Veryovkina Cave

Veryovkina Cave (also spelled Verëvkina Cave, ვერიოვკინის მღვიმე, Вериовкин иҳаԥы) is a cave in Abkhazia, internationally recognized as part of Georgia. At 2,223 meters (7,257 ft) deep, it is the deepest-known cave on Earth. Veryovkina is in the Arabika Massif, in the Gagra mountain range of the Western Caucasus, on the pass between the Krepost and Zont mountains, close to the slopes of Mount Krepost. Its entrance is 2,285 metres (7,497 ft) above sea level. The entrance of the cave has a cross section of 3 m × 4 m (9.8 ft × 13.1 ft), and the depth of the entrance shaft is 32 metres (105 ft).

Naming
In 1968, the cave was assigned the name S-115, which was later replaced by P1-7, and in 1986 it was renamed after caver and cave diver Alexander Verëvkin. Verëvkin died in 1983 while exploring a siphon in the cave Su-Akan, located in the Sary-Tala massif, now Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia.

History



 * 1968: the cave was discovered by cavers from Krasnoyarsk. They reached a depth of 115 m and marked it on the map as S-115.
 * 1982: the cave was discovered for the second time by the expedition of the "Perovo" speleoclub (PSC) from Moscow. It was marked as P1-7.
 * 1983–1986: cavers from the same team continued exploration and reached the depth of 440 m.
 * 1986–2000: work in the cave did not take place.
 * From 2000 to 2015 – the PSC and its "Perovo-speleo" team (PST) researched the cave bottom. Despite the effort, the deepest known cave depth remained at 440 m.
 * August 2015 – cavers from the PSC discovered a new shaft, but could not explore it because they did not have rope. This discovery opened the way to a series of later discoveries.
 * June 2016 – the expedition of the PST took place. The team started from the same point. They surveyed a pit that was about 30 m deep and a small system of passages below. The next day Evgenyj Kuzmin climbed over the wall of boulders and found the head of the Babatunda pit. Its depth was later determined to be 156 m. That expedition managed to reach a depth of 630 m.
 * August 2016 – a joint expedition of the PST and the PSC reached a depth of 1010 m.
 * October 2016 – the expedition of the PST reached a depth of 1350 m.
 * February 2017 – the expedition of the PST reached a depth of 1832 m. The cave advanced to the second deepest in the world, after Krubera (Voronya) cave.
 * Early August 2017 – the PSC explored the cave to a depth of 2151 m. An ancient collector of the karst aquifer system with extensive horizontal tunnels, not typical for the Arabika Massif, was discovered. Veryovkina became the second super deep cave (over 2 km) and the deepest accessible without diving equipment.
 * Late August 2017 – the PST reached a depth of 2204 m, thus setting a new world depth record. A huge system of more than 6000 m of subhorizontal passages below -2100 m was discovered and surveyed.
 * March 2018 – another expedition of the same team added more than a kilometer of tunnels to the cave map. They also measured the depth of The Last Nemo Station terminal siphon lake. It was 8.5 m and so the total cave depth reached 2212 m.
 * September 2018 – a photo trip of the PST to the bottom of the cave took place, led by Pavel Demidov, with the English cave photographer Robbie Shone. The team narrowly escaped the flood caused by a rain storm, which filled the lower level of the cave.
 * August 2019 – the cave depth was increased to 2212 m during the survey by members of the PSC.
 * August 2023 – the cave depth was increased to 2223 m through the survey of the siphon Captain Nemo's last stand by an underwater drone, again during the expedition of the PSC.

During an expedition in 2021, PST found the body of a caver, who died exploring on his own, at −1100 m. He was later identified as Sergei Kozeev, who left his home in Sochi (Russia) on 1 November 2020 and began descent into Veryovkina, where he spent around a week at a −600 m permanent camp. Then he continued his descent down to technically challenging parts at −1100 m where he got stuck due to inadequate equipment and skill, and died of hypothermia. The body was eventually recovered after a complex retrieval operation on 17 August 2021.