Expedition News

International expedition started its journey to the Krubera-Voronya cave.

The first participants are about to leave to the expedition “Towards the Center of the Earth” to the deepest cave of the world Krubera-Voronya organized by Lithuanian caving club Aenigma. The preparation and packing of a huge amount of the equipment and food is finally over. The team consisting of 17 members from 5 European countries (Lithuania, Ireland, Spain, France and Serbia) will meet in Adler, Russia on August 5th, 2010. Up in the mountains of the west Caucasus the deepest cave of the world is waiting for them.

One of the most interesting tasks of this expedition is to install new water level logging equipment in the cave and to take the data of the previously installed loggers. A set of loggers measuring the water level and pressure fluctuations inside the cave have been installed during previous expeditions in 2008 and 2009. This year they will be complemented by a rain logger at the entrance of the cave thus enabling to examine the dependency between the rainfall and the water level in the cave. The cave Krubera-Voronya this year is becoming a true state-of-the-art laboratory.

Also one group of the team will try to descend to the sump S-5 “Two captains” (-45m deep) on the bottom of the cave (at the depth of 2140 m) and try to explore unknown passage of the cave. The other team will be exploring further the Spanish branch at the depth of 1340 m.

The news of the expedition will be announced on the official expedition‘s site www.gilyn.lt and on the site of the Lithuanian cavers www.speleo.lt.

This expedition is supported by European Speleological Federation (FSE) as one of the EuroSpeleo projects and is sponsored by: Sati (service), Gandrs (equipment), Petzl (caving equipment), Optimus (Nova stoves), Beal (rope), Aventure Verticale (transport bags), Scurion (caving lighting), Vilnius Heart Surgery Center (medicine), Expedition.lt (equipment), Waterra (loggers), Speleological Union of Ireland (financial support), Xpro divers (diving equiment), Duracell (batteries), and other smaller sponsors from different countries.