"When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares at you."
Almost everyone has heard of Nietzsche's words, but few have seen the abyss in the literal sense.
In Russia, there is a group of people whose job is to detect the abyss, and it is the deepest abyss in the world, the Vilovkina Cave.
As in myths and legends, the job is extremely dangerous and fascinating.
(Vilovkina Cave)
Located in the Arabeka Mountains in northwestern Georgia, The Velovkina Cave has a hidden and narrow entrance, but its depth reaches 2,212 meters underground, resembling a tunnel leading straight to the center of the earth.
In 1968, The Vilovkina Cave was first discovered by Soviet serology, when they only explored to a depth of 115 meters, marking it as S-115 on a map.
(Mount Arabeca outside the cave)
In 1983, the Perovo Cave Exploration Club in Moscow followed the map and explored to a depth of 440 meters in the following years.
That number didn't change for thirty years, and no one knew that the underground world of The Velovkina Cave was that big.
(Entrance to Velovkina Cave)
This is because caves are not the same as mountain peaks, and it is difficult to see the depth intuitively from the appearance. Expedition members had to search carefully to find a downward stone cave, and many times, such a hole was only one person's width.
In August 2015, Perovo-speleo, an expedition to the Perovo Cave Club, made a major discovery. They found a new shaft (i.e., a natural steep straight passage) at the bottom of the cave, which was very deep downward, but unfortunately their rope was not strong enough.
(A 70-meter-long shaft in the cave)
The discovery opened the way for future research, and in June 2016, the Perovo-speleo expedition reached a depth of 630 meters through a new shaft.
In the months that followed, their explorations continued to deepen, each time finding a new shaft, the Vilovkina Cave, which was more than 1,000 meters deep.
In 2017, Perovo-speleo's expedition reached a depth of 2204 meters, setting a new world record and making Vilovkina Cave the deepest in the world!
(Complete topographic map of Vilovkina Cave)
After several probes, the depth of the cave was maintained at 2212 meters,
The expedition team found that the entire cave was vertical at 2100 meters underground, and after 2100 meters deep, it became a huge horizontal passage of more than 6000 meters, a veritable dungeon.
(Entrance to the grottoes that enter the underground palace)
In the underground world, everything is different from the ground.
The complete darkness of the environment allowed the cave to have many exotic new species, especially rare shrimp and scorpions, which was the focus of the expedition's expedition.
(Expedition team members who collect biological samples)
There are also a large number of fossil cave creatures in the cave, and for millions of years, their appearance has been engraved on the rock wall, which is of great research value and tells scientists how the organism evolved.
The most fascinating thing is the underground palace, at the bottom of the cave, there is a beautiful turquoise-colored lake, about 15 meters long and about 8 meters wide, surrounded by black limestone.
(Lake 2115 meters underground)
"It's a beautiful and eerie place." Robbie Shone, the photographer who arrived at the underground palace, said, "It is the ultimate embodiment of the beauty of the cave." ”
But beauty is only one thing, and on the other hand, it is a pervasive danger.
The cave is very difficult, and the expedition team needs to use a rope to explore a little bit downwards, setting up camp along the way, which takes 4 days to reach the bottom of the cave.
(Expedition team members climbing down the stone wall)
The Vilovkina Cave is very dark, damp and icy, starting at 800 meters underground, full of groundwater, humidity reaches 100%, and the temperature is around 4 to 7 degrees.
(Tough caving trip)
There are also many pools of stagnant pools in the winding caves, and the expedition members often have to swim all the way through them to reach the next shaft.
This results in their equipment being frozen frequently, and people can also freeze to death if they don't bring professional clothes.
(Swimming underground is commonplace)
In August, the expedition found a frozen human body 1,100 meters underground.
In the darkness, a corpse in camouflage and hiking boots lay quietly in a cave with two cell phones on his body and a backpack, crampons and trekking poles next to him.
The expedition confirmed that he was not an expeditionary and did not know who he was.
(Expedition members)
Local Abkhaz prosecutors looked at the body and found him a nearby villager, a 37-year-old married man.
A year ago, he said goodbye to his loved ones, didn't say where he was going, and then drove alone to the Vilovkina Cave.
He was clearly an amateur caving enthusiast, checking a lot of adventure knowledge on his mobile phone and using ropes to lower himself to the expedition camp 600 meters underground.
(Reported by the Russian media)
By eating food stored by the expedition, he lived in the camp for a week before continuing his descent to 1100 meters underground.
The cave lover apparently overestimated his abilities, as it was too humid and cold, coupled with the lack of proper equipment, and he eventually died of hypothermia.
(Expeditions and police transported the body out)
Amateur caving will die, and so will the professionals.
In August 2020, expedition leader Pavel Demidov was accidentally killed in a rock blast in an unexplored cave 305 meters underground.
(Pavel Demidov)
Rock burst refers to the sudden and violent release of energy due to the high elasticity of the rock mass, resulting in rock bursting.
At the time of the incident, Demidov was just under an exploding rock mass, his teammates dodged it, and he was hit by a stone on the spot and died.
However, for the expedition, the most dangerous situation they encountered was the flood of 2018, which almost wiped out the entire team.
National Geographic photographer Robbie Shawnee participated in the expedition, documenting the encounter in detail.
(Expedition swimming in the water)
It was September 2018, and the Perovo-speleo expedition and Shawnee arrived at the Dungeon to document the deepest part of the situation.
They had been in the dungeon camp for seven days, collecting many invertebrate specimens and taking many photographs.
(Expedition's camp at the Dungeon)
They were scheduled to stay a few more days, but when the two expedition members who left early arrived at the camp 1300 meters underground, they found a signal of flood pulses underground.
Many areas of The Vilovkina Cave are below the water table, and if the groundwater gushes in, the U-shaped crypt (also known as the "siphon hole") will be submerged.
(Siphon hole with stagnant water)
The expedition team immediately informed their colleagues underground of the news.
At first, the expedition didn't pay much attention, because flood pulses were not uncommon and came and went quickly. The camp in the dungeon was also very dry, and they thought that the impact could not be here.
But one of the team members was next to the tent when they heard a gurgling sound coming from a small hole in the ground. He couldn't see any water, but two hours after the flood pulse came, the sound of the water showed no signs of abating, which made him very worried.
He told captain Dmidov the news, and they went to check it out, and less than five minutes later they found that the hole had flooded with water, rising so fast that it was almost spraying onto the rock wall.
The ground was flooding, and the roar of the flood was heard from the shaft above.
The rumble of the water grew louder and louder, like a freight train passing through a tunnel. Then the whole cave began to shake.
Almost instantaneously, the flood reached the exit of the shaft and rushed down like a waterfall to the camp.
"I'll never forget the scene in front of me." Shawnee wrote in later records, "A huge stream of white water poured in through the mouth of the cave, and I watched with astonishment as the huge wall of white water entered our little home. ”
(The last look before the camp was washed away)
It was a life-or-death moment, and everyone hurried to put on waterproof clothing, helmets and ropes and desperately go up.
Shawnee and his assistant first grabbed the rope on the rock wall, which was fixed when they came down, and then climbed up against the pressure of the waterfall.
"The force was suffocating, and I felt like my head was going to be washed away."
He shrank his head, breathed in a little space under the edge of his helmet, and moved as fast as he could. Because he worked as a window cleaner in his early years, he excelled at using mechanical climbers, pushing them up a few inches with each breath.
After climbing a few hundred meters, he and his assistant finally came to a relatively dry place, where there was exactly one camp.
Because they didn't catch the rope in time, they thought the rest of the expedition members were dead, but fortunately, the six Russians came up one by one.
The expedition members said the ropes that exposed the water had been completely submerged, and they had crossed them by swimming. The captain of the temple was also involved in the whirlpool, and he constantly fought with the current, swimming to the rope to save his life.
It's a complete miracle, but the danger hasn't been lifted yet.
70 meters above the camp here, there is a semi-siphon hole, and the tunnel is half full of water, and you can only crawl through it.
If the flood below rises fast enough to reach the semi-siphon hole, then everyone is done.
For the next 16 hours, they kept checking the rise in the water flow, and finally heard the sound of the water slowly weakening.
They conserve their strength and slowly climb out of the Velovkina Cave, only to learn later that the flood had lasted nearly 20 hours because of a week of rain nearby.
(After the flood receded, waves appeared on the ground.)
"This is the pinnacle of human effort in the cave world. With great mental strength, physical strength and luck, we climbed out alive. "To me, these people are the greatest explorers in the world." ”
Although the abyss was dangerous, dark, and unpredictable, the expedition is still surveying it today.
People give time, energy, and even their lives to find their very bottom little by little, thinking that they can go deeper and deeper.
This is not only for the fossils and animals underground, but also for the curiosity of human beings.
Perhaps, the latter is the source of power.
After all, humans are such inquisitive creatures that we want to know the ultimate answer.
This also makes exploring the cave a dark romance...