FORTY-EIGHT
ALEXANDER KABANIKHIN’S ACCIDENT HALTED THE EXPEDITION of August 2003. Alexander Klimchouk planned to lead one of his own—the sixth since 1999—to Krubera in the summer of 2004. In August, his team arrived on the Arabika Massif with fifty-six cavers (forty-five men and eleven women) from seven countries, ten thousand pounds of supplies, and two miles of rope.
They, like all those who had gone into Krubera before them, had no illusions about their coming weeks. Cheve Cave was full of challenges and hazards, and there was no hyperbole in the assertion that exploring it was like climbing Mount Everest in reverse. But neither was it uncommon for people to wax poetic about the exquisite turquoise pools of the Swim Gym, the Turbines’ polished, gleaming walls, the daunting splendor of Nightmare Falls. The beauty of Cheve, in other words.
Not so Krubera. Aesthetically and technically, it was an ugly cave, tight, wet, freezing, and unrelentingly vertical. Cheve presented cavers with a modicum of walking passage and nontechnical descents like the A.S. Borehole and Low Rider Parkway. In contrast, about 90 percent of Krubera was technical (requiring ropes and hardware), one long elevator shaft after another pounded by glacial-melt waterfalls, connected by tortuous meanders. Cheve gave its explorers room to back off and take in the vistas, like tourists on the Blue Ridge or the rim of the Grand Canyon. Not Krubera, which almost never relaxed its tight embrace.
Be that as it may, these explorers encountered beauty of another kind: the elegance of superb leadership and organization. People had clearly assigned tasks, understood what they were, and doing them well for the good of the team was a point of immense pride. Moreover, on Klimchouk’s expeditions, cavers rarely got hurt. Women as well as men were present, but sexual shenanigans were conspicuously absent. Even couples slept separately, to avoid making others feel deprived or uncomfortable.
Klimchouk’s August 2004 expedition began with typical quiet efficiency. Team members acclimated once again to the supercave environment, rigged all the drops, established and stocked all the camps, drilled and blasted wider passageways. They also completed installation of a telephone line to the deepest camps.
After three weeks of this work, they reached a sump at 5,823 feet. Gennadiy Samokhin, who was to eastern European cave diving as the great American diver Jim Brown was to American, geared up and dove the sump’s 32-degree water. It was about 35 feet deep, and at the bottom he found a tight slot. Water went through it, but he could not. That left two options: work underwater with hand tools in zero visibility to widen the squeeze or find a way around the sump.
Sergio García-Dils, back for another Krubera close encounter, rappelled under a hammering blast of frigid water to the bottom of a narrow, nearby chamber, hoping it would go. No luck. Then two other expedition members, Dmitry Fedotov and Denis Kurta, found a tubular passage about 30 inches in diameter that descended steeply from one of the sections just beyond their deepest camp, some 415 feet above the terminal sump. If other places in Krubera were ugly, this hellhole was horrific. For more than 100 yards, there was not even room to creep on one’s hands and knees. Over the eons, rushing water full of abrading gravel had cut and gouged the tube’s walls, leaving knife-edged ridges around its entire circumference. There were also many rock spikes poking out at all angles. It was like slithering on one’s belly through a twisting tube full of blades and daggers.
Fortunately, the cavers were amply rewarded. The passage (they named it Way to the Dream) bypassed the sump and kept going until it reached another at 5,888 feet. At the end of August, Samokhin free-dove this sump (meaning it was a breath-hold dive, without scuba gear), disappearing into the cold, opaque water. He did not resurface immediately, which was cause for both hope and fear. If he had popped right back up, it would have meant that there was no way past the sump. That he lingered longer meant that either he had found a way or was in trouble.
Samokhin’s companions stood anxiously around the sump, their breath visible in the cold, damp chamber. After what seemed like a very long time, they saw a light approaching through the bluish water. Samokhin surfaced, breathless but grinning.
It goes, he told them. There is an obstruction of boulders, but an opening that can be enlarged.
Samokhin had just completed the deepest dive—free or with gear—ever done in a cave and had pushed Krubera’s limit to 6,037 feet, establishing it firmly as the deepest cave on earth. This was a historic accomplishment. Samokhin and the others were well aware of that, and an ecstatic little celebration, with cheering and clapping and hugging, took place right there at the sump. When news of the find was telephoned up to Klimchouk and the others in camp, another celebration erupted.
Several days later, team members began crawling one by one out of Krubera’s mouth. Klimchouk hugged each in turn, and others were waiting with colorful bouquets and mugs of good wine. With the whole team reunited, a third celebration ensued.
EVERYONE WAS OUT SAFE, AND GREAT new work had been done. All good. But, to use an Antarctic analogy, they had not reached the South Pole just yet—there was still more descending cave to explore.
They would not explore more of it on this trip, however. Klimchouk had planned for a month up on the Arabika Massif, and they had spent their month. Both supplies and cavers were nearing exhaustion. It was time to pull out.