Two Kilometres Underground: Inches of Breathing Room

One of the world’s top cave photographers travels to Russian-occupied Georgia to capture images of a true natural wonder - a cave so deep it takes four days to reach the bottom. But when water cascades into the underground system, Robbie Shone will face a series of challenges beyond his worst nightmares. Soon he will find himself with literal inches of space in which to keep breathing… A Noiser production, written by Duncan Barrett. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:50Speaker 01

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• 1:04John Hopkins?

  It's Sunday, September 16, 2018, in the Arabica Massif, a mountain range in Russian-occupied Georgia.

• 1:13John Hopkins?

  These towering limestone formations are blanketed in lush woodland. Their snow-tipped peaks loom over the serene waters of the Black Sea, which fans out into the distance.

• 1:28John Hopkins?

  But Arabica's greatest natural feature is below the surface:

• 1:34John Hopkins?

  Varyovkina.

• 1:38John Hopkins?

  Officially, the deepest cave in the world.

• 1:44John Hopkins?

  From its opening in the mountains, Varyovkina drops straight down, startling 2.2 kilometers, or more than 7,200 feet.

• 1:55John Hopkins?

  It's a vast, vertical chasm, right through the heart of the mountain range.

• 2:02John Hopkins?

  Deep down is a kingdom of slender passageways, echoey caverns, and immense darkness.

• 2:11John Hopkins?

  And it's in this world that 38-year-old British photographer Robbie Shone has spent the past two weeks. He's here documenting the work of a Russian caving team.

• 2:24John Hopkins?

  He's captured images of the stunning green pools of water at the bottom, the jutting rock formations, the glistening limestone walls. He's even visited Varyovkina's terminal sump, the deepest point in the deepest cave.

• 2:44John Hopkins?

  Right now though, on Sunday morning, Robbie's tucking into his breakfast. He and the Russian cavers are huddled under a blue tarpaulin, chowing down in the light of their head torches.

• 2:57John Hopkins?

  Over the past week, Robbie's grown used to Varyovkina's Camp 3, located on a horizontal plateau 1,900 metres below the surface.

• 3:07John Hopkins?

  By caving standards, it's pretty luxurious, with a high ceiling and soft brown sand blanketing the ground.

• 3:15John Hopkins?

  The cavers have made themselves at home here, hanging their kit up to dry on washing lines strung over their heads. Robbie's photographic equipment, cameras, lights, tripods, and more, is spread out all around the cave. The atmosphere is laid back, relaxed.

• 3:35John Hopkins?

  Until the radio fizzes into life.

• 3:42John Hopkins?

  It's a warning for Camp 3. From a pair of cavers up in Camp 2, 700 odd metres above them, there is a flood pulse on its way down through the cave system. Thousands of gallons of water hurtling towards them with the force of a freight train.

• 4:01John Hopkins?

  Robbie hears the rumble getting closer and closer. The walls of the cave begin to shake. He rushes to the entrance of Camp 3 and looks up into Varyovkina's main vertical column, which stretches above.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  First of all, we felt the wind. I'll never forget, we felt the wind a couple of seconds earlier. And then we saw this wall of white brown water just bursting out of the hole above us. And it plummeted right past us. Very quickly, it filled the space of like 10 metre wide shaft. And the water just disappeared into the pit beneath us and found its way down to the water table.

• 4:43John Hopkins?

  The sheer force of the waterfall is overwhelming. Robbie stands watching it, his mouth wide open. The furious brown liquid is roaring into a pit just below them, where the water table lies. A saturated layer, from which there's nowhere for the water to escape. If it doesn't stop flowing, the level will rise and rise, and he and his colleagues are going to be trapped. Not just underground, but underwater.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  Drowning is my biggest fear. So I was terrified. The only way to stay alive was to get higher. And the only way to get higher was to get on that rope in the waterfall and start climbing.

• 5:30John Hopkins?

  Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice?

• 5:39John Hopkins?

  Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

• 5:54John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet Robbie Shon. The 38-year-old is one of the world's top cave photographers. And in September 2018, he travels to Georgia to capture images of a true natural wonder. A cave so deep, it takes four days to reach the bottom. But when water cascades into the underground system, Robbie will face a series of challenges beyond his worst nightmares. Soon, he will find himself with literally inches of space in which to keep breathing.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  We needed to have our mouth and our nose up in the roof in order to breathe. I think there was maybe six inches of airspace and the rest was brown, foamy water.

• 6:38John Hopkins?

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

• 7:10John Hopkins?

  It's 11 years earlier, September 2007.

• 7:17John Hopkins?

  Robbie Shone is at a farmhouse in rural China, near the ancient town of Tianxing. He's laid out his kit on the battered wooden table in front of him. Camera, SD cards, batteries, prepping for a big adventure the next morning.

• 7:35John Hopkins?

  Robbie's in China to photograph an unusual geological phenomenon, the Miao Kang Shaft, an unbroken 500-meter drop.

• 7:46John Hopkins?

  If your rope snaps, that's a 10-second fall before you hit anything. He's hoping to get some spectacular images of the stunning striated rock disappearing into the blackness below. But Robbie and his team aren't the only ones exploring Miao Kang. A Russian group are also in town, led by a man called Pavel Demidov. Robbie's never worked with Russians before.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  They have a reputation for being very strong and very tough. So we were a little bit wary. And I'll never forget the moment we met the leader, Pavel, Pavel Demidov.

• 8:26John Hopkins?

  Suddenly, the door to the farmhouse is flung open.

• 8:30John Hopkins?

  And in walks Pavel.

• 8:34John Hopkins?

  He is almost a decade older than Robbie. He's tall, strong, muscular. His hair is cut short, almost shaved off completely, with the image of a snow leopard carved into it. In short, he fits the intimidating stereotype to a T.

• 8:54John Hopkins?

  But tonight, Pavel has come bearing gifts.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  In each hand, he held a bottle. And he said, "My name is Pavel, and I drink vodka and champagne." And from then onwards, we realised that actually, we had nothing to fear. These guys were just like us, you know.

• 9:17John Hopkins?

  For Robbie and Pavel, it's the start of a beautiful friendship, one that will last far beyond a trip to China.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  I kept in touch with Pavel over the years. And in 2017, he got in touch with me and said that a deep cave that the team had been working on in Georgia had just broken the world depth record, Bury of Kena. And he would love for me to come and photograph it. This is a great opportunity. It might be my only opportunity. So I said, "Yes, let's do it."

• 9:50John Hopkins?

  By now, Robbie is an established caver himself and one of the top cave photographers in the world.

• 9:58John Hopkins?

  He first got the bug at Sheffield Hallam University when a rock climber friend took him down a cave in the Yorkshire Dales. His eyes were opened to a whole new subterranean landscape, as beautiful as it was strange. Gorgeous moss-covered rock formations, underground waterfalls, otherworldly stalactites.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  I'll never forget the experience. It was like love at first sight. This alien world was something that fascinated me. I'd never seen anything like it before. And I'd totally forgotten about the daylight, the sunshine on the surface. I was now in the cave. I was now experiencing this underworld for the very first time. And I was hooked. And from then onwards, I wanted to go caving all the time.

• 10:45John Hopkins?

  Officially, Robbie was supposed to be studying fine art, but his real passion was for photography.

• 10:52John Hopkins?

  Unfortunately, photographing caves is a pretty niche speciality, and none of his tutors were able to help him with it.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  There was nobody at university that could teach me cave photography. It was all new to them, and I wasn't on the photography course. So I would go downstairs to the photography floor and borrow old film cameras from the university. And then I would take them into the caves in the Peak District, practising lighting, because that's basically the main skill of cave photography, is lighting. How do you light these spaces to make the caves look beautiful?

• 11:28John Hopkins?

  Eventually, through a process of trial and error, he learnt the tricks of the trade.

• 11:35John Hopkins?

  And while he was honing his photography skills, he was developing as a climber as well. Before long, he'd qualified as a rope-access technician, spending his long summer holidays working for a local firm that supplied climbers for jobs requiring rope skills.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  You can go and work on places like the Dartford Crossing over the River Thames and like clean it or paint it. It was great. It was great money. It was working with cavers and climbers, so the conversation was brilliant. It was exactly what I wanted. But most importantly is you could dip out from the industry and go on an expedition somewhere to like Malaysia or China on a caving expedition. I could practise my cave photography in the big, big caves of the world. And then I could come back, make a phone call on like the Thursday, and I could be back on the job on the Monday.

• 12:29John Hopkins?

  After graduating, Robbie continued this work as a rope technician, all the while building his photography portfolio, visiting the eerie ice caves of Mount Etna in Sicily, capturing the stunning crystals of New Mexico's Lechuguilla, and lighting up the precipitous interior of China's Miao Kang, meeting Pavel Demidov in the process. So by 2017, when Pavel asks him to come and capture Veriovquina, Robbie is well established as one of the foremost cave photographers in the world.

• 13:05John Hopkins?

  His images have graced the pages of National Geographic magazine, and he's appeared on TV numerous times. Plus, so far in his almost two-decade career, he's avoided any serious danger.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  I've been caving for eighteen, nineteen years, and I never really had any kind of incident in the cave. I had a lot of experience by this point. I was ready to tackle, you know, camping in a cave for over two weeks. That was not going to be a problem.

• 13:37John Hopkins?

  In September 2018, Robbie leaves his partner Gina behind in their home in Austria and sets off for Veriavkina. He'll be a part of a team of ten, eight Russians and two Englishmen.

• 13:50John Hopkins?

  Robbie has secured funding from the National Geographic Society for him and his assistant Jeff Wade to document Pavel's latest expedition.

• 14:00John Hopkins?

  But before they head underground, there's work to do at surface level.

• 14:06John Hopkins?

  They meet up with the team at a camp in the Arabica Mountains, just ten minutes' walk from the cave entrance. It's a picturesque spot, looming peaks close in all around, green and white. You can even glimpse the gleaming shores of the Black Sea in the distance.

• 14:24John Hopkins?

  But they aren't here to enjoy the view.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  We spent about three days on the surface beforehand, packing all of the gear. Because, as you can imagine, two and a half weeks underground, we needed to carry a lot of food, and it all had to be waterproofed. We had to take down the sleeping bags with gas cylinders for the stoves.

• 14:47John Hopkins?

  At the surface camp, surrounded by piles of small, plastic-wrapped packages, Robbie asks Pavel about the kind of conditions they can expect to find underground.

• 14:58John Hopkins?

  Veriavkina is damp and prone to flooding during periods of heavy rainfall. On previous visits, Pavel has found plates and cutlery stuck to the walls and even the ceilings after a sudden deluge has come and gone.

• 15:14John Hopkins?

  But he isn't worried. Even the lowest levels of the cave only ever fill up in winter. It's mid-September. They should be fine.

• 15:24John Hopkins?

  Robbie, however, isn't so sure.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  This nagged me. This was on my mind and I remember speaking to Gina, my partner, before I left, I was like, I've just got a bad feeling. Them to say that, like, we know it floods to the ceiling. Gina, she works in climate change, she's a researcher. So she knows that our weather is changing, our climate is changing. We can get these freak weather storms on a regular basis, any times of the year. We live with this conversation all the time. So I was going to Verkhina with that at the back of my mind, anyway.

• 16:00John Hopkins?

  Even for an experienced caver, Verkhina is no walk in the underground park. As the team finally sets off, laden with supplies and equipment, the challenge ahead becomes stark.

• 16:14John Hopkins?

  The Entrance Series, the stretch of narrow tunnels leading down from the surface, is particularly hard going. An eight-hour slog through rocky spaces too cramped to stand up in.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  It's very tight, the walls are quite restrictive. It's not for the faint-hearted. And of course, we had all these bags of equipment. I had bags of photography equipment, bags of batteries, you know, to last the two and a half weeks. So all this had to get through these narrow spaces.

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• 17:17Speaker 01

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• 17:52John Hopkins?

  Meter by meter, the team make their way through the dark, dank tunnels. Robbie hugs his photographic equipment close, negotiating the twists and turns of the entrance series.

• 18:06John Hopkins?

  At times, the cavers are forced to crawl on their bellies, squeezing through gaps barely large enough for the human frame.

• 18:16John Hopkins?

  Thoughts of becoming stuck have to be pushed to one side.

• 18:21John Hopkins?

  And eventually, after the best part of a day, the team emerge into an open chamber.

• 18:27John Hopkins?

  They stretch their stiffened limbs, taking in the magnificent scene around them.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Once you've tackled the entrance series, and you've got through that, and you're now beneath the surface at minus 400, then you're away. You pop out at the head of a giant pitch, which is like 160 meters of open space, all the way down to Camp One, at about minus 600.

• 18:57John Hopkins?

  From slowly scrambling through a claustrophobic maze, now it's time for a speedier, vertical drop.

• 19:08John Hopkins?

  Robbie shimmies into the dark abyss. He slides carefully down the ropes until his feet hit the ground.

• 19:18John Hopkins?

  Soon, the entire team has arrived at Camp One. It's here that they'll spend their first night in Verkhovkina.

• 19:28John Hopkins?

  After an energy-sapping day, it's time for dinner. Pavel, it turns out, is not just team leader, but head of the catering department as well.

• 19:38John Hopkins?

  He opens a bag and pulls out meals for the entire crew. Freeze-dried at his home back in Moscow. The provisions are compact, light to carry. All Pavel has to do is add hot water, and voila, a hot dinner. But the Russians haven't just brought food with them.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  Pavel and the team took down with them 100% alcohol.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  And they would, they would wait until everybody is safely at a camp before they would open the alcohol and they would dilute it to that magic 40% proof. And they would mix it with like berries or lemons, they would take lots of fresh lemons down to flavour the vodka. And Pavel insisted that we all drank three shots of vodka before we went to bed.

• 20:33John Hopkins?

  The temperature at Camp One is just three or four degrees above freezing. So the shots of vodka are a welcome warmer.

• 20:42John Hopkins?

  It's not long before Robbie drifts off to sleep.

• 20:49John Hopkins?

  Well rested the following morning, the team rise and set off again. They still have a long journey ahead of them.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  The rest of the cave is quite, quite straightforward relatively. But it still takes three days after that to get to the very bottom.

• 21:09John Hopkins?

  The route down to Camp Three, over a mile beneath the entrance, is not to be sniffed at.

• 21:16John Hopkins?

  As recently as 2024, a less experienced climber tragically died traversing this stretch of Varyovkina. But for Robbie and his companions, this kind of rope work feels almost second nature.

• 21:31John Hopkins?

  And there's something meditative about the slow, steady rate of descent.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  You're so involved, you're so captivated by the challenges of caving, that you just forget about everything, all the worries in your day-to-day life, paying the bills, blah, blah, blah, all that goes out of your head and you're just concentrating on being in the cave and living that experience.

• 21:59John Hopkins?

  Still, when the group makes it to Camp Three, it's a welcome relief. From a long, vertical tunnel, there's a horizontal ledge off to the side, which opens out into a high-ceilinged, sand-strewn plateau. The perfect spot for the team to make camp, rest up, and prepare themselves to explore the lowest levels.

• 22:22John Hopkins?

  Perhaps the most dazzling sight down here is the terminal sump, a beautiful oval pool at the very deepest point of the cave network.

• 22:34John Hopkins?

  While two of the Russians swim in the bright green water, lighting it up with their torches, Robbie snaps an image of Pavel ascending from the depths, one foot planted on a wall of jet-black limestone. Pavel's eyes are on the rope above him. There is a look of steely determination on his face.

• 22:58John Hopkins?

  He looks every inch the action hero.

• 23:06John Hopkins?

  Now, in his mid-forties, Pavel is no longer the brash young man Robbie met in China a decade earlier. He's matured into a brave and thoughtful team leader.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  And it was brilliant. We started taking photographs and we spent a week at the bottom camp, working our way through the lowest sections, documenting the team and had a great time. It was brilliant. And I'd totally forgotten that we were, you know, two kilometres underground.

• 23:36John Hopkins?

  While Robbie and the others explore the wonders of Verkhovkina's lowest level, 2,000 metres above them, the weather has taken a turn for the worse.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  There had been continuous rain for about a week after we left. And then on the penultimate day, the day before the flood, there was a hailstorm with hailstones the size of your thumbnail. So all that water that falls could find its way down into the tunnel to us because there is one main canyon leading down to the lowest point in Verkhovkina.

• 24:22John Hopkins?

  A flood pulse occurs when a large quantity of water gradually builds up on the surface and then suddenly forces its way underground. A wild, white-water torrent, moving with the force of a runaway train.

• 24:38John Hopkins?

  For experienced cavers, they're a familiar hazard. As long as you don't get in the way of the deluge, they don't usually present too much of a problem. Within a few hours, sometimes even a few minutes, the flood will cease and the passageways will become navigable again.

• 24:55John Hopkins?

  So when Robbie and his colleagues in Camp 3 learn that a pulse is on its way down to them, there isn't an instant need to be concerned. In fact, thanks to the cave's rudimentary communication network, they have about half an hour's warning to get well out of the way.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  They had a communication system in operation from the surface down to the lowest camp. Two cavers from the team had left the day before, up the ropes, back up to Camp 2, where they were making their way out of the cave, they had to get back to Moscow for work. A huge flood pulse passed their camp. They got on the radio and they radioed down to us and they said, "Look, you know, a giant flood pulse is just past us. We suggest you don't leave camp. Wait, wait until it hits you and then you can monitor the situation."

• 25:45John Hopkins?

  It'll take a while for the flood pulse to reach them. It has a way to travel down from Camp 2. The team's best guess: 20 to 25 minutes.

• 25:56John Hopkins?

  They return to their breakfast and wait patiently, listening out for the sound of rushing water.

• 26:04John Hopkins?

  Sure enough, bang on cue, they hear it coming. A deep bellow, gradually growing louder.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  We heard the sound of what I always describe as a freight train, like in the underground, slowly coming toward you. You can hear it and it's like, "What's that?" It's like a rumbling sound, and then you realise what it is.

• 26:28John Hopkins?

  Robbie sets down his food and runs to the ledge overlooking the central canyon.

• 26:34John Hopkins?

  It's here that the torrent of water will fall past them as it drops down to Veriavka's lowest reaches. He peers up at the hole in the ceiling where the climbing ropes disappear into the shaft above. It's their only way out of here.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  First of all, we felt the wind. I'll never forget, we felt the wind a couple of seconds earlier and then we saw this wall of white brown water just bursting out of the hole above us and it plummeted right past us. Very quickly, it filled the space of like 10 meter wide shaft and the water just disappeared into beneath us and found its way down to the water table.

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• 29:16John Hopkins?

  The water table in Veriavkina is about 60 meters, or 200 feet, below Camp 3. Once the flood reaches that level, there's only one place for the water to travel, and that's back up. But it's still a decent distance beneath them. No need to panic, and the pulse should pass soon enough. For the next few hours, the cavers continue to wait, quietly monitoring the situation. Pavel and another member of his team, called Andre, go to check on a nearby siphon, a flooded section of cave.

• 29:52John Hopkins?

  The Russians noted how high the water was in this particular spot before, so they should be able to get a good idea of how much the level is rising.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  So they nipped down to have a look at this. And whilst they were gone, another team member, Peter, he went over to a small hole that we'd been spitting our toothpaste out into. And he looked down and, because I think he thought he could hear a gurgling noise or something. There was nothing, and he came back.

• 30:25John Hopkins?

  Meanwhile, Robbie's doing his best to get on with his own work, capturing photographs of the people and the action.

• 30:33John Hopkins?

  His gear is strewn out all over the rocky, sandy floor. Even now, no one is overly worried about the flood pulse. The mood is alert, but calm.

• 30:45John Hopkins?

  But then, a few minutes later, Peter returns to check on that little hole in the ground again. And this time, what he sees is alarming.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  I'll never forget the look on his face because he turned around and he looked at me first. And he was white and I rushed over to see what he'd seen. And to my horror, within a few inches beneath the surface of this hole was brown water, jostling and rising, there was foam, and it was coming up so quickly.

• 31:20John Hopkins?

  In an instant, the stakes have been raised. The water table isn't just creeping higher, it's racing upwards and seeping into Camp Three.

• 31:32John Hopkins?

  Robbie turns to his assistant, who is staring wide-eyed at the bubbling murky floodwater.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  I looked at Jeff and said, "Look, you know, we need to leave right now." I looked at all of my photography gear that was just strewn out all over the campsite floor. Quickly realised that I had no time to pack it away. I needed to race out of this cave, I needed to go up these ropes fast.

• 31:57John Hopkins?

  That's £10,000 worth of equipment he's leaving behind. An indication of the severity of the situation.

• 32:04John Hopkins?

  Robbie does take a moment to salvage the photographs he's already taken, including the haunting shot of Pavel ascending from the terminal sump.

• 32:14John Hopkins?

  He grabs the memory card out of his camera, seals it into a Ziploc bag, and tucks it away inside his pocket. Then he bursts into action.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  I needed to get dressed, I needed to get my oversuit on, the dry suit, the harness, the helmet and lights. Go, go, go.

• 32:33John Hopkins?

  With their Russian counterparts scrambling behind them, Robbie and Jeff flee the campsite, making their way to the ledge that overhangs the main canyon.

• 32:43John Hopkins?

  Looking down, Robbie can clearly see the water beneath, rising up to meet them.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  To my horror again, the pit was now a lake. The waterfall was cascading into this brown lake, only a metre beneath the traverse line, which had previously been like a 10-metre drop.

• 33:02John Hopkins?

  Time is running out. From here, the only way is up.

• 33:08John Hopkins?

  But the route to Camp Two means climbing through the waterfall. A raging barrage of ice-cold froth tumbling downwards with colossal force.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  I didn't think about it. It was survival instinct, I put it down to. The only way to stay alive was to get higher. And the only way to get high was to get on that rope in the waterfall and start climbing. I jumped on the rope, swung into the waterfall and just started climbing the rope as fast as I could. But the force of the water squashed my head into my shoulders, a bit like a tortoise going into its shell. I had to tense up all the muscles in my neck.

• 33:45John Hopkins?

  As Robbie climbs, his body is pounded by the thundering flood pulse. Every sinew strains against the onslaught. He is ascending, hand over hand, forcing his way up, fighting the water for every inch. You can't even see where he's going.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  I couldn't look up because it would have ripped my helmet off my head if I'd looked up and that would have been my helmet and light lost. Game over.

• 34:15John Hopkins?

  Fortunately, the lip of Robbie's helmet creates a little space for him to suck in air as he climbs.

• 34:23John Hopkins?

  His eyes fixed straight ahead of him, he makes it up to the top of the pitch, the point where he has to unclip himself from one rope and clip onto the next, freeing the bottom rope for Jeff to follow after him.

• 34:36John Hopkins?

  It's the sort of manoeuvre that's second nature to an experienced climber. But he's never had to do it in circumstances like these.

• 34:45John Hopkins?

  Robbie shouts down to Jeff, "Rope free", but it's unclear if his friend can hear him at all.

• 34:52John Hopkins?

  All Robbie can do is keep moving upwards. He's climbing for his life now.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  I was racing up the ropes as fast as I could. Because I was fearing the worst, I thought that the water table was rising faster than I was climbing. And eventually it was just going to swallow me up.

• 35:11John Hopkins?

  Finally Robbie is almost out of the waterfall's direct path. After over a hundred metres of climbing, it's just a few more inches up. His ropes rise up and away from the water. With an exhausted final heave, he clambers onto a dry ledge.

• 35:30John Hopkins?

  The water continues to crash down right next to him. But for the moment at least, he can breathe easily again. He can hear Jeff following close behind now.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  Jeff caught me up. He was shouting, "Slow down, slow down." And we just stood on this ledge for maybe, well, it felt like eternity, but it was probably only about a minute.

• 35:51John Hopkins?

  The two Englishmen have made it out of the waterfall. But there's no sign of their Russian companions. Four of the team were still in Camp Three when Robbie and Jeff fled.

• 36:02John Hopkins?

  But Pavel and Andre were even deeper underground, inspecting one of Varyovkin's lowest siphons. Right now, it's unclear whether any of them are still alive.

• 36:14John Hopkins?

  It's a stomach-churning weight as Robbie and Jeff peer into the chasm below.

• 36:22John Hopkins?

  And then, at last, Robbie spots them, emerging from the depths, soaked through and utterly spent. One by one, the Russians clamber up onto the ledge. One, two, three, four. That's everyone accounted for, apart from Andre and their leader Pavel.

• 36:45John Hopkins?

  It's hard not to fear the worst.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  When we'd left the lowest camp, Pavel and Andre were still away. You know, where they were, we had no idea. There was no way they could have survived. It was like madness. It's madness to imagine that they'd survived that.

• 37:03John Hopkins?

  A mordorian silence falls over the group. Heads are bowed. But then, looking out over the edge, Robbie sees the faint glimmer of a headlamp.

• 37:16John Hopkins?

  Andre emerges from the waterfall. Before, last but not least, sweating, panting and grunting, Pavel emerges as well.

• 37:28John Hopkins?

  He's got quite a story to share. As team leader Pavel was the last out of Camp 3. And he barely escaped with his life.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  The water completely filled the chamber, the tent was all gone. Everything was destroyed. He was in the roof, maybe a foot of airspace. And he tried to get over to the rope, I remember him telling me. And he got spat out by the whirlpool and he grazed his face. And he had another go and he eventually got to the rope with only seconds remaining. And he climbed up.

• 38:02John Hopkins?

  Against the odds, all eight members of the team have escaped Camp 3.

• 38:09John Hopkins?

  But they haven't survived this subterranean flood yet. There's still some way to go. And there is a new problem.

• 38:20John Hopkins?

  The route ahead, a narrow horizontal tunnel is blocked by something even more impassable than the waterfall.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  The way ahead of us was completely submerged. It was a horizontal passage that was completely full of water. And there was no way we could go any higher.

• 38:37John Hopkins?

  The climbers will just have to wait it out. Eventually, the flow of water will dry up. When it does, there should be just enough airspace to shuffle through the passage. But it's impossible to know how long they'll have to wait. And in the meantime, the waterfall continues to cascade downwards.

• 38:58John Hopkins?

  If the water level beneath carries on rising before they can escape, there will only be one outcome.

• 39:06John Hopkins?

  With no other options, they make camp for the night on their ledge and wait.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  Those 16 hours were hell. The waiting, I convinced myself that I was going to die. We were trapped.

• 39:22John Hopkins?

  The mood is leaden, but the Russians remain stoical and clamber into the tent for the night.

• 39:30John Hopkins?

  Pavel invites Robbie and Jeff to join them, but right now Robbie can't bear to sit still.

• 39:36John Hopkins?

  Instead, he paces up and down the ledge, just metres from the precipice.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  I feel like out of the whole team, it hit me the most. I reacted the worst, for sure. I dealt with it the worst out of the lot of us. And there was no vodka, so we couldn't even get drunk and then die, you know? We were always reminded of our situation by the thundering force of the waterfall, the water which was passing through the rock next to us. You know, we were safe, we were dry where we were, but the noise! And you could almost feel the walls vibrating. I was following the rope all the way down to the bottom, to where my light beam ended, and just waiting to see brown, foaming water appear. And that was the scariest moment, waiting to see that.

• 40:27Speaker 03

  That was the worst point, because when I was climbing the ropes from the bottom camp up to this point, I was just full of adrenaline, full of, "I've got to get higher, I've got to get higher", I wasn't thinking much. But now I was thinking. I had time to think about Gina, I had time to think about my parents, I had time to think about my life. At this point, you know, I didn't know how long I was going to be thinking about my life, but I was thinking about all those things, those people that I weren't going to see ever again, those moments. And drowning is my biggest fear, so I was terrified.

• 41:09Speaker 01

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• 41:39Speaker 00

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• 42:09John Hopkins?

  It's been the longest night of Robbie's life. But as he, once again, paces along the rocky ledge, he notices something. The rush of water. It's beginning to die down.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  The noise slowly dropped and the water table hadn't appeared. Okay. Maybe we are gonna survive this. Maybe, maybe it is gonna be okay. After all, I'm not thinking about my life ending and, and all these horrible thoughts anymore. That was a point where we all thought, okay. It's gonna get better now. We're gonna find a way out. It's gonna be okay.

• 42:50John Hopkins?

  With the waterfall dried up, the team can finally continue to cap too. But, despite the renewed optimism, they're now facing a test possibly beyond anything they've yet encountered. They must traverse a 60-meter horizontal passage, which is still almost entirely filled with water.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  To get through it, you have to get on your hands and knees. That's how big it is. It's not very high. You need to be on your hands and knees to go through it.

• 43:20John Hopkins?

  After a couple more hours, the team feels the tunnel has dried up enough for them to pass through. But only just. A tiny gap of air has appeared between the water and the ceiling of the passage.

• 43:36John Hopkins?

  Robbie centers himself. Deep breath. Keep calm. Here we go.

• 43:44John Hopkins?

  As he begins to crawl through the tunnel on his hands and knees, he's almost completely submerged in opaque, foamy water. There's only about six inches of air.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  It was just passable for us, providing we tilted our heads sideways and we could breathe by following the roof. We needed to have our mouth and our nose up in the roof in order to breathe the airspace.

• 44:09John Hopkins?

  It's a grueling gauntlet. But slowly, steadily, a line of men creep their way forwards, chins always angled upwards.

• 44:20John Hopkins?

  Finally, after sixty brutal meters, Robbie emerges from the end of the tunnel.

• 44:27John Hopkins?

  They're out.

• 44:32John Hopkins?

  Safely at Camp Two, the team settles down to a much-needed meal. But it's too soon for anyone to count their chickens.

• 44:41John Hopkins?

  Just as everyone starts to relax, they're given a startling reminder of the hazards all around.

• 44:47John Hopkins?

  Team leader Pavel is cooking the dinner as usual, when there is a strange, cracking noise bouncing off the cavernous walls. A small boulder has begun to loosen from the ceiling of the cave. Then, quite suddenly, it dislodges, striking Pavel on its way down.

• 45:07John Hopkins?

  A crunch, a streak of blood and a cry of pain. Everybody rushes to their leader. Thankfully, he's all right.

• 45:16John Hopkins?

  It's a second close shave for the Russian. An inch closer, and the rock would have directly hit his head.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  He wasn't badly hurt. He had like a cut to his face, but he was okay. But I remember turning to Jeff, who was sat next to me, and I just quietly said to him, "Death is still in this cave. He's after one of us."

• 45:41John Hopkins?

  Over the next two days Robbie and the others continue their climb back to the surface. Back up the central column, along the treacherous entrance series. Ropes, readjustments, rests, restarts.

• 45:56John Hopkins?

  Until finally, Robbie senses a change in the air.

• 46:01Speaker 03

  I could smell vegetation at this point. I knew that we'd made it out of the cave. I remember getting to the top of the ropes and I stopped and sat there in my harness. And uncontrollably I just burst into tears, like I was hit by this wave of emotion. Because I recognize the fact that I'd done it, we'd all survived.

• 46:21John Hopkins?

  It's night time when the weary group of men finally set foot on the surface.

• 46:27John Hopkins?

  Then, one by one, they walk the short distance from the cave entrance to the nearby campsite.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  I could see the lights at camp and I remember seeing a blood-red moon sinking over the Black Sea. And it was just above the horizon and I was stood watching it slowly descend into the ocean. And then the stars were out and just slowly went down to camp in a daze.

• 47:00John Hopkins?

  At the campsite, the cavers toast their survival in the traditional Russian way.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  There was some bottles of vodka, tequila. We start laughing and joking as the alcohol sets in. I remember I called Gina. I walked up a hill to get some signal. And she said to me afterward, she said, "You know, you were very matter-of-fact on the phone. You were very calm and precise and you were telling me what had happened and that you'd survived and it was all okay." But she said, she later said that when I called her again back at the coast, like three days later, it was like that near-death experience had sunk in and apparently I was a nervous wreck on the phone. I was emotional, I cried again. So it didn't hit me immediately, but it hit me a few days later.

• 47:54John Hopkins?

  As Robbie readjusts to life back home with his partner in Austria, it soon becomes clear that his experiences in Veriavkina have left a lasting impact. He is tormented by visions of drowning deep underground.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  I probably should have seen help. I spent three months, nearly three months, getting drunk every night because I couldn't go to sleep being conscious. I couldn't go to sleep being sober, being aware of my existence because I would lie in bed thinking of water catching me up and lapping by my legs and then within a minute or two it would up by my neck and then it would swallow me whole and I was going to drown. I had this feeling that, no, I wasn't alive. I'd actually died down in the bottom of the cave and all of our bodies were just at the bottom. And I was now in ghost form. I was now a ghost.

• 48:55John Hopkins?

  Slowly, Robbie begins to recover his mental health. He's able to sleep better, to process what happened.

• 49:03John Hopkins?

  But he says his brush with death will never fully leave him.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  I'm OK now, but mentally it's altered me for sure. For better, for worse, I don't know. I think it's made me a lot more aware of the fragility of being alive and how death can take us at any moment. I now look at my caving projects slightly differently. I don't focus on the difficult, challenging, more dangerous projects like, you know, the bottom of Veriavkina, for example. To be honest, I have no desire to ever go back to the bottom of Veriavkina or the next deepest cave. You know, in my lifetime, I'm sure there'll be another cave that breaks the world depth record.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  I'm not on that trip. That's for somebody else, right?

• 49:59John Hopkins?

  Despite his newfound caution, Robbie still has unfinished business with Veriavkina. His job on the 2018 expedition was to document the cave with his photographs. But the only photos he brought back with him were those of the lowest levels, including his magnificent image of Pavel ascending from the terminal sump.

• 50:21John Hopkins?

  He'd been planning to photograph the rest of the cave on the way back up, before he was forced to leave all his equipment behind in Camp 3.

• 50:31John Hopkins?

  A year after barely escaping with his life, Robbie is back there to finish the job, along with Jeff and Pavel.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  We didn't go down to the bottom. That was something I made quite clear to Pavel. I didn't want to go to the bottom. And we didn't need to go to the bottom. We'd got all the pictures. So we went down to, I think, 1,000 metres or something like that, and then photographed the rest of the cave from there back to the surface.

• 50:59John Hopkins?

  Robbie and Pavel's bond is stronger than ever after their ordeal in the world's deepest cave. And together, they've shared their story at public events.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  I love that. I love standing in front of an audience now. I didn't know how I would react to that. It's something I never did. I was a little bit scared, a little bit intimidated about being onstage. It turns out that it's actually good fun.

• 51:27John Hopkins?

  Unlike Robbie, Pavel shows no signs of slowing down. He even returns to Camp 3 of Veriavkina. It's a sobering sight. Clothes, sleeping bags, and photographic equipment strewn all around. Many of the items are embedded in the ceiling.

• 51:47John Hopkins?

  Later, Pavel shows Robbie what he found in the cave.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  And I was presented with a load of gear that they'd salvaged. They'd been down a few weeks earlier and managed to salvage my Primaloft jacket that I'd left, some radios, a walkie-talkie. The walkie-talkie still works. I still use it.

• 52:10John Hopkins?

  Over the next two years Pavel supervises a number of safety improvements at Veriavkina. But all the measures in the world can't guarantee a cave's welfare. Even one as experienced and level-headed as Pavel Demidov. In August 2020 Robbie's friend is exploring a new cave in the Arabika Masiv, not far from Veriavkina.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  He was only, I don't know, 200, 300 metres underground when he was crushed by a big rockfall and his teammate had to move the rocks out of the way in order for him to get past, to reach the surface and call the... not the rescue, the recovery, I guess. Because he realised that Pavel had died in the rockfall.

• 53:00John Hopkins?

  With the help of the international caving community, Robbie and Gina raise over £5,000 to pay for Pavel's body to be recovered.

• 53:10John Hopkins?

  At the head of their fundraising page sits the image of Pavel ascending from the pool of Veriavkina's deepest point. A look of heroic determination on his face.

• 53:24Speaker 03

  Pavel was, in my opinion, the greatest cave explorer of our generation. He was an incredible leader. He was incredibly tough and strong, but he was also incredibly kind and generous and supportive. It's a big loss. It's a big loss to cave exploration.

• 53:45John Hopkins?

  Robbie and Gina meanwhile have embarked on adventures of a different kind as parents to four-year-old Maddie. And in a way, it's all thanks to Veriavkina.

• 53:58Speaker 03

  It did change my life. I remember when we got back home, I told Gina that I was ready to start a family. My life is very different now. Maddie is in it. That's a direct result of Veriavkina, I think. I mean, I think about it often, I must admit. Psychologically, the Veriavkina experience changed me, for sure. I'm more aware of my existence. Maybe it was a good thing it happened.

• 54:34John Hopkins?

  En el próximo episodio, nos encontramos con Mark Lyons.

• 54:39John Hopkins?

  En noviembre de 2015, el apetito ciclista ha entrado en La Ruta de los Conquistadores, una épica carrera de bicicleta montaña a través del corazón de Costa Rica. Es un desafío desagradable, considerado por muchos como la competición más difícil de su tipo.

• 54:55John Hopkins?

  Y Mark pronto aprenderá por qué tiene una reputación tan temerosa.

• 55:00John Hopkins?

  Cuando se cae y cae durante una cruz de río, el padre de dos se va a deslizar hacia el fondo por millas, profundo en el bosque.

• 55:15John Hopkins?

  Eso es la próxima vez, en Real Historias de Vida. Escucha la historia de Mark hoy sin esperar una semana al suscribirse a Noiza Plus.

• 55:23Speaker 00

  Visible pone el hack无线 ultimate en el dedo de tu mano. Con datos de datos wireless unlimited 5G y hotspot diseñados para mantenerte conectado, impulsado por la red 5G de Verizon. Y sin contrato te mantenga en contacto. Los planes empiezan a 25 dólares al mes, o obtén el Premium Visible Plus Pro Plan y gasta 10 dólares en tu primer mes cuando utiliza el código promocional Hack. Haz el cambio en visible.com. Términos aplicables. Visible.com para detalles.

• 55:53Speaker 01

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