Minecraft Tutorial SE05 - Cave Mining

When doing a cave mining, you can make landmarks without using cobblestones.
Simply place your torch only to your right, when you want to return to surface, walk with torches on your left.
This is extremely helpful except for mineshaft conditions.
However, you can also try to work out the structure of the cave.
You should mark the number of layers, the path of the layer and the special places(e.g. lava lake)
Maps should have label for each path to another map.

This kind of map will do, layer 1 is connected with layer 2 by hole A.
And marking of lava will make it a lot safer especially when your computer is lagging.
I hope this helped!