Real Survival Stories - Two Kilometres Underground: Inches of Breathing Room

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

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 [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. It's Sunday, September the 16th, 2018, in the Arabica Massif, a mountain range in Russian-occupied Georgia. 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. But Arabeca's greatest natural feature is below the surface. Varyovkina. Officially the deepest cave in the world.

From its opening in the mountains, Varyovkina drops straight down, startling 2.2 kilometers, or more than 7,200 feet. It's a vast vertical chasm, right through the heart of the mountain range. Deep down is a kingdom of slender passageways, echoey caverns and immense darkness. 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. 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. The deepest point in the deepest cave. Right now though, on Sunday morning, Robby'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. Over the past week, Robby's grown used to Varyovkina's Camp 3, located on a horizontal plateau 1900 meters below the surface.

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

It's a warning for Camp 3. From a pair of cavers up in Camp 2, 700-odd meters 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. 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 Veriofkina's main vertical column which stretches above. 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 the pit beneath us and found its way down to the water table. The sheer force of the waterfall is overwhelming. Robby 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 gonna be trapped.

Not just underground, but underwater. 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. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? 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. In this episode we meet Robbie Shone. 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. 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 air space and the rest was brown foamy water. I'm John Hopkins from the Noiza podcast network. This is real survival stories. It's 11 years earlier, September 2007. 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. Robbie's in China to photograph an unusual geological phenomenon. The Miao-Keng shaft, an unbroken 500-meter drop.

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 Keng. A Russian group are also in town, led by a man called Pavel Demidov. Robbie's never worked with Russians before. 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. Suddenly the door to the farmhouse is flung open and in walks Pavel. 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. But tonight, Pavel has come bearing gifts.

Pavel has come bearing gifts. 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 realized that actually we had nothing to fear. These guys were just like us, you know. For Robbie and Pavel, it's the start of a beautiful friendship, one that will last far beyond the trip to China. 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, the Berry of Keener, 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. By now Robbie is an established caver himself and one of the top cave photographers in the world. 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. 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. from then onwards I wanted to go caving all the time. Officially Robbie was supposed to be studying fine art, but his real passion was for photography. Unfortunately photographing caves is a pretty niche speciality, and none of his tutors were able to help him with it. There was nobody at university that could teach me cave photography, speciality and none of his tutors were able to help him with it. 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, practicing lighting, because that's basically the main skill of cave photography is lighting. How do 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? Eventually, through a process of trial and error, he learnt the tricks of the trade. And while he was honing his photography skills, he was developing as a climber as well. 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.

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 practice my cave photography in the big, big caves of the world. And then I could come back, make a phone call on like a Thursday and I could be back on the job on the Monday. After graduating, Robby 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 Niao-Keng, meeting Pavel Demidov in the process. So by 2017, when Pavel asks him to come and

capture Veriovkina, Robby is well established as one of the foremost cave photographers in the world. 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. I've been caving for 18, 19 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.

In September 2018, Robbie leaves his partner Gina behind in their home in Austria and sets off for Verjofkina. He'll be a part of a team of 10, 8 Russians and 2 Englishmen. Robby has secured funding from the National Geographic Society for him and his assistant Jeff Wade to document Pavel's latest expedition. But before they head underground, there's work to do at surface level. They meet up with the team at a camp in the Arabica Mountains, just 10 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. But they aren't here to enjoy the view. We spent about three days on the surface beforehand, packing all of the gear. Because 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. 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.

Beriovkina 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. 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. Robbie, however, isn't so sure.

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. For 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 Varyovkina with that at the back of my mind anyway. Even for an experienced caver, Varyovkina is no walk in the underground park. As the team finally sets off, laden with supplies and equipment, the challenge ahead becomes stark. 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. 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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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. At times, the cavers are forced to crawl on their bellies, squeezing through gaps barely large enough for the human frame. Thoughts of becoming stuck have to be pushed to one side. And eventually, after the best part of a day, the team emerge into an open chamber. They stretch their stiffened limbs, taking in the magnificent scene around them. Once you've tackled the entrance series, and you've got through that that and you're now belief 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. From slowly scrambling through a claustrophobic maze, now it's time for a speedier vertical drop. Robbie shimmies into the dark abyss. He slides carefully down the ropes until his feet hit the ground. Soon the entire team has arrived at Camp 1. It's here that they'll spend their first night in Varyovkina. 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. 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. Pavel and the team took down with them 100% alcohol. And 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 flavor the vodka. And Pavel insisted that we all drank three shots of vodka before we went to bed. The temperature at Camp One is just three or four degrees above freezing. So the shots of vodka are a welcome warmer. It's not long before Robbie drifts off to sleep. Well rested the following morning the team rise and set off again.

They still have a long journey ahead of them. The rest of the cave is quite straightforward relatively. But it still takes three days after that to get to the very bottom. The route down to camp three over a mile beneath the entrance is not to be sniffed at. 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. And there's something meditative about the slow, steady rate of descent. sent. 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. cave and living that experience. Still, when the group makes it to Camp 3, 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. rest up and prepare themselves to explore the lowest levels. Perhaps the most dazzling sight down here is the terminal sump,

a beautiful oval pool at the very deepest point of the cave network. 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. He looks every inch the action hero. Now in his mid-40s 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. 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 totally forgotten that we were, you know, two kilometers underground. While Robbie and the others explore the wonders of Veriofkina's lowest level, 2,000 meters above them, the weather has taken a turn for the worse. 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 Bay of Keener. 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. 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. 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. 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 the cave there 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. It'll take a while for the flood pulse to reach them. It has a way to travel down from camp two. The team's best guess 20 to 25 minutes. They return to their breakfast and wait patiently, listening out for the sound of rushing water. Sure enough, bang on cue, they hear it coming. A deep bellow, gradually growing louder. We heard the sound of what I always describe as a freight train, like in the underground, slowly coming towards you can hear it And it's like what's that? It's like a rumbling sound and then you realize what it is Robbie sets down his food and runs to the ledge overlooking the central canyon

It's here that the torrent of water will fall past them as it drops down to very often as lowest reaches of water will fall past them as it drops down to Verjofkina'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. 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 the hit beneath us and found its way down to the water table.

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Titanic Ship of Dreams. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. The water table in Varyovkina 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 Andrei go to check on a nearby siphon, a flooded section of cave. 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. 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've been spitting our toothpaste out into and he looked down and I think he thought he could hear gurgling noise or something there was nothing and he came back. Meanwhile Rob is doing his best to get on with his own work capturing was nothing and he came back.

Meanwhile Rob is doing his best to get on with his own work, capturing photographs of the people and the action. 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. 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. 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's foam and it was coming up so quickly. In an instant the stakes have been raised. The water table isn't just creeping higher, it's racing upwards and seeping into Camp 3.

Robbie turns to his assistant, who is staring wide-eyed at the bubbling murky floodwater. 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. I quickly realized 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. That's 10,000 pounds worth of equipment he's leaving behind, an indication of the severity

of the situation. Robbie does take a moment to salvage the photographs he's already taken, including the haunting shot of Pavel ascending from the terminal sump. 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. I needed to get dressed. I needed to get dressed. I need to get my oversuit on, the dry suit, the harness, the helmet and light.

Go, go, go. With their Russian counterparts scrambling behind them, Robbie and Geoff flee the campsite, making their way to the ledge that overhangs the main canyon. Looking down, Robbie can clearly see the water beneath rising up to meet them. To my horror again that 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. Time is running out. From here the only way is up. But the route to Camp 2

means climbing through the waterfall. A raging barrage of ice cold froth tumbling downwards with colossal force. 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. As Robbie climbs, his body is pounded by the thundering flood pulse.

Every sinew strains against the onslaught. He's ascending hand over hand, forcing his way up, fighting the water for every inch. You can't even see where he's going. 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. Fortunately, the lip of Robbie's helmet creates a little space for him to suck in air as he climbs. 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. It's the sort of maneuver that's second nature to an experienced climber.

But he's never had to do it in circumstances like these. Robbie shouts down to Jeff, rope free, but it's unclear if his friend can hear him at all. All Robbie can do is keep moving upwards. He's climbing for his life now. I was racing up the ropes as fast as I could because I was fearing the worst. I thought that the wards table was rising faster than I was climbing. And eventually it was just going to swallow me up.

Finally, Robbie is almost out of the waterfall's direct path. After over 100 meters 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. 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. 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. 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. But Pavel and Andrei were even deeper underground, inspecting one of Veriokhina's lowest siphons. Right now it's unclear whether any of them are still alive. It's a stomach churning wait as Robbie and Jeff peer into the chasm below. 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 Andrei and their leader Pavel. It's hard not to fear the worst. When we'd left the Lois 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. What's a madness to imagine that they'd survived that. A maudlin silence falls over the group. Heads are bowed. But then, looking out over the edge, Robbie sees the faint glimmer of a headlamp. Andre emerges from the waterfall. Before, last but not least, sweating, panting and grunting, Pavel emerges as well. 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. 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. Against the odds, all eight members of the team have escaped Camp 3. But they haven't survived this subterranean flood yet.

There's still some way to go. And there is a new problem. The route ahead, a narrow horizontal tunnel, is blocked by something even more impossible than the waterfall. The way ahead of us was completely submerged. It was a horizontal passage that was completely full of water and there was nowhere we could go any higher. 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.

If the water level beneath carries on rising before they can escape, there will only be one outcome. With no other options, they make camp for the night on their ledge and wait. Those 16 hours were hell. The waiting. I convinced myself that I was going to die. We were trapped. The mood is leaden, but the Russians remain stoical and clamber into the tent for the night. Pavel invites Robbie and Jeff to join them, but right now Robbie can't bear to sit still. Instead he paces up and down the ledge, just meters from the precipice. 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. 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 moment waiting to see that.

That was the worst point because when 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. Oh, this is it. The day you finally ask for that big promotion.

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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 is beginning to die down. The noise slowly dropped and the water table hadn't appeared. Okay, maybe we are going to survive this. Maybe it is going to be okay. after all. I'm not thinking about my life ending and all these horrible thoughts anymore. That was a point where we all thought, okay, it's going to get better now. We're going to find a way out. It's going to be okay. With the waterfall dried up, the team can finally continue to camp too.

But despite the renewed optimism, they are now facing a test possibly beyond anything they've yet encountered. They must traverse a 60-metre horizontal passage which is still almost entirely filled with water. 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 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. 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. Robbie centres himself. Deep breath, keep calm. Here we go. As he begins to crawl through the tunnel on his hands and knees, he is almost completely submerged in opaque, foamy water. There's only about six inches of air.

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 air space. It's a grueling gauntlet, but slowly, steadily, the line of men creep their way forwards, chins always angled upwards. Finally, after sixty brutal meters, Robbie emerges from the end

of the tunnel. They're out. Safely, at Camp Two, the team settles down to a much-needed meal. But it's too soon for anyone to count their chickens. Just as everyone starts to relax, they are given a startling reminder of the hazards all around. 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. A crunch, a streak of blood and a cry of pain, everybody rushes to their leader. Thankfully, he's all right.

It's a second close shave for the Russian. An inch closer and the rock would have directly hit his head. 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. 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. Until finally, Robbie senses a change in the air. 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. It's nighttime when the weary group of men finally set foot on the surface. Then one by one they walk the short distance from the cave entrance to the nearby campsite. 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. At the campsite, the cavers toast their survival in the traditional Russian way. 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 afterwards, she said, you know, you were a 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. As Robbie readjusts to life back home with his partner in Austria, it soon becomes clear

that his experiences in Verjofkina have left a lasting impact. He is tormented by visions of drowning deep underground. 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. Slowly, Robbie begins to recover his mental health. He's able to sleep better to process what happened. But he says his brush with death will never fully leave him. I'm okay now, but mentally it's altered me for sure. Or 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 very of Kena, for example, I, to be honest, I have no desire to ever go back to the bottom of very of Kena or the next deepest cave, you know, in my lifetime, I'm sure there'll be another cave that breaks the world depth record. I'm not on that trip. That's for somebody else, right? Despite his newfound caution, Robbie still has unfinished business with Verjofkina. 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 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. 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. A year after barely escaping with his life, Robbie is back there to finish the job, along

with Jeff and Pavel. We didn't go down to the bottom. That was something I made quite clear to Bert Apple. I didn't want to go to the bottom and we didn't need to go to the bottom. You know, we'd got all the pictures. So we went down to I think a thousand meters or something like that and then photographed the rest of the cave from there back all the pictures. So we went down to, I think, a thousand meters or something like that, and then photographed the rest of the cave from there back to the surface. 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. 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 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 on stage. It turns out that it's actually good fun.

Unlike Robbie, Pavel shows no signs of slowing down. He even returns to Camp 3 of Veriöfkina. It's a sobering sight. Clothes, sleeping bags and photographic equipment strewn all around. Many of the items are embedded in the ceiling. Later Pavel shows Robbie what he found in the cave. 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. Over the next two years, Pavel supervises a number of safety improvements at Varyovkina. 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 Arabica Massif, not far from Varyfkina. He was only, I don't know, 200, 300 meters underground when he was crushed by a big rock fall 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 realized that Pavel had died in the rockfall.

With the help of the international caving community, Robbie and Gina raise over £5,000 to pay for Pavel's body to be recovered. At the head of their fundraising page sits the image of Pavel ascending from the pool of Veriokhina's deepest point. A look of heroic determination on his face. 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 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 Varyovkina.

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 Varyovkina, I think. I mean, I think about it often, I must admit. Psychologically, the Vary Evkina experience changed me. For sure, I'm more aware of my existence.

Maybe it was a good thing it happened. In the next episode, we meet Mark Lyons. In November 2015, the keen cyclist has entered La Ruta de los Conquistadores, an epic mountain bike race through the heart of Costa Rica. It's a grueling endeavor, regarded by many as the toughest competition of its kind. And Mark will soon learn why it has such a fearsome reputation. When he slips and falls during a river crossing, the father of two will be swept downstream for miles deep into the jungle. That's next time on Real Survival Stories.

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