WHEN MARK DICKEY entered the third-deepest cave in Türkiye, he couldn’t have foreseen that he’d be trapped in there for 11 days.
The American cave explorer suddenly fell ill while working on a project to map Morca cave in the southern part of the country. The cave is very deep, extending almost 1,3 kilometres below ground at its deepest point.
Mark was among the 12 people who entered the cave in the Taurus Mountains on 31 August.
On day three of the expedition, he suddenly started vomiting and developed a stomach bleed. It’s not yet known exactly what led to Mark’s condition but it left him too weak to climb out of the cave himself. At one point he even lost consciousness.
Luckily, the team of adventurers who were with him, which included his fiancée Jessica Van Ord, a paramedic, were able to keep him
