In the Arabika massif, one of the most extreme and inaccessible places on the planet’s most extreme and inaccessible places is hidden in the played Republic of Abcasia in the south of the Caucasian region. The Veryovkina cave, with its 2,223 meters of confirmed depth, currently represents the deepest cave known on Earth, and exceeds very little the nearby Krobera Cave that held the absolute primacy.
A fifty -year -old long discovery
The history of the Veryovkina began in 1968, when a group of speleologists from Krasnoyarsk identified for the first time the entry of what was then cataloged simply as “S-15”. Located at 2,285 meters above sea level, between the Krepost and Zont mountains, the cave remained substantially unexplored for decades.
It was only in 1982 that the “Perovo” speleological club in Moscow rediscovered the site, renamed it P1-7. Since then, the explorations have followed each other with alternate results: in 1986 the cave was named after Alexander Verëvkin, a Russian speleologist who died three years earlier during the exploration of another cavity, and for the subsequent twenty years the works interrupted completely.
The race to the depth
The real turning point came in 2015, when the speleologists discovered a new well that opened the road to a series of extraordinary explorations. In just three years, from 2016 to 2018, the known depth of the Veryovkina literally exploded: from 630 meters it was first reached 1,832 meters in February 2017, then to 2,151 meters in August of the same year, until the 2,204 meter record reached in August 2017.
The most significant exploration dates back to March 2018, when the Perovo-Speleo Team team added over a kilometer of galleries to the cave map and measured the depth of the terminal siphon “The last nemo station”, bringing total depth to 2,212 meters.
A unique underground world
What makes Veryovkine exceptional is not only its record depth, but also the complexity of the cavity system that characterizes it. Unlike other deep caves, Veryovkina has an extensive network of horizontal galleries in the lower part, over 2,100 meters deep, an atypical phenomenon for the Arabika massif.
The system includes over 6,000 meters of sub-horizontal passages, underground lakes and flooded siphons. In 2022, the speleologists managed to trace the flow of groundwater to surface lakes, allowing precision measurements that then led to the revision of the depth at 2.209 meters in 2024.
Dangers and tragedies
The exploration of the Veryovkine is not without fatal risks. In September 2018, a team of photographers led by Pavel Demidov could barely escape an induction caused by a storm that filled the lower levels of the cave.
The discovery occurred in 2021, when the speleologists found the body of Sergei Kozeev, a lonely explorer who died of hypothermia at 1,100 meters deep in November 2020. Kozeev had attempted exploration alone, without the equipment necessary to trace the lower and permanently humid areas of the cave.
The primacy of the Caucasus
Veryovkina is part of an exceptional karst system. The Arabika massif, in the Caucasian region, houses the deepest caves in the world, all concentrated in a relatively restricted area. In addition to the Veryovkina and Krubera, this region of ABKAZIA has over 400 known caves, making it one of the most important speleological areas on the planet.
The particular geological conditions, with deep limestone layers and a complex drainage system, have created these vertical abysses over millennia which continue to challenge the limits of human exploration. Each shipment requires weeks of preparation, specialized equipment and teams of expert speleologists willing to spend days in the depths of the earth to reveal the secrets of these underground worlds still widely unexplored.
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