Explorers Club

Bill Steele started exploring caves in Kentucky while a teenaged Boy Scout in the mid-1960s. He has stayed active in it ever since. 

At age 30 he joined The Explorers Club and was named a Fellow at a much younger age than is usual. He had already explored hundreds of caves, including sections of Mammoth Cave, the world’s longest cave, and had organized and led the expedition which explored and mapped Sistema Huautla in Mexico, still the deepest known cave in the Americas.

Steele is active with the Texas Chapter of The Explorers Club and is a former chairperson of it. He retired in 2014 after a 34-year-career with the Boy Scouts of America, at the conclusion of which he was national director of Alumni Relations and the National Eagle Scout Association. Bill has been on 23 Explorers Club flag expeditions, the most of any member in its 120 year history.

He is co-leader of Proyecto Espeleologico Sistema Huautla, the project continuing to explore, map, study, and publish about Sistema Huautla in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca.    He is the author of two caving books, “Yochib: The River Cave” and “Huautla: Thirty Years in One of the World’s Deepest Caves” and many chapters in other books and hundreds of articles. He spends time exploring caves in Texas, organizing Huautla expeditions, travelling the world as a speaker on cruise ships, and spending time with his partner Dr. Diana Tomchick and his seven grandkids. 

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Steele_(cave_explorer)