Krubera crow. The deepest cave in the world, in which they are still searching for depth

Tourism is one of the main sectors of the economy of Abkhazia. All travelers come here for two things, beach and mountain tourism. Most of the attractions consist of objects of natural origin, which are mainly located in mountainous areas. Among them are gardens, lakes, waterfalls and, of course, caves, which are in demand and famous in Abkhazia, as well as beyond its borders. Special attention deserves the Krubera-Voronya cave, which will be discussed further.

The Krubera-Voronya Cave is a natural site known all over the world. The reason for this is its physical size; this cave is the deepest cave currently explored in the whole world. This natural miracle reaches a depth of up to 2199 meters! Krubera-Voronya cave is located in the Arabica mountain range, Gagra ridge, in the Western Caucasus.

The Arabica massif is one of the largest and highest in the Western Caucasus. The depths of this part of the Gagra ridge are dotted with many caves, including Krubera-Voronya. Its main entrance rises at an altitude of about 2250 meters above sea level, surrounded by the Orto-Balagan tract. According to its type, the Krubera-Voronya cave is a karst cave, which was formed by the long-term activity of water dissolving the rock, which in turn led to the appearance of voids.

The Krubera-Voronya cave is subvertical and consists of a series of wells connected by galleries and climbers. Another entrance to it was opened in August 2014 and it is located three meters higher than the main one. Still, there are five entrances to the cave. Having descended to a depth of 200 meters, the “mine” branches into two main ones: the Main branch, depth up to 2196 meters, and the Nekuibyshevskaya branch, depth 1697 meters. After a level of 1300 meters, the Krubera-Voronya cave branches into many others.

The Krubera-Voronya cave contains quite deep plumbs, among which there are heights of 110, 115 and even 152 meters. Just imagine that such a plumb line can accommodate a 50-story skyscraper. More than 8 tunnels (siphons) are known in the bottom part of the cave. The bottom part of the attraction has another interesting feature, starting from a depth of 1600 meters, the limestone in which the cave is located becomes black.

Krubera-Voronya Cave was discovered in 1960. For the first time it was explored to a depth of 95 meters by an expedition led by the largest researcher of Georgian geography, honored scientist, doctor geographical sciences and Professor Levan Iosifovich Maruashvili. The cave received its name in honor of the outstanding Soviet geographer, founder of Russian karst studies, Alexander Alexandrovich Kruber.

After some time, the Krubera-Voronya cave was forgotten, but in 1968 it was explored again, but to a depth of 210 meters, by speleologists from Krasnoyarsk. The new expedition gave a new name to the natural object, Siberian Cave. Oddly enough, the cave again lost interest and was forgotten until the 1980s, when Kyiv speleologists discovered it and re-explored it to a new depth of 340 meters. This time the Krubera-Voronya cave received its new, third name, Voronya.

Subsequent descents resumed only in August 1999, the reason for such a long break was the Georgian-Abkhaz war, which cut off the Krubera-Voronya cave from free visits by speleologists. At the end of the 1990s, Kyiv speleologists reached a depth of 700 meters, which in September 2000 had already reached 1410 meters. In January 2001, members of the Ukrainian Speleological Association, together with Moscow speleologists, set a world record, reaching 1710 meters.

In subsequent years, the Krubera-Voronya cave became a place of rivalry between the two teams. In August 2003, the Russian Cavex team passed the fourth siphon and stopped at a depth of 1680 meters, where it then had free continuation. A year later, the same team set a new world record at 1775 meters.

A month later, the Ukrainian Speleological Association explored another branch of the Krubera-Voronya cave, and again set a world record of 1840 meters, and on October 19, for the first time in the history of speleology, the 2-kilometer limit was overcome - 2080 meters. All subsequent expeditions of the rival teams consisted of diving bottom tunnels (siphons), each time increasing the depth.

On August 10, 2013, the Krubera-Voronya cave became known for a new record of 2197 meters, set by a teacher and speleologist from Simferopol, Gennady Viktorovich Samokhin. And in 2014, a new entrance was passed, located 2 meters lower from the main one, which increased the depth of the system to 2199 meters, with total length at 16058 meters. So every year more and more expeditions come, exploring the subsoil, discovering something new, and who knows, maybe the numbers 2199 and 16058 meters are not the limit.

There are some pretty deep caves, and over 85% of those discovered to date are above sea level!

But not these ten: they are the deepest in the world, and some of them are so deep that they can only be explored and studied with the help of radar equipment, since not a single person could survive in them...

10. Huautla Cave System, Mexico
depth - 1475 m

It's a cave system that is said to have endless passages, waterfalls as tall as a 60-story skyscraper, and true natural wonders such as a huge 90-meter cavity called the Aphrodite Hall.

9. Cehi II Cave (Čehi 2), Slovenia
depth - 1502 m

In Slovenia, caves are considered national property and are protected by law, even if they happen to be located on privately owned land!

8. Sima De La Cornisa Cave, Spain
depth - 1507 m

This cave system is famous for its 28 Neanderthal skeletons, discovered in one of the deepest parts of the cave. But how they got there without the equipment we have today is still one of the questions. greatest secrets peace.

7. Cave named after. Vyacheslav Pantyukhin (Pantyukhin Cave), Abkhazia
depth - 1508 m


In the mine. Vyacheslav Pantyukhin has 513 caves, and new ones open every year.

6. Torca Del Cerro Del Cuevón, Spain
depth - 1589 m


The Torca del Cerro cave system is a system consisting of two interconnected deep chasms. It is also a deep chasm that has claimed the lives of many cave explorers.

5. Jean Bernard Caves, France
depth - 1602 m

This cave is located in and has the highest entrance in the world. It's also pretty deep, but that goes without saying since it's on this list.

4. Mirolda Cave (Gouffre Mirolda), France
depth - 1626 m


Back in 2001, Mirolda Cave was considered the deepest in the world, but over time, deeper cave systems were discovered, which you will learn about below.

3. Lamprechtsofen Cave, Austria
depth - 1632 m

This is a cave that has been known and explored since 1701, but soon after its discovery it was walled up to prevent the invasion of treasure hunters who tried to get into it, having heard enough legends about wealth hidden by a knight named Lamprecht, who returned from the Crusades.

2. Snezhnaya Cave, Abkhazia
depth - 1753 m


Snezhnaya Cave is the general name of the cave system, which consists of interconnected caves: “Snezhnaya”, “Mezhennogo”, “Illusion”.

1. Krubera Cave, Abkhazia
depth - 2199 m


Also called Crow Cave, it is the deepest in the world today, and every time someone goes down into it using sonar, it gets deeper and deeper. The Krubera-Voronya Cave is the only known cave whose depth exceeds 2 kilometers.

There are some pretty deep caves, and over 85% of those discovered to date are above sea level!

But not these ten: they are the deepest in the world, and some of them are so deep that they can only be explored and studied with the help of radar equipment, since not a single person could survive in them...

10. Huautla Cave System, Mexico

depth - 1475 m

It is a cave system that is said to have endless passages, waterfalls as tall as a 60-story skyscraper, and true natural wonders such as a huge 90-meter cavity called the Aphrodite Hall.

9. Cehi II Cave (Čehi 2), Slovenia

depth - 1502 m

In Slovenia, all caves are considered national property and are protected by law, even if they happen to be located on privately owned land!

8. Sima De La Cornisa Cave, Spain

depth - 1507 m

This cave system is famous for its 28 Neanderthal skeletons, discovered in one of the deepest parts of the cave. But how they got there without the equipment we have today is still one of the world's greatest mysteries.

7. Cave named after. Vyacheslav Pantyukhin (Pantyukhin Cave), Abkhazia

depth - 1508 m

In the mine. Vyacheslav Pantyukhin has 513 caves, and new ones open every year.

6. Torca Del Cerro Del Cuevón, Spain

depth - 1589 m

The Torca del Cerro cave system is a system consisting of two interconnected deep chasms. It is also a deep chasm that has claimed the lives of many cave explorers.

5. Jean Bernard Caves, France

depth - 1602 m

This cave is located in the Alps and has the highest entrance in the world. It's also pretty deep, but that goes without saying since it's on this list.

4. Mirolda Cave (Gouffre Mirolda), France

depth - 1626 m

Back in 2001, Mirolda Cave was considered the deepest in the world, but over time, deeper cave systems were discovered, which you will learn about below.

3. Lamprechtsofen Cave, Austria

depth - 1632 m

This is a cave that has been known and explored since 1701, but soon after its discovery it was walled up to prevent the invasion of treasure hunters who tried to get into it, having heard enough legends about wealth hidden by a knight named Lamprecht, who returned from the Crusades.

2. Snezhnaya Cave, Abkhazia

depth - 1753 m

Snezhnaya Cave is the general name of the cave system, which consists of interconnected caves: “Snezhnaya”, “Mezhennogo”, “Illusion”.

1. Krubera Cave, Abkhazia

depth - 2199 m

Also called Crow Cave, it is the deepest in the world today, and every time someone goes down into it using sonar, it gets deeper and deeper. The Krubera-Voronya Cave is the only known cave whose depth exceeds 2 kilometers.

The Krubera-Voronya cave, which is located in Abkhazia, is the deepest in the world. It is located in the Arabica mountain range, its depth is 2190 meters. The deepest karst cave is a series of numerous wells connected by galleries and climbs.

This “abyss” has an entrance that is located above two thousand meters above sea level. From a depth of about 1000 meters, the central branch branches, going further into the depths with its numerous “tentacles”.

The Krubera-Voronya cave holds more than one world record. Its groundwater gives life to the shortest river on the planet, the Reprua, which is only 18 meters long. After its short run, it flows into the Black Sea.

The most deep cave in the world - the Krubera-Voronya cave.

The most interesting fact associated with the “bottomless cave” is that it is home to an animal from a series of springtails that existed 450 million years ago. Scientists discovered it at a depth of 1980 meters and this underground dweller given the name Plutomurus ortobalaganensis. I would like to note that no one lives deeper than this creature in the world.

The cave was first discovered and explored by speleologists from Georgia in 1960. They studied it to a depth of 95 meters. Then the cave received its first name in honor of A.A. Kruber, who was the father of Russian karstology. Many expeditions sank deeper and deeper underground, reaching new heights. These people don't lack courage. Their courage was rewarded with more and more interesting discoveries.

Krubera-Voronya cave in Abkhazia.

The second part of the name, Voronya, was given to the cave in the mid-80s of the 20th century. This is what Kyiv speleologists called it, who explored the cave to a depth of 340 meters. To date, the diving record in Krubera-Voronya belongs to speleologist from Ukraine Gennady Samokhin. He managed to descend to a depth of 2191 meters in 2007.

USA expedition to the Krubera-Voronya cave, August 2004. Video.

The largest well in the Abkhazian Krubera-Voronya cave, the “Big Cascade”, descends to 152 m; the cave itself, with a known depth of 2196 m, is by far the deepest in the world. The passing record belongs to Ukrainian speleologists.
The Age of Discovery did not end with the mapping of the last piece of the earth's surface. Today's pioneers rush to their goals not into the distance, but into the depths, revealing the secrets of the underground world of the Earth.
Jules Verne's fantastic epic "Journey to the Center of the Earth" anticipated the real penetration of daredevil speleologists into the mysterious inner world planets where underground abysses, grandiose halls, tunnels, wells and galleries, rivers and lakes are discovered. The chronicle of the conquest of the “underground pole” can be traced back to 1723, when the engineer Nagel, by order of the Austrian emperor, reached the bottom in the Macocha abyss in Moravia (-138 m). Then Italy set the record with the Padriciano Cave (-226 m in 1839) and the Trebiciano Cave (-320 m in 1841). Then the deepest caves were considered to be in Switzerland, Austria, and again in Italy. In 1944, the minus 500 m mark was reached in the Dent-de-Crol cave system, France, and almost until the very end of the 20th century. The French dominated the conquest of the cave depths.
The global speleology boom began in the middle of the last century, when a dramatic struggle ensued for the status of not the deepest, but the longest cave in the world. The study of giant caves required special efforts and preparation (the top three were the American cave with a known passage length of 38 km at that time, which over time subsequent expeditions managed to increase to 563 km), the Ukrainian Optimistic cave (known length 230.5 km) and the Swiss Hölloch (156 km). “Under the earth’s surface in absolute darkness there is so much huge world“What can we say about a new continent,” said the famous Swiss speleologist in the pages of National Geographic magazine (Alfred Begley in 1966). The “underground continent” metaphor was immediately supported. Speleological expeditions continue, the study of caves is carried out on a large scale and intensively, the list of record holders is constantly updated as the boundaries expand in breadth and depth. It is not possible to go through the entire cave right through, to the very bottom of the longest passage, on the first try, and not at all. all the pioneers of the underworld manage to return alive. This is a very dangerous path, full extreme situations, complicated by bottlenecks, blockages and siphons (sections of the tunnel completely flooded with water) of unpredictable length and configuration.
The deeper, the more extreme, and each new breakthrough became a sensation of its time. A depth of 1000 m was overcome in 1956 in the Berger Chasm in the French Alps. The 1500 m mark was reached in 1983 in the Jean-Bernard Chasm, also in France (-1535 m). In 1998, the Lamprechtsofen abyss in the Austrian Alps with a depth of 1630 m (a record for the Polish team) was named the “underground pole” of the Earth. And finally, in 2001, a Ukrainian expedition explored the new deepest cave in the world - Krubera-Voronya on the Arabica massif in the Western Caucasus - to a depth of 1710 m. The previous record was surpassed by 80 m. This became a real sensation not only in the speleological world, news went around all the leading media. At the 13th International Speleological Congress in Brazil in August 2001, the Ukrainian Speleological Association was awarded an honorary prize “For the most outstanding speleological discovery.”
The entrance to the Krubera-Voronya cave is located in the Orto-Balagan valley on the northern side of the Berchil ridge, at an altitude of 2240 m above sea level. m. It is a series of wells connected by climbers and galleries. During the exploration of the cave, the expedition set up several camps inside: at a depth of 1200 m (an area for two tents) and 1400 m. Further descent only in a wetsuit. The siphon at a depth of -2145.5 m continues to the very bottom (finishing 50.5 m underwater).
The Krubera-Voronya karst cave in Abkhazia, explored back in the 1960s by Georgian speleologists, is the current record holder in the “vertical race”. Currently it is considered the deepest in the world.
Back in 1977, the people of Kiev discovered and explored the deepest cave in the USSR at that time - the Kyiv abyss on the Kyrktau plateau in Central Asia, which became the first Soviet “thousandth” (deeper than 1000 m) and the fourth in the world at that time. And the promising Arabica in Abkhazia, with the goal of opening a new deepest cave in the world, began to be explored back in the 1980s. The choice of location was not accidental: the geology and hydrogeology of the massif made it possible to count on super-deep caves. The Krubera-Voronya cave was then explored to a depth of 340 m. With each new expedition, the depth mark dropped lower and lower.
For the 1980s Ukrainian and Russian speleologists explored hundreds of caves in Arabica, including four caves deeper than a kilometer. But the team knew that this was not the limit: in 1984-1985. A unique experiment on the coloring of groundwater proved the existence in the depths of Arabica of the world's deepest hydraulic system. The colored water of the spring at the top of the mountain, going into the crevices of the cave system, 2300 meters below came out at the foot of the massif through 8 springs. All that remained was to explore and go through this cave labyrinth following the underground waters.
But after the collapse of the USSR, the Georgian-Abkhaz ethnopolitical conflict escalated, escalating into military action in 1992-1993 and 1998. The war interrupted cave exploration. Only in 1999, the glacial valley of Ortobalegan (the most promising Arabica site in terms of caves) was returned by an expedition led by Yuri Kasyan. And immediately a continuation of passages was discovered in the previously explored Krubera-Voronya cave. There was a breakthrough to a depth of 750 m, in August of the following 2000 - to 1200 m, in September of the same year - to 1480 m, and everyone felt: the world record was close. And they organized the third expedition in a year, without waiting for next summer. In winter, at the turn of 2000 and 2001, the cave was explored to the point of collapse at a record depth - 1710 m!
The 2001 world record did not become the ultimate dream: the team of speleologists set themselves a new goal - to overcome the 2000-meter depth mark in a natural cave. In 2003, Oleg Klimchuk and Denis Provalov (an expedition of the Kyiv Speleo Club and the Cavex team) were able to overcome a flooded area in a small side branch of the Krubera-Voronya cave at a depth of 1440 m and discovered a new branch of the cave system. At that time, it was explored to a depth of 1680 m. In 2007, Ukrainian Gennady Samokhin descended in the Krubera-Voronya cave to a depth of 2191 m, setting a new world record. And relatively recently, in August 2012, an international team of speleologists managed to reach its bottom. The world record for depth in the cave - 2196 m - was set by Gennady Samokhin. The bottom of the cave lay 5 m below the record level of 2007.
The possibility of opening a new, even deeper cave theoretically exists. Experts are confident that the tens of thousands of caves explored today are only a tiny part of the predicted number, and new deep records are ahead, which record-breaking speleologists will be no less proud of than the first climbers who conquered Everest.

general information

Type: subvertical karst, the lower part is composed of black limestones.

Location: Arabica mountain range of the Gagra ridge of the Western Caucasus.

Administrative affiliation: Republic of Abkhazia (partially recognized state in accordance with the UN resolution, it is part of Georgia).

Nearest city: Gagra.

Year of discovery: 1960 (the group led by L.I. Maruashvili dropped to 95 m).

Status of the deepest in the world: 2001 (1710 m). The 2000-meter mark was passed in October 2004.

Year complete passage : 2012

Numbers

Total stroke length: 16,058 m.
The deepest well: 152 m.
Cave entrance height: 2240 m above sea level.

Climate

Average annual temperature of air and water at depth: about +5°C.

Relative humidity: about 100%.
The city of Gagra (Gagra) has a humid subtropical climate.

Average annual temperature: + 17°C.
Average January temperature: +12°C.

Average temperature in July: +26°С.
Average annual precipitation: 1700 mm.

Curious facts