Peer into the depths of the deepest cave in the world in Georgia or gaze in awe at a giant wave-shaped rock in Western Australia.
To the untrained eye, a small hole in the ground would not mean much. But in the Arabika Massif (mountain) of the Western Caucasus, near the Black Sea coast in Georgia, one such opening leads to an abyss that seems to have no bottom – the Krubera cave. It was called the Voronya Cave (Crows’ Cave) during the 1980s as many crows nested in the entrance pit. It was later named after Russian geologist Alexander Kruber.
In 2004, a team of cavers led by Yuri Kasjan became the first to touch a depth lower than 2000 m while exploring the cave. One team member claimed that it “was like climbing an invented Mount Everest!” In 2007, Kasjan descended to a depth of 2191m, making it the deepest cave in the world, and the only one known so far to be deeper than 2000 m. With the cave still under study and new pits being discovered, cavers are raring to plunge to greater depths.
The alpine karst of Arabika is home to several other caves like Kujbyshevskaja Cave (1110m), Iljukhina System (1240m) and the Sarma Cave (1,550 m).
A type of landscape made up of limestone plateaus.
Picture Credit : Google