THIRTY-EIGHT
GREAT DISCOVERIES HAVE A WAY OF generating great tragedies and controversies. After Amundsen’s fast, light expedition used sled dogs and skis to discover the South Pole, some (especially the second-place Brits) accused him of dishonorably running a “race,” rather than conducting a serious scientific expedition. When, during his own South Pole quest, Robert Falcon Scott’s entire team perished after being bested by Amundsen, others questioned Scott’s leadership and judgment. Before Hillary and Norgay were even off the mountain after summiting Everest, a divisive question was being asked: Which man got there first? True to form, things began to go sour not long after Krubera was proven to be the deepest cave on earth. Sadly, the worst of it was between Alexander Klimchouk and his son Oleg.
Alexander Klimchouk started caving young, at around eleven. If he had had a caving father, he probably would have started even earlier, as did his own sons. Some sons almost reflexively rebel against their fathers’ predilections, but not Oleg. He took to caving quickly and passionately, which brought great joy to Alexander. What richer reward does life bring a father than to be joined by one he loves most in doing a thing he loves most?
By then twenty-five and working in the same kind of industrial mountaineering as Yury Kasjan, Oleg had made a move typical of maturing young men, relocating from quiet places to where the action is. He spent a lot of his time in the former Soviet Union’s happening place, Moscow. That city was also the home base for CAVEX, which Oleg enthusiastically joined.
Soon after returning from the cave, Oleg asked his father’s permission for himself and CAVEX to seek commercial sponsors and raise funds using the world record in Krubera as their leverage. Against his better judgment, Klimchouk agreed, with restrictions. Please, he said, remember that CAVEX is there only as part of the Ukrainian Speleological Association, and that the Ukrainians had done all the years of advance work that made the record possible.
No problem, Oleg and the Muscovites assured Klimchouk. But problems arose almost immediately. CAVEX members began claiming in interviews and articles that the new deepest cave in the world had been discovered by the CAVEX team. The Russian media have no love for things Ukrainian, so several major Russian television channels’ follow-up reports portrayed the CAVEX team as heroes and the Ukrainians, when they were mentioned at all, as mere supporters. This would have been bad enough had the misinformation been broadcast exclusively in Russia, but those stations were also dominant throughout Ukraine and became the basis for international coverage, as well. The Ukrainians were shocked and felt disgraced in the eyes of the world.
“They started to go mad about the idea of superiority and fame,” Klimchouk said of CAVEX. “The world record clearly made their minds go awry. They started to develop plans to promote CAVEX as a super-extreme team and make a living on it.”
Klimchouk was distressed, but what could he do? That horse was already out of the barn and far down the road. His lone voice and those of a few Ukrainians were drowned out by the thunder of the international media. He took some small comfort from the fact that modern news stories have a twenty-four-hour shelf life, if that. Soon enough, the stories would ebb. Things would return to normal, and he and his teams could go back to the business of exploring Krubera.
Or so he assumed, until one day in the spring of 2001. The media interest had faded, but then Oleg approached his father with a truly bizarre plan. Representing CAVEX, Oleg proposed that his father should force Yury Kasjan and the entire Ukr.S.A. out of Krubera and let CAVEX take it from there. The young Turks—or Russians, actually—in Moscow had been plotting a regime change.
Klimchouk was horrified. It was as though Oleg had asked him to cut off an arm. The request, and Klimchouk’s angry refusal, sparked a severe conflict between the two, opening a breach that remains to this day. To understand the depths of Klimchouk’s distress, it helps to know that he, the gentlest of men, was so angered that he “was about to beat” Oleg. That’s hyperbolic; Klimchouk never struck Oleg, or really even came close. But he was undeniably furious. For his part, the son, realizing what a terrible mistake he had made, backed off and steered clear of Alexander for some time.
It was a tragic example of the law of unintended consequences. With the best of intentions, Alexander Klimchouk had introduced his son early on to the thing that had been the guiding force of his own life, cave exploration. And though he loved both his son and cave exploration without reservation, somehow now the two had conspired to cause him the greatest pain he had ever suffered. The breach between father and son was something else as well, eerily reminiscent of the divide that had opened between Bill and Pat Stone.
Nevertheless, Klimchouk chose to at least partly give the Muscovites the benefit of the doubt, persuading himself to write Oleg’s gaffe off to youth and the influence of young Russians with stars in their eyes. Thinking that direct communication between himself and the Russians would restore them to their senses and bring dignity back to the exploration of Krubera, Klimchouk invited them to take part in his upcoming expedition to Turkey’s Aladaglar Massif, which had significant supercave potential. He personally led the twenty-three-member expedition, which included a number of CAVEX members.
During a month in the Turkish mountains, Klimchouk did achieve a better understanding of the CAVEX people, but it only confirmed his worst fears. The limelight was and had always been, for Klimchouk, far down a long list of more important objectives; doing serious science, protecting the environment, and team safety, to name just three. He concluded that the Russians were apparently obsessed with fame, with ginning up accolades from the technically ignorant media for even routine explorations. He felt that his Russian invitees poisoned the month-long expedition, perpetrating what he interpreted as betrayals to garner inordinate credit for themselves. Worst of all, in fighting with CAVEX, Klimchouk was fighting with his son, perhaps giving that frayed relationship the last tug needed to rip it apart forever.
So dismayed was Klimchouk by what he perceived as the CAVEX team’s duplicity that he elected to stay away from his beloved Arabika in 2002 and 2003, years in which CAVEX teams were there. Instead, he and Yury Kasjan led expeditions to the Aladaglar Massif in both years, monitoring the CAVEX efforts from afar. Klimchouk certainly resented the Russians’ cheeky invasion, but he also worried about the younger, less experienced teams. He feared that they were badly organized, included too many inexperienced cavers, took too many risks, and were, in sum, a recipe for disaster.
THE 2003 CAVEX EXPEDITION KICKED OFF on July 29. The base camp was quickly established. The long-haul travelers shrugged off their jet lag, adjusted their watches, and everybody got used to sleeping on (and in) the ground once again.
By then, the world depth record had changed yet again. On January 12, 2003, an expedition had descended to 5,685 feet in France’s Mirolda Cave, besting Krubera by 74 feet. And there was always the specter of Bill Stone’s Mexican exploration at Sistema Cheve, which, he had unabashedly announced, would prove to be the deepest cave on earth.
Several unexplored windows and passages led out from the vast Chamber of Soviet Speleologists, the vast room near the bottom of Krubera. Others existed on the way to it. Of highest interest, though, was that small sump located 4,700 feet deep at the bottom of a 36-foot drop called P11. Following protocol, the cavers had bypassed these “possibles” as long as they could keep going through main passage. Now, halted for good at 5,609 feet, it was time to go back and dive that sump.
By early August, teams had rigged most of the cave, created a camp at 3,985 feet deep, and installed a telephone line. Things had been moving along so beautifully that everyone could have been forgiven for thinking that this expedition was blessed with a guardian angel. That lasted until a squad of soldiers armed with AK-47s showed up.