29/08/2026
Seven days inside a mountain searching for places that no man has been before. No daylight.
On 14 August, Jani loaded the car in Plura Valley and drove 3636km to Sardinia. With him he had the Divesoft Liberty SM CCR, Seacraft Ghost and Go scooters, dry tubes, and enough food to live underground for a week.
Bel Torrente is a cave on the east coast of Sardinia. The entrance sits underwater at the foot of the cliffs, so everything has to arrive by boat. Inside, the cave is not one long dive. It is a chain: you dive a flooded passage, surface into dry cave, take the gear off, carry all of it through the dark, and dive again. Seven times over, with the goal of mapping and discovering places no human has been before.
For anyone who does not dive, the closest comparison is climbing Everest. Underground. Without sherpas, because the team carries every single kilo themselves. Just to establish the first camp, the team moved roughly 600 kg of equipment, 2000 metres of diving and 125 metres of carrying through the demanding dry section. Some places you have to use single rope technique to be able to continue.
Base camp is beyond the second sump, with roughly 500 metres of solid rock between the team and the surface. No phone. No daylight. The only contact with the outside world is short text messages sent through the mountain itself, when and if the system is working. After establishing the base camp all the dive gear and the push teams camping gear had to be carried 520 meters further to the start of sump 3, then diving the 140 meter long sump 3. Then carrying the push teams equipment further - you get the picture… a week with a lot of carrying!
The team went in on Friday 21 August and came out on Thursday 27 August. Seven days. Janis job was survey, cartography, and support: mapping what the team finds and carrying gear forward so the push divers can go first. In a project like this, every single piece has to be thought through in advance. As little as possible should be improvised several kilometres inside a mountain.
The expedition was a success. The push team got through Sump 7, surfaced in a large new chamber no human had ever stood in, and found Sump 8 waiting on the other side. Bel Torrente is already mapped to more than 12 kilometres and it just got longer again.
In Jani’s own words:
“And we are back safely from the Bel Torrente - SKEP project. Push team was able to dive through Sump 7 and found another big chamber + Sump 8 so the cave just keeps on going. Amazing experience to be part of a team like this. With a lot of carrying we were even able to come out one day earlier than scheduled.”
The team came out a day early. Not because they cut it short, but because they carried harder than the plan required.
Huge respect to Thorsten “Toddy” Wälde and Protec Sardinia, who have been working this cave for 19 years, and to the whole SKEP team including Witold Hoffmann and Max Fahr on the push. Natalie Lasselin documenting the expedition and Oliver Steinle and Jani Santala Jordbru on the support team.
‘Cold’ water, total darkness, heavy gear, and a long way from help. Teamwork, safety focus and highly skilled participants. It is the same discipline we live by up here in Plurdalen, just under a different mountain. Thank you for allowing us to contribute, it has been a blast!
