, Auditorium
In late August of 2025 cavers from across the world, including six Americans, converged in Lefka Ori (the White Mountains) of Crete, Greece with the objective of continuing exploration in Sternes Cave. Originally explored in the early 90s by French cavers to a depth of 428m, Sternes has seen a renewed exploration effort over the last decade. This renewed effort has been led by The Speleological Club of Crete (SPOK). Since 2018 several large, international expeditions have continued to push and explore Sternes which has slowly been revealing its secrets. From the original deep point of 428m exploration slowed drastically as cavers battled tight meanders. In 2018 they finally broke through to a large 60m shaft named Bulldozer Pit. From here the way forward evaded cavers until the end of the 2022 expedition when there was a major breakout into an extensive horizontal passage named First Light. The 2023 and 2024 expeditions were very fruitful, finding kilometers of horizontal passage, colossal rooms, and a large river passage which ended in a sump. The 2025 expedition was hopeful to find a way around the sump and continue deeper. Making use of two existing camps and establishing a third, with sleeping bags purchased with an NSS international exploration grant, multiple teams were able to explore several new areas of the cave. Despite not finding a way to bypass the sump a new deep point was discovered pushing the cave's depth to -728m. In addition over 2,700m of passage was surveyed extending the cave's length to just over 10.7km making it Greece's third longest cave. Several other nearby caves were re-explored and pushed with exciting results. Sternes slowly continues to reveal its secrets and it is hoped that future expeditions will push it past the -1km level.
Dustin Kisner