Bill,
In case you're interested, there were two major connections made in the
last week or two that affect world deep caves.
In Austria Raucherkarhöhle and Feuertalsystem were connected producing
the Schönbergsystem which is 1060 m deep and 120,400 m long, making it the
longest cave in the E. U. (although Switzerland has longer caves). This is
only the second cave in the world to be both over 1000 m deep and 100 km long
(after Siebenhengste). There is a little information at
<de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schönbergsystem>.
In Abkhazia/Georgia (former USSR), Illusia Cave was connected to
Snezhnaya-Mezhennogo Cave system. The new depth of this system is 1750 m with
a total length of 23km. This is now the 2nd deepest cave in the world after
Krubera-Voronja. (Information from a Russian caver email list via Yuri
Schwartz.)
The grapevine is _fast_! :-)
Mark Minton
