Magnus Midtbø has documented his descent into Mossdale Caverns, the Yorkshire cave where six men drowned in 1967 and remain entombed.
The Norwegian climber, a former competitive rock climber with more than 3.6 million YouTube subscribers, brought his cameraman Sam and a local guide for the attempt on Fourways, one of the deepest chambers in the system. Heavy rain outside could flood their section within about an hour, the guide warned, making the team entirely dependent on the forecast.
“I’m not afraid of being stuck in a cave as long as it’s dry,” Midtbø said, adding that the threat of flooding is what makes the trip so “freaking terrifying.”
“If the weather forecast is wrong, then this place is going to flood,” he added.
The physical demands proved immediate and unrelenting. The team navigated the infamous “Knee-Recorder” crawl, a narrow, half-kilometer passage with no space to turn around. Midtbø described it as the most claustrophobic experience of his life, noting that dragging his body through jagged rock and water left him physically exhausted.
At one point, a deep bass-like rumbling echoed through the tunnel, momentarily terrifying him with visions of the worst-case scenario. A moth fluttering near his helmet in the pitch-black depths became a lighthearted “bad omen” amid the stark silence.
The psychological weight of the location intensified as the team pressed deeper. Midtbø told his guide that he had read more people have been to outer space than down this cave. The guide replied: “Probably.” The guide estimated only about 50 people have entered the system and roughly 20 have reached Fourways, meaning around 30 percent of those who made it there had died.
Reaching the boiler room required 30 minutes of tight squeezes, with grass stuck to its roof demonstrating that floodwater can rise even there. The team deliberately avoided the Sanctuary, where the six victims were laid to rest, and crawled through a passage over 1,600 feet long.
The allure of documenting “unexplored potential” passages that few human eyes had seen kept Midtbø moving despite his fear.
The Mossdale Caverns disaster on June 24, 1967, remains the deadliest incident in British caving history. A party of ten cavers entered to map passages under clear skies and favorable forecasts. After several hours, four turned back for unclear reasons while six pressed deeper. A sudden thunderstorm swelled Mossdale Beck, sending water into the entrance and flooding the narrow tunnels before the six could escape. The four who had surfaced tried to warn them, but the entrance was already submerged. More than 300 rescuers, including the Upper Wharfedale Fell Rescue Association, built a makeshift dam and diversion ditch and deployed mechanical diggers and pumps to redirect the water. The cave filled in under an hour, and David Adamson, Geoff Boireau, John Ogden, Colin Vickers, Bill Frakes, and Michael Ryan all drowned. Rescuers judged recovery too dangerous, so the men remain inside.
The cave was sealed with concrete after the tragedy and remained closed for many years. It reopened a few years ago following talks with the victims’ families, though few have ventured inside due to extreme danger and persistent beliefs that it is haunted, with claims of voices echoing in the tunnels.
Having reached Fourways, the team hurried back out in case rain began. “Oh my gosh, that’s the most claustrophobic cave I’ve ever been to,” Midtbø said.