The U.S. Deep Caving Team was created as an organization dedicated to the exploration, study, and public awareness of the earth's last remaining frontiers and to encourage the development of technologies necessary to achieve those aims. The early focus of the organization was to enable American exploration teams to field world-class expeditions to chart unexplored, and extremely deep air-filled caverns located in southern Mexico. The remoteness, technical nature, and depth of these caves (pushing towards 1500 meters [one mile] beneath the surface of the earth) forced new thinking. Based upon support from the U.S. Deep Caving Team, full time, on site expeditions lasting 3 to 4 months were fielded for the first time by U.S. speleologists. The philosophy then, and now, has been to enable the best amateur explorers in the country to temporarily become full time, volunteer professionals who can settle into an area and tackle an exploration problem in a fashion that would not otherwise be possible.