Speleology and caving. From a science to an outdoor activity (1930-1945)

After being institutionalized as a science in 1895, caving keeps this scholarly image up until the 1930s. The activity is then embraced by outdoor enthusiasts like alpinists and scouts whose influence will progressively change it. The mixing together of these very different practitioners gives rise to a genuine cultural "melting pot", each party bringing in its own specific ways of practice. This is how caving progressively becomes closer to an outdoor activity, but without losing its scientific outlook. The point of this article is to evidence this cultural mix which ended up with a new definition of the activity. We will look into each party's cultural specificities and see how it affected the practice of caving. At the same time we will show how speleologists in their turn influenced new comers to the activity. These developments will be analyzed through the words of the people and groups concerned. To this end we will refer to a corpus of reviews, books and letters written by the actors themselves.