Man suffered 'every cave diver’s' worst fear trapped deep in underground caverns
Topics: Wales, UK News, World News
Joe Yates
Featured Image Credit: Martyn Farr
Topics: Wales, UK News, World News
Since the start of time, explorers have risked their lives to map the unknown, whether that be sea, new land, space and even underground.
Roger Solari was one of them.
He was skilled at dry caving and fascinated by venturing through the deepest, darkest natural tunnels in the UK.
That was until on June 15, 1974, when tragedy befell him.
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The 26-year-old and his friend Martyn Farr were on a mission to explore the Agen Allwedd cave, which is located in Wales.
They were both very experienced divers, and they planned to explore the fourth sump in the cave system - a pool of water collected underground as drainage.
Everything went well until they reached the unexplored part of the system, and when Farr and Solari dived into the fourth sump they had already used the majority of their oxygen.
They chose to dive together but independently, which meant if they encountered any problems they could swim back up to the pocket of air.
While Farr had a guideline of 1,000ft he went in with, Solari's was only 400ft long. It is a standard procedure in cave diving for people to use line reels because it is easy to get confused about the way out when there is no light.
As the pair went further and further into the sump, Farr began to ascend on the other side believing there would be a pocket of air, but when he reached the top he discovered that there wasn't and so with his last bit of air went back.
While on his way back he saw Solari at the roof of the passage, and signalled to him underwater that they needed to return to the surface.
When Farr made it out the sump he waited for a few minutes, but Solari had still not resurfaced.
It was every cave divers' worst fear - Farr did not have enough oxygen in his tank to return and look for him, and was aware that Solari had less air than him in his tank.
There was still no sign of Solari so Farr went back into the cave with his air reserve.
He began to pull Solari's line but it was slack, he then discovered that Solari's line had been cut.
Again, Farr returned to the surface and waited for his friend's return, but he never did.
It wasn't until their friends returned from a cave dive nearby that they notified the police and the cave rescue team.
After a huge search team was launched and countless hours spent underground looking for Solari it was called off.
To this date Solari's body has never been retrieved and the mystery of why his line was stuck remains.