I received an e-mail from Chris Nicola, Former Met & NRO Chair and Current UAYCEF Chair and Project Director. This news bulletin was placed on The Ukrainian American Youth Caver Exchange Foundation website, www.uaycef.org.
A New Deep Cave World Record
In the early 80’s Valeriy Rogozhnikov, UAYCEF co-founder and vice-president, began leading a series of expeditions to Georgia’s mountainous Arabika region in the hopes of someday finding one of the deepest caves in the world.
Over the course of the next twenty years, many others, including numerous students of Valeriy’s, explorered this region with the same dream as him of finding the World’s deepest cave.
The dream has now become reality!!! A New Deep Cave World Record was set on January 6, 2001 in Voronja cave, Arabika Massif, West Caucasus (Abkhazia region), by a Ukrainian Speleological Association expedition of Ukrainian and Russian cavers consisting of the following:
- Yury Kasjan (leader)
- Nikolay Solovjev
- Yulija Timoshevskaja
- Oleg Klimchouk
- Anatolij Povjakalo,
- Dmitrij Skljarenko
- Ilja Zharkov
- Denis Provalov
- Konstantin Moukhin
- Sergej Zubkov
- Vitalij Galas
UAYCEF gives congratulations to all expedition and project members.
Kurbera-Voronja in Georgia has been explored more than 2 kilometers down.
“On 10 August 2013 Ukrainian caver Gennady Samokhin extended the explored depth of the Krubera Cave in the Arabika Massif, Georgia, by six metres. Krubera, the only known cave in the world with a depth greater than 2 km, now has a known depth of 2,197 m”
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/deepest-cave