Human beings like to test themselves, challenge their limits and demonstrate what is possible. Throughout history, milestones that seemed impossible were accomplished and today they are part of our daily lives. One of Jules Verne’s long-awaited dreams, according to what he published in his novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth” of 1864, was to enter the interior of the terrestrial globe. Although the Veryovkina Cave will not lead us to such a depth, it is the known depression that allows us to get closer to the center of the planet.
The Veryovkina Cave, With a known depth of 2,212 metres, it is the deepest cave on the planet. It is located in the pass between the Krepost and Zont mountains in the Abkhazia region, a self-declared independent state that is officially considered part of Georgia by most UN states.
In 1968 the cave was discovered by cavers from the city of Krasnoyarsk, who were able to reach depths of up to 115 meters. Already in 1986 a new group from Moscow and led by Oleg Parfenov, managed to reach the considerable depth of 440 meters. Since 2015, a series of new incursions by the Perovo-Speleo group determined that the cave was deeper reaching new and better marks repeatedly until reaching the record of 2212 meters in March 2018 and registering an underground tunnel system of more than 6000 meters.
Pavel Demidov was the first to go to such depth, and he explains his experience this way: “It’s like you’re looking at an unknown part of the moon. It takes 3 days to descend and another 3 days to return to the surface. The team members follow each other and rest in the underground camps.”
The cave begins practically vertically and is full of wells with small horizontal passages. The descent of the first 400 meters is very complex, due to the narrowness of the path. At 800 meters several tributaries appear, which make everything very wet and cause a sensation of intense cold. The temperature is between 4°C and 7°C and the humidity is 100%.
As you descend, you discover a tremendous labyrinth. The cross section of the passages is usually between 3 and 5 meters, but sometimes it is greater than 15 meters. In the case of the galleries, their width is between 20 and 50 meters, so we are talking about a real underground city. The dangers that await cavers are many, ranging from rockfalls to flash floods due to weather changes.
In 2018 the expedition had to escape from the “camp 2100” because the water level rose very quickly. Despite the extreme conditions, the team continues to study the cave, working on paleontology, biology and microbiology projects. Every 100 meters they take samples of soil, sand, clay and flow stones to carry out studies in the laboratory and to better understand the composition of the planet and the microorganisms in the cave.
Research has shown that the microorganisms present in the cave may be beneficial for the development of antibiotics. One of the most recent discoveries has been a fossil, which has shed light on how mountain ranges and caves were formed and on living beings from bygone eras.
The reality is that as science and technology advance hand in hand, our chances of understanding our past increase exponentially. If in 1986 we managed to reach a depth of 440 meters and recently we exceeded 2 kilometers, How deep will we be able to go in 2050?