Cave of Amazons

The Cave of the Amazons is one of Hungary's specially protected caves. It is located in the Pilis Mountains within the Danube–Ipoly National Park.

Description

In Pomáz, beside the dirt road leading from the large quarry, on the opposite side of the road from the outer houses of the settlement, before a large bend in the road, the cave is situated. In a slightly sloping mountainside, on a rocky, open terrain, there is a natural but modified entrance closed with a steel plate door, which is 50×50 cm, circular and vertically oriented. The easily found entrance is in a location that can be reached easily, even by car.

The cave was formed in Triassic limestone by dissolution below the karst water level. It is currently inactive. In the branching and multilevel cave the slope conditions vary. Horns, shafts, spherical chambers, spherical domes, calcite draperies, ancient artifacts, stalactites, flowstones, stalagmites, straw stalactites, stalactite slabs, stalactite flags, stalactite drips, stalactite poisonings, re‑dissolved deposits, montmilch, crystalline pea stones and typical (spherical) pea stones can be observed there.

It can be visited with permission and basic cave‑tour equipment. The undeveloped cave is easily walkable. At most two groups may visit per day. A group may consist of up to 8 persons.

Crawling through the difficult-to-open door, one can descend on a 3 m long iron ladder into the cave's first spacious chamber. There is a lot of garbage in this chamber. From this chamber, further down, one can again descend on a ladder about 3 m long. At the bottom of the ladder is the first large opening, as well as the later entry point. The smaller‑to‑larger rock debris extracted from here was deposited safely on the right‑hand wall. On the right‑hand wall above the crawl there are large patches of montmilch and re‑dissolved stalactite flags. Some of these are also covered with montmilch, and in this area many, but insignificant‑sized, pepper stones can also be observed. At the crawl the cave passage narrows, and the tunnel descends steeply for a few metres. In this section many well‑preserved ancient remains (megalodus) are on the wall.

After the steep descent the passage continues as a horizontal, wet‑clayey floor crawling passage, where small white and re‑dissolved pendant stones have formed. In the corridor with a nicely dissolved ceiling, proceeding on all fours, one can reach the cave's largest chamber (Panoramic Chamber). The largely walkable even while standing, astonishingly large chamber compared with the previously explored parts of the cave, on the left side of the ceiling many small stalactite drops, stalagmites, stalactite flows and wolf‑bite stalactite flags can be seen. On the almost completely trodden floor of the chamber, blocks of stone that have fallen from the ceiling, some dripping pits and small stalactite columns are present. On the right side, on the ceiling, there is a completely regular sphere about 2 m in diameter, beneath which many prepared calcite fragments and megalodus can be seen.

In the inner part of the hall there is a research shaft about 1×1.5 m in diameter, approximately 6–7 m deep and continuously rectangular in section, which has not yet reached the stalagmite, and therefore on all four sides only a clay wall is present. From this breaking point the passage continues in one direction upward on a massive-sized debris pit, and in the other direction approximately horizontally alongside the stalagmite wall in a narrow fissure. After a few tens of metres these two passages merge again and end. The upward‑going section of the debris pit is walkable standing and is almost completely triangular in section.

Here on the main floor a few roughly 1 m diameter spherical stalactites and stalagmite drops can be found. The left‑hand wall is in several places covered over several square metres with tiny pea‑size stones, the main floor is decorated with thin calcite crust. At the top of the debris pit a small passage leads to a small chamber, from which a trumpet‑shaped passage about 4–5 m high begins upward. Downward a tube‑shaped narrowing corridor starts, which joins the passage that begins alongside the right‑hand stalagmite wall. On this upper part of the cave white erodible coating has formed on the small stone blocks embedded in the ground, and from the ceiling mushroom‑like threads (?) hang down in many places. The whole cave can be toured in about 1 hour.

In 1997 the cave was first called Amazonok‑cave in the literature. The cave also appears in the literature under the names Amazon‑cave (Kocsis 1997) and Amazonok’s cave (Leidinger 1999).

Research history

The June 1961 Karst and Cave Research Bulletin mentions that members of the Lóczy Lajos Cave Research Group had in recent weeks explored two cavities near the Pomázi quarry, and, on the yard of a nearby house, uncovered three cavities in a cave by excavation based on the guidance of local residents. At the latter site the speleologists continue the exploration, after which the previously mentioned smaller cavities will also be investigated. The 1967 book Pilis guidebook notes that on the É side of the Majdán plateau, which continues the Oszoly K‑i, facing the Dera stream, near the quarry beside the outer houses of Pomáz, a few small cavities open.

In the book titled Pilis útikalauz published in 1974, in the list of caves of the Pilis Mountains and the Visegrád Mountains (pages 19–20), it is mentioned that there are the Majdán-fennsík cavities among the caves of the Pilis Mountains and the Visegrád Mountains. The description of the Majdán-fennsík cavities in the section describing the caves of the Pilis Mountains matches the description of the Majdán-fennsík cavities presented in the guidebook published in 1967. In the guidebook published in 1991, the description from the 1967 guidebook is repeated, which mentions the small cavities located near the Pomázi stone quarry.