April 20, 2025, 9:16 am | Read time: 6 minutes
The Veryovkina Cave, the deepest of its kind in the world, is located in the region of Abkhazia, which has broken away from Georgia. 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 disaster for the explorers. However, other explorers have already paid for the descent with their lives.
Nestled within the inaccessible Arabika mountain range on the east coast of the Black Sea lies a place in the breakaway region of Abkhazia, where the price of entry could, in the worst case, be your life. Yet, only a select few possess the experience and physical prowess required to undertake this journey, for this is the Veryovkina Cave, the world’s deepest known cave. Discovered in 1968, it was not until half a century later that researchers finally touched the cave’s deepest point. The team’s expedition nearly culminated in disaster as they narrowly evaded an underground tidal wave. Others were not so lucky.
The sheer statistics surrounding the Veryovkina Cave are enough to send shivers down your spine. It is 2212 meters deep and in some places so narrow that a person can just squeeze through. The descent to the bottom is incredibly strenuous and takes a total of four days. Researcher Robbie Shone, who barely escaped with his life during the 2018 expedition, compares it to climbing an 8,000-metre-high mountain in the specialist magazine “Base Mag“. “But instead of climbing up, you climb down,” says the adventurer. Similar to the way climbers establish camps on a mountain, the cave features intermediate stations for weary explorers. In the Werjowkina, they are located at depths of 600, 1350 and 2100 meters.
The Discovery Almost Cost Lives
The entrance to the Veryovkina Cave is just three by four meters wide and is 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 only made it to a depth of 115 meters, recorded the location on their map and named it S-115. On another expedition almost 20 years later, a team from Moscow then penetrated to a depth of 440 meters. In honor of their late colleague Alexander Veryovkin, they bestowed his name upon the cave. Veryovkin tragically perished while climbing in a nearby cavity during the three-year expedition from 1983 to 1986.
In 2018, the Perovo Speleo Caving Team, an international consortium of experts, completed the entire descent for the first time. Over four days, they fought their way down to a depth of 2212 meters, setting a world record. Never before had people descended deeper into the earth’s interior than in the Veryovkina Cave. The year before, they had already reached a depth of 2204 meters and explored more than 13 kilometers of the cave system. Yet, the intrepid men and women came perilously close to paying for their remarkable feat with their lives. It wasn’t until 2021 that Robbie Shone shared the chilling tale of their rescue with ‘Base Mag.’
A Tidal Wave Like a Freight Train
“The expedition had been going smoothly until then, and suddenly we were catapulted into survival mode,” says the photographer. It was the seventh day of a 14-day expedition when the Veryovkina Cave almost became a death trap for the group. As Shone and his colleagues were having breakfast at a depth of 2100 meters, a radio message crackled through from team members positioned above them. The warning: a tidal wave was coming from above. Initially underestimating the danger, they finished their breakfast in comfort. That is, until the deluge swept over the camp with the ferocity of 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 washed over the researchers from a height of 15 meters, but initially disappeared into even deeper regions of the Werjowkina Cave. However, the researchers had underestimated how quickly it would rise. And now a fight to the death began. The team was compelled to hasten their ascent to higher, safer ground with all possible speed. Much of their equipment, which they had been carrying in rucksacks weighing up to 30 kilos, had to be left behind in the rush.
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“I Thought Everyone Was Dead”
While the water in the Veryovkina Cave continued to rise below the researchers, it rushed onto their heads from above. “The only way to breathe was to press my chin close to my chest, creating a tiny cavity under my helmet. I was absolutely terrified and panicked,” says Shone. This was exacerbated when he occasionally 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 1900 meters, however, the group finally had to take a break for 16 hours because a waterfall coming from above made further ascent impossible. Looming over them was the constant fear that the rising floods might engulf them from below.
Eventually, however, the water in the Veryovkina Cave receded. Some team members even dared to retrieve equipment that had remained at greater depths. One explorer had injured his knee, but miraculously everyone survived. At the end of his report, Robbie Shone points out that this was only possible because all members of the expedition were extremely experienced and physically trained. Having survived the brush with death, he lauded his team with high praise: “To me, these individuals stand shoulder to shoulder with the most illustrious explorers, not just of our era, but in all of history.”
Others were not so lucky, as the Australian news site “News” reports. Russian adventurer Sergei Kozeev lost his life in the Veryovkina Cave. He disappeared there in November 2020 and 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 had died of hypothermia due to the extreme cold underground. According to the authorities, the man was probably a tourist who was not optimally prepared for the requirements. This serves as a stark warning that venturing into the world’s deepest cave is a challenge that should be reserved for seasoned experts. Because even they are sometimes just lucky to get out alive.