March 4, 2025, 6:21 a.m. | Reading time: 6 minutes
In the Abkhazia region that broke away from Georgia is the Veryovkina Cave, the deepest of its kind in the world. The descent into this incredible world takes four days and is so dangerous that its deepest point was only discovered during an expedition in 2018. This almost ended in catastrophe for the researchers. Other explorers paid for the descent with their lives.
On the east coast of the Black Sea in the Abkhazia region, which has broken away from Georgia, in the middle of the inaccessible Arabika mountain range, there is a place that, in the worst case, you pay with your life to enter. However, only very few people would have the experience and physical ability to do that, because we are talking about the Verjovkina Cave, the deepest of its kind in the entire world. First committed in 1968, it took researchers 50 years to reach its lowest point. The expedition almost ended in disaster for the team, as they narrowly escaped an underground tidal wave. Others weren't so lucky.
The bare numbers surrounding the Verjovkina Cave are goosebump-inducing. It is 2,212 meters deep and in some places so narrow that a person can squeeze straight through. The descent to the bottom is incredibly strenuous and takes a total of four days. The researcher Robbie Shone, who barely escaped with his life during the 2018 expedition, compares it in the specialist magazine “Base Mag” to climbing an 8,000 meter high mountain. “But instead of climbing up, you climb down,” says the adventurer. And just like when climbing a peak, there are camps in the cave as stopovers. In the Veryovkina they are located at depths of 600, 1350 and 2100 meters.
The discovery almost cost his life
The entrance to the Verjowkina Cave is just three by four meters wide and takes place via a 32 meter long shaft. In 1968, a team of Russian speleologists (cave explorers) ventured into the awe-inspiring abyss for the first time. They barely made it to a depth of 115 meters, marked the location on their map and named it S-115. On another expedition almost 20 years later, a team from Moscow penetrated to a depth of 440 meters. They named the cave after their late colleague Alexander Veryovkin, who lost his life while climbing in another nearby cavity during the venture, which lasted over three years (from 1983 to 1986).
In 2018, the Perovo Speleo Caving Team, an international consortium of experts, managed the entire descent for the first time. Over four days they fought their way to a depth of 2,212 meters, setting a world record. Never before had people descended deeper into the earth's interior than in Verjovkina Cave. The year before, a depth of 2,204 meters had already been reached and more than 13 kilometers of the cave system had been explored. But the brave women and men barely paid for their incredible achievement with their lives. Robbie Shone only told about the hair-raising rescue story in “Base Mag” in 2021.
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A tidal wave like a freight train
“The expedition had been going smoothly until then, and suddenly we were catapulted into survival mode,” said the photographer. It was the seventh day of a 14-day expedition when the Veryovkina Cave almost became a death trap for the group. While they were having breakfast at a depth of 2,100 meters, Shone and his colleagues received a radio message from team members who were already higher up. The warning: a tidal wave is coming from above. Initially underestimating the danger, we even finished our breakfast comfortably. Until the water hit the camp like a biblical plague.
"I will never forget that sound. It was a deafening roar, as if a freight train was thundering through our camp." Immediately afterwards, an enormous tidal wave from a height of 15 meters washed over the researchers, but initially disappeared into even deeper regions of the Verjovkina Cave. However, researchers underestimated how quickly it would rise. And now a fight to the death began. The team had to start climbing to higher, safer regions as quickly as possible. In their haste, they had to leave behind a lot of their equipment, which they had previously carried in backpacks weighing up to 30 kilos.
“I thought everyone was dead”
While the water in the Verjovkina Cave was continually rising beneath the researchers, it was rushing from above onto their heads. "The only way to breathe was to tuck my chin tightly into my chest, creating a tiny cavity under the helmet. I was absolutely terrified and panicked," said Shone. This increased when he temporarily lost sight of colleagues climbing up behind him. “For a few long minutes, I thought everyone behind me in the cave was dead.” At a depth of 1,900 meters, the group finally had to take a break for 16 hours because a waterfall coming from above made further ascent impossible. Always worried that the floods could continue to rise from below.
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Eventually, however, the water in the Verjovkina Cave receded. Some team members even dared to collect equipment that was left at a greater depth. One researcher had injured his knee, but miraculously everyone had survived. Robbie Shone points out at the end of his report that this was only possible because all members of the expedition were extremely experienced and physically trained. After surviving the near-death experience, he has words of praise for his team: “For me, these people are not only in the same league as the greatest explorers of our modern world, but of all time.”
Others weren't so lucky, as Australian news site News reports. Accordingly, the Russian adventurer Sergei Kozeev lost his life in the Verjovkina Cave. He disappeared there in November 2020. His body was only recovered in August of the following year at a depth of more than 900 meters, hanging from a climbing rope. He died of hypothermia due to the extreme cold underground. According to authorities, the man was probably a tourist who was not optimally prepared for the requirements. A clear warning that a venture like penetrating the deepest cave in the world should be left to the experts. Because even they are sometimes just lucky to make it out alive.
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