorporate some of her outdoor therapeutical ideas into Yorkshire Dales Guides.

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