Ukrainian Spelunkers Reach Unprecedented Low

This year’s last expedition was composed of fourteen persons representing eleven cities of Ukraine. Thus members of the Ukrainian Speleological Association (USA) select team, again reached the record depth in August 2001. They were daredevils from Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kamyanets-Podilsky, Khmelnytsky, Nova Kakhovka, the Crimea, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Melitopol, and Poltava, the latter being represented by a brilliant “speleological couple” of the association president Yury Kasian, the expedition leader, and his wife Yuliya Tymoshevska who told The Day’s correspondent, “Last summer the Ukrainian speleologists planned to reach the world record depth, verify the previous winter measurements with high-precision instruments, search for Crow’s Cave passages that could lead to still lower depths, and, in addition, make the route safer, so that other, not so well trained, spelunkers could visit the cave’s bottom.”

The expedition found out that the autumnal and vernal floods had sharply increased the water level in the Crow’s Cave system. In particular, water in the grotto, where the world record was in fact recorded, reached the 16-meter mark. In other words, this over twenty meter cavity was almost completely flooded. The spelunkers concluded that in all probability there were water- filled and sandy galleries below. As flood water rises and the Crow’s Cave is unable to quickly get its fluid out of the way, the liquid accumulates in the bottom gallery, making it impossible to penetrate further down the grotto. This means it is advisable to carry out further explorations in the Crow’s Cave passages with entrances placed slightly above.

Expedition leader Yury Kasian was making his way through a 1640-m deep waterfall named Ukrainian Night, when he got into a powerful meander with another water-filled corridor at the end. At the depth of 1040 meters, Kharkiv’s Markovsky and Kovaliova pair explored a new well and a gallery. The daring duo managed to go down by another 100 meters. In the so-called Spanish Branch (the part of the cave explored by a Spanish expedition in 2000), the Ukrainian spelunkers got through the bottlenecks and ran into an insurmountable obstacle. In a cave branch named by the Austrians as Lamprechtshofen, the Kasian-Markovsky duet ascended by ninety meters and saw another well. As the expedition was pressed for time, it had to stop further movement. Perhaps this sector of the cave will be an attraction for next expeditions.

The Ukrainian cavemen confirmed the previously-announced record depth of 1710 meters after they had repeatedly measured it with a high-precision instrument. This time, all members of the expedition, including three women, reached the cave bottom. Were there any adventures? The explorers say there were three notable mishaps. One was the explosion of a carbide container in the Sinusoid Meander, which set ablaze acetylene and, in turn, a transportation bag. As a result, a team member sustained minor injuries and was a little afraid. Another more serious accident occurred in a 1215 meter deep camp. A spelunker fell on the gallery’s sloping floor. He had his knee heavily bruised and his leg injured. Yet, the injured man managed to climb to the surface on his own. And the third adventure was rather mysterious and puzzling. One of the expedition participants, moving from Camp 1400 to Camp 1215 down the camp’s vertical plane, was constantly aware of somebody breathing down his back, although the other explorers were then resting in the two subterranean camps.

The cave explorers’ folklore has a legend about black and white spelunkers. Of course, the black is a creation of the spirits of darkness. One thing stands in the way of researchers. He can be quite a wicked and dangerous cave poltergeist. You know, things that go bump in the night. The white spelunker is the opposite of the black one. He is also shrouded in various legends. But it is now up to the successors of Kasian and his colleagues to find out who was shadowing the Ukrainian explorer of Crow’s Cave.

Future plans of the Ukrainian national speleological team include, in addition to another expedition to Crow’s Cave, exploration of another cave, named Berchilskaya, in the Western Caucasus. Its entrance is 100 meters higher. Yet, it is this cave that the Ukrainians consider suitable for setting a new record.