Borz Cave

Borz Cave is one of the caves located in the Aggtelek National Park. Together with the other caves of the Aggtelek Karst and the Slovak Karst, it has been part of the World Heritage since 1995.

Description

North of the center of Szögliget, about three kilometres away, northeast of the Lakatos spring (Borz spring), 72 metres away, next to the route marked with the blue stripe of the National Blue Trail, there is a natural entrance one and a half metres high. Some tourist maps mark the cave’s location with a cave symbol and the name. It formed in Upper Triassic Hallstatt limestone.

The archaeological exploration of the 32‑metre horizontal extent of the cave can be fruitful. A lot of bone and animal waste is present in it. These indicate that a predator lived, or lives, there. On old maps a crawling passage leading further from the endpoint can be seen, which is currently impassable. At its end one could reach a water‑conducting passage closed with debris, after squeezing through a narrow opening, according to those who knew the cave in the past. The unsealed part of the cave can be visited with basic cave‑tour equipment and a permit.

The cave was named Borz Cave because of the borz mushroom found during its exploration. According to locals, gypsies used to burn borz at the cave entrance in the past and it may have been destroyed then. In literature the cave also appears under the names Borz‑hole (Dénes 1963), Borzlyuk (Balázs 1957) and Borzlyuk‑cave (Bertalan 1976). In 1957 the cave was first called Borz‑cave in the literature.

Research History

The cave was opened in August 1957 by Gyülvészi Barnabás and Ort János by clearing a blocked hole to a length of 28 m. In that year Balázs Dénes and Bató Tibor surveyed the cave, and based on the survey the cave map was prepared. The map presents the cave at a scale of 1:100. In 1959 the Red Meteor SK Cave Exploration Group carried out excavation work in the cave. In the speleological field report prepared in 1963, based on an August 1963 visit, Dénes György wrote that Borz Cave is probably the old inactive source cave of the Bába spring, through which the waters of the Bába‑valley springs once reached the surface. According to the manuscript it is 50 metres long. The length figure undoubtedly includes the length of another nearby excavated cave that may be traversable in connection with this cave. In reality the two caves were not connected.

In 1968 the Red Meteor Cave Research Subcommittee expanded the entrance part of the cave. In 1971 the Tectonics Cave Research Group enlarged the cave. Probably in 1973 members of the Tectonics Cave Research Group (László Csernavölgyi and András Molnár) surveyed the cave, and then András Molnár, based on the survey, prepared the cave floor plan map and five cross‑section maps. The guidebook edited by László Jakucs and published in 1975 states that the cave is 50 m long and, according to the explorers, is an old, already inactive source cave of the Bába‑valley cave system. A photograph showing the cave entrance was published in the book. According to the 1976 MKBT Report, the Borz cave is walkable up to about 20 m in length and can be explored in two directions.

The 75th card in the manuscript written by Károly Bertalan, completed in 1976, mentions that the Borz cave located on Szögliget, on the Lower Mountain, has another name, Borzlyuk cave. The cave entrance is on the edge of a clearing beside the tourist trail leading to Szádvar, at an altitude of 299 m above sea level. The cave is 28 (50?) m long and is filled with sediment. The part of the manuscript describing the cave was based on two literary works. According to the speleological field report written in 1977, based on a February 1972 entrance, the Borz cave has a hydrological connection with water intake No. 1 of the Bába valley. The floor‑plan length of the Borz cave is 41 m, its actual length is 41 m, its horizontal extent is 20 m and its vertical extent is 2.3 m. In the autumn of 1978 members of the Imre Vass Cave Research Group collected a small amount of sediment sample from the cave fill, which was examined from a paleo‑archaeological perspective by József Rácz. The sample was free of ancient artifacts.

At the 1982 National Hiking Meeting of the Hungarian Karst and Cave Research Society it was one of the hiking destinations. In the book *Caves of Hungary* published in 1984, which contains the national cave list, the cave located in the Aggtelek Karst appears under the name Borz Cave with the variant name Borzlyuk Cave. Related to the list, the geographical location of the caves of the Aggtelek Karst and the Bükk Mountains is shown on a 1:500 000 scale map, indicating the cave’s geographical position. (The KvVM Cave and Geological Department has a plan map of the cave and five cross‑section maps, none of which show the date of creation or the creator on the map sheet. They were made in 1993 or later. The plan map shows the location of the five cross‑sections within the cave.)

Since 1995 the cave, together with the other caves of the Aggtelek Karst and the Slovak Karst, has been part of the World Heritage. In the thesis prepared by Attila Nyerges in 1997, Borz Cave is mentioned among the flood caves and spring caves of the Hungarian part of the Alsó‑hegy. On 15 October 2008 Bea Frigy, Tamás Németh, Zoltán Povázsai and Éva Tóth surveyed the cave, and based on the survey the cave’s plan map and three cross‑section maps were produced.