Growing up in Calaveras County, Stephen Fairchild spent more time underground than above it. This drive for the underworld has stayed with the “Caveman” through adulthood leading him to purchase four caves privately, making him owner of more caves than anyone else on the planet. Fairchild got his start in the commercial caving biz in 1972, when a friend who owned Boyden Cavern in Kings Canyon National Park decided to sell it. (The friend suffered from claustrophobia, a deathblow to anyone in the caving industry!) Fairchild took a look and decided it would be more fun to own and operate a cave than toil away as a computer executive and solid-state physicist.