PART TWO: KLIMCHOUK
THIRTY-TWO
AT 11:40 A.M., ON AUGUST 23, 2003, Alexander Kabanikhin, a young Russian speleologist from Archangel, descended into Krubera Cave, located high in the western Caucasus Mountains in the Republic of Georgia. Kabanikhin was ferrying supplies to others already at the cave’s 500-Meter Camp, 1,640 feet deep. After a couple of hours, he arrived at the Big Cascade, a 500-foot-deep shaft with several rebelays.
At the first rebelay, halfway down, Kabanikhin switched his European-style mechanical descender, called a bobbin (comparable to the rappel racks used by most Americans), from one rope to the next, then leaned back to begin his rappel. The rope popped out of his descending device and he started to fall, his headlamp beam lashing the cave walls as he dropped. Before he could even scream he struck a rock ledge that smashed his mouth. In quick succession, other impacts compound-fractured his left leg, fractured his pelvis, and broke several vertebrae in his back.
Kabanikhin had made a mistake similar to the one that killed Chris Yeager in Cheve: failing to close and lock a safety gate on his descending device. Because his rope ran through two carabiners between his harness and the descender, Kabanikhin remained attached to the rope, but the carabiners and descender did nothing to slow his air rappel.
There is an old saying in climbing that the problem is not falling—it’s the landing that gets you. Kabanikhin’s plunge turned that on its head. The fall was actually worse than the landing because the rope, to which he remained attached, kept smashing him into the wall. Ultimately, though it caused grievous injuries, the rope did prevent his death. It did not hang completely free all the way to the bottom but, with some slack, led to the next rebelay, 115 feet farther down. Kabanikhin fell that distance and would have kept on falling another 100 feet, to his certain death, were it not for the rebelay anchor, which stopped him, not quite dead but almost. He hung there, unconscious at first, and then, soon after, awake and screaming.
Surviving that fall was a small miracle in itself, given the length and the brutal impacts. Two reasons he lived were his helmet, which kept his skull from being smashed like an eggshell, and the fact that he’d severed no major veins or arteries, though before long he might have thought bleeding to death a preferable fate. Pain slows time, and hanging there, badly damaged, Kabanikhin learned something about eternity.
Sergio García-Dils, a friendly, sandy-haired Spaniard, had arrived at the 500-Meter Camp earlier that day, bringing fuel for the team’s gasoline-powered hammer drills and other supplies. A search-and-rescue expert who trained Spanish military units, García-Dils and others at the camp heard Kabanikhin screaming between crunching impacts with the wall. The cave acted like a vast echo chamber, amplifying the screams so much that, initially, no one was sure whether they were coming from above or below. At first, the cavers looked down into the vertical pitches beneath the 500-Meter Camp, but Bernard Tourte, a handsome, wiry, black-bearded French caver, soon realized that the screams were coming from above. Two other cavers climbed 100 feet to the rebelay bolt where Kabanikhin was hanging. A trail of bright red blood above, glistening in their lights, revealed the path of his fall. Kabanikhin himself was covered in blood, his face badly cut by its impact with the rocks. He was in agony from multiple fractures, but conscious and able to speak. As gently as they could (not very, given the circumstances), they lowered Kabanikhin to the 500-Meter Camp and made him as comfortable as possible.
Kabanikhin’s situation might have been a lot worse. Without the rebelay anchor that halted his fall, he would have dropped that last 100 fatal feet. And although his plunge was calamitous, the 500-Meter Camp was still less than a full day’s climb to the surface for healthy cavers. Had the accident happened down near Krubera’s bottom, Kabanikhin might well have died before rescuers could have saved him.
Even so, Kabanikhin’s chances for survival seemed slim. He was in horrible pain and in deepening shock. His pulse raced at 180 beats per minute, an indication of the trauma he had suffered. He had lost a quart of blood already, and his fellow cavers were having trouble stopping the bleeding from that compound fracture. To make things worse, hauling him to the surface would require a rescue litter, and the expedition did not have one. Even if they could obtain one, many passages between the surface and the 500-Meter Camp were too tight for a litter to pass through. Those passages would have to be drilled and hammered and blasted open before the litter could even be brought down. On top of everything else, only one member of the expedition had rescue training.