, Auditorium
At almost 91 km length and 1,529 m depth, Sistema Cheve is the 11th deepest cave in the world. While it is clear that the cave was used and revered by ancient peoples, the first modern speleologists to visit the cave were Carol Vesely and Bill Pharr in 1986. They began mapping immediately and soon organized a project to explore and survey the cave. This period of exploration fielded expeditions annually through 1997. By the end of 1997, the main Cheve river disappeared into a sump at the end of Wet Dreams, and strong airflow had been pursued up through 150 meters of sketchy breakdown only to be lost in Harbinger Hall. In 2003, there was an expedition focused on diving the sump at the end of Wet Dreams; while they did succeed in diving through two sumps, they did not find the hoped-for continuation of the big boreholes that people often associate with Cheve. A second period of exploration began in 2017 and has fielded annual expeditions with the exception of 2020 during the height of Covid. At the start of 2017, the cave was 26.1 kilometers long and -1,484 meters.
Matt Covington and Adian Ward