Poles exploring the Albanian cave Viroit descended to a depth of 201 m!

We are pleased to announce another Polish success in cave diving. Adam “Zioło” Pawlik together with his group dived in the Albanian cave Viroit and was the first to reach the depth of 201 meters!

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Viroit Cave is actually a complex of two wells. The first of these Adam also explored first to 114m, reaching the bottom in 2014. The second well then surprised him with its depth and he ended its exploration at 142m.

This year the team that returned to Albania was prepared to reach depths of 230-250m. As it turned out, reality was somewhat more modest than our estimates and in the 16th minute of the dive we managed to reach the bottom of the cave at a depth of 201m. The whole dive lasted less than 5 hours.

Unfortunately, the dive was not without complications. At a depth of 140-150 metres Adam came across a bunch of broken railing. In this place there is a connector between subsequent sections of the well and the cave becomes narrower.

As for Viroit itself, it is tectonic, collapsing and its lower parts clearly karstic. The capriciousness of the cave is manifested, among other things, by large currents during rainy periods and a significant decrease in visibility during dry periods. This is when visibility in the cave significantly deteriorates.

Adam Pawlik was diving on a closed circuit, but as he stresses, the arrival of the support team, in which everyone was using open circuits, significantly worsened the conditions in the cave. Speaking of the latter, the water temperature was 10ºC, its clarity was crystal clear and the current in the cave was moderate.

The dive lasted just under five hours. Adam did not notice any symptoms of anaesthesia or HPNS in himself. He has already announced that after configuring the second rebreather, he would absolutely like to go back there and check the crack in the new configuration. All because a large number of bailout stage cylinders would cause too many complications to go any further.

The project involved:

Adam “Zioło” Pawlik CN Anaconda / TKTJ
Agnieszka Dobrzańska CN Anaconda / Speleoklub Olkusz
Jacek “Homer” Strejczyk CN Anaconda / Aven
Michał Lesiak CN Anaconda
Krzysztof Czyżyk CN Anaconda / KKJ
Jakub Czyżyk CN Anaconda / KKJ

Thanks to:

eNurek.pl for professional equipment
Messer Poland for gases
Miranda for lighting