Panthera Spelaea

It was light out when I woke, just like when I went to sleep. That’s summer above the Arctic Circle for you.

The arrival of the swing shift team and their conversations is enough to get me out of bed. I joined them at the tables as they ate; they were bone tired yet excited. “How far did you get?”

“Here,” one of the graduate students told me as he pushed his phone across the picnic table. “I took this when we stopped for turnover.”

The high-resolution photographs showed their progress; they had uncovered the mammoth as far as the front legs and up to the neck. “And take a look at this.” He showed some close-up shots of the front legs. Just above the kneecap was a section of torn flesh. My jaw dropped. “Is that?”

“A bite wound. No doubt about it from the symmetry of the damage. This mammoth was attacked by one or more cave lions just before it died. We’ll find out soon, but I’m confident that the lion underneath it died during the attack.”

What a find this was becoming! Could you imagine the taxidermists recreating the scene? It would be amazing. “You guys are close. Do we know how we’re getting it out yet?”

“Vitali said to ‘trust him.’ I don’t know what he’s planning, but this thing is freakin’ huge.” I looked through the other photographs he’d taken as he finished eating, air-dropping the best ones to my phone. I gave it back as they headed to their tents to get some sleep.

The bugs were thick, so I headed back to my tent and looked at the photos there. I fell back to sleep eventually, waking in time for breakfast. Vitali had come back with the swing-shift crew to get some sleep, but he was up and ready to head out with us. So we gobbled breakfast, eager to return to the site.

On the way there, I asked Vitali how we were getting the mammoth out. I figured that by the time we arrived, the nightshift crew would have the mammoth freed from the surrounding permafrost. “You said you are getting a helicopter; are we cutting a hole in the roof?”

“No; the mammoth is a good ten meters below the hillside, and any vertical shaft we create might collapse inward as the permafrost melts. We can’t risk it getting crushed. You’ll see my plan when I get there.”

We arrived at Cave Three, and the night crew was waiting for us. “What’s with the chest waders,” I asked them as they walked out to the boat.

“They’re for you,” one of them replied. “We timed this perfectly to avoid the sucky part.”

Vitali laughed as he pulled a set on over his warm clothing. I looked up at the cave entrance to find it was blocked chest-high with sandbags. “What is the easist way to move a heavy object from point A to B,” he asked.

It hit me immediately. “Float it,” I said.

“Exactly. We’re going to flood the tunnel nearly to the top, then cut the carcass free and pull it out. Since it will be partially underwater, moving it will be much easier than it would be otherwise.”

The cave sloped gently upward to keep the water flowing back to the river. “You won’t have enough at the back.”

The expedition leader nodded. “That’s why we are building another dam closer to the mammoth. We need a lot of water to float it free without damage. Once we can move it, we can almost flush it out of the cave.”

“What about the cave lion?”

“The riskiest part of this whole thing is moving the mammoth off of the lion. Partially floating the carcass will remove some of the weight; since the cave lion is still encased in permafrost underneath and frozen, it’s our best chance to avoid further damage.”

“It’s not going to be easy. We need to maintain some supports for the mammoth to hold its weight off the cave lion while the water gently separates the two. Then we need to cut the mammoth loose while the tunnel is flooded high enough to do this. I have some divers coming in with dry suits; they will make the final cuts when we are ready.”

It was a hell of a plan. Once out of the cave, we’d attach lifting straps and a big net. A heavy-lift helicopter would move it to the White Mountain Airport in Belaya Gora. From there, a Russian military transport would fly it to the University of Moscow.

The tricky part was the messy work to undercut the mammoth without breaking off a chunk of the frozen animal or damaging the lion underneath. The three of us worked past lunch, leaving columns of frozen mud to support the weight as we cut passages underneath. Vitali checked our work and agreed it was time to flood the room.

The other workers had put together sandbag dams in preparation for flooding the passageway. The first one was two-thirds of the way in, the second at the cave entrance. We turned all the hoses on and started to fill the pond. Nicole and I stayed in waders, walking around the mammoth and watching for any problems.

When the water got above waist level, we were out of there. The two divers in their dry suits replaced us. We’d taken pictures of where the frozen support columns were, but they’d have to finish cutting it free by feel. The cold, muddy water was like working blind.

We started filling between the first dam and the entrance while the divers went to work with the small hoses and wands. We had water to our thighs when we heard the shouts from the divers. “это бесплатно! (It is free)!”

Sure enough, the mammoth was floating like a single ice cube in a glass. The divers slowly maneuvered the carcass until it was next to the temporary dam. We tied off ropes to the legs and neck that led back to the river.

Once the water level in the lower portion was almost up to the upper level, we worked with the divers to dismantle the dam. The men on the ropes slowly pulled the mammoth down the tunnel, skidding it over the frozen floor where the water wasn’t deep enough to float it.

It was four in the afternoon when the mammoth reached the dam at the cave entrance. When ready, boats with attached ropes pulled the sandbag dam down, and the mammoth shot out of the cave like it was on a waterslide. It stopped near the river, exposed to sunlight for the first time in perhaps ten thousand years.

It was beautiful.

“Go get some rest,” Vitali said as he clasped my shoulder. “Tonight will be busy with getting this animal on the plane. Tomorrow, we go after the Cave Lion.”