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By Michael Ray Taylor, Discovery News
A team
of 11 cave explorers from the Ukraine has found the world's
deepest cave, a complex series of pits as deep as a mile
below the cave's entrance, according to Alexander Klimchouk
of the Ukrainian Speleological Association.
Named Voronja, or "Crow's Cave," the discovery
lies within the Arabika massif, a remote mass of limestone
in the western Caucasus mountains of the Georgian Republic,
about 50 miles east of the Black Sea port of Sochi.
When
first explored in the 1980s, the cave was thought to end
in a narrow meandering passage 1100 feet below the surface.
But in 1999, the Ukranian cavers found two "windows"
within a 200-foot shaft in the cave that led to new passages
and deeper pits. In August and September 2000, they joined
a French and Spanish expedition in pushing the new discoveries
to a depth of 4,600 feet.
The
Ukrainians returned to the cave Dec. 25. After a week hauling
additional ropes through the complex routes established
on the fall expedition, on Jan. 2 team members established
an underground base camp 4000 feet below the entrance level.
Exploration of new passages began on Jan. 3.
"Almost
immediately, the team began finding and descending new pits,"
says Klimchouk, a U.S.-based Russian caver who joined earlier
trips to the cave. He has been keeping in touch with the
current expedition, led by Yury Kasjan of the Ukraine, via
email.
According
to messages Klimchouk received, the record depth was reached
Jan. 6 in a large chamber choked with boulders at one end.
At that point, the explorers began exiting the cave to meet
a helicopter that was to return the team and equipment from
the mountain on Jan. 11 and 12.
Unfortunately,
Klimchouk says, they emerged to a winter storm that prevented
the helicopter from flying.
Using
the same caving techniques they had employed underground,
the team made a daring mountain descent amid heavy snowfall,
arriving on foot at the small village of Gantiadi Jan. 14,
according to Dan Filippovsky, another U.S.-based member
of the caving club.
"They
plan to wait out the weather, fly up to retrieve their equipment,
and return to Kiev on Jan. 18," Filippovsky says. "Then
they will start planning to return to the cave to set another
world record."
According
to Bob Gulden, who maintains records on the world's deepest
and longest caves for the U.S.-based National Speleological
Society, the Ukrainian team broke the previous depth record,
held by an Austrian cave called Lamprechtsofen-Vogelshacht,
by 250 feet.
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