Danca Cave

The Danca Cave is one of the specially protected caves of Hungary. It is located in the area of the Aggtelek National Park. Together with the other caves of the Aggtelek Karst and the Slovak Karst, the cave has been part of the World Heritage since 1995. It is the seventh longest cave of the Aggtelek Karst.

Description

The entrance of the cave is located about 2.5 km from the centre of Égerszög. The cave entrance is on the eastern side of the Tót Valley, north of Égerszög, about 7 m above the valley floor and about 52 m away. The natural entrance is situated at the foot of a small rock wall. The cave formed in Triassic Wetterstein limestone, but in some parts dolomite is the host rock. Generally, during the autumn rains and spring snow melts a spring emerges from it, and water also flows in the streambed inside the cave at those times. Its maximum water discharge is 5 m³/s. In some places there are permanent small lakes, in the Chamber of the Siphon, in the place called Sauna, and in the place called Bathroom. By water dye tracing it was shown that the waters of the Unnamed sinkhole at the foot of Mount Pitics and the Gyökérkúti sinkhole feed into it. Dénes Balázs named the Danca Cave and the unknown part between the water sinks the Pitics Cave System. Currently the endpoint is near the Gyökérkúti water sink, so the main passage of the presumed Pitics Cave System has been identified along its entire length. The section called Fairy Branch reaches almost to the water sink.

The cave structure is simple. It consists of a winding Main branch, a side branch 170 m long, and several smaller upper passages and side passages. The stream‑filled main branch, which periodically carries water, is poor in formations and is divided by stalactite columns and stalagmites, with a keyhole‑shaped and Christmas‑tree‑shaped shaft. It has two parts, the so‑called old part, which was known until 1981, and the so‑called new part, which was entered in 1981, and later further significant discoveries were made there. The old part is relatively spacious and easily walkable. The new part is relatively narrow and leads through a dangerous, collapsing section and a very narrow debris labyrinth. The old part of the cave can be entered freely, only the most dangerous part, the section called Szilvamag, has been blocked. From Szilvamag, one can reach a permanently closed siphon by crawling on all fours, often sliding, during an average cave walk.

During the discovery, it was already possible to proceed further into the cave by pumping out the water from the siphon. The removed water from the siphon, however, is dangerous because behind it there is a water‑holding blockage that retains much water and, when it breaks, the siphon refills. The stalactite ceiling in the siphon descends about 2.4 m below the static water level. To make it passable, the water level must be lowered by about 2.8 m. This can be achieved by pumping out roughly 30 m³ of water. Afterwards, a thin, about 1.3 m deep, dilute sludge at the bottom of the siphon makes crossing difficult. Beyond the siphon there are passages with keyhole and tunnel sections, but compared with the cave’s passages, the keyhole and Christmas‑tree sections are characteristic of that part. A dripstone collapse blocks the onward path in the terminal collapse zone, where further exploration is hazardous.

Only at the end of the main branch and in the side branch are there brownish and white dripstones, stalactites, such as radish dripstones, heliktites and straw dripstones, as well as small dripstone columns planted on a clay floor and grown on dripstone crust, also called clay stalagmites. Many dripstones have developed there, but the main speleological value is the wealth of forms created by the cave stream. In some places meander stalactites have formed. The largest chamber is the Great Hall, which is 17 metres long, 10 metres high and 6 metres wide. Its horizontal extent north–south is 570 metres. Visiting it requires permission from the Aggtelek National Park Directorate and only about 400 metres of length, up to a siphon that blocks further progress, may be traversed.

It is the seventh longest cave of the Aggtelek Karst, after Baradla Cave, Béke Cave, Szabadság Cave, Vass Imre Cave, Meteor Cave and Kossuth Cave.

The cave occurs in the literature under the names Danca Cave (Takácsné, Eszterhás, Juhász, Kraus 1989), Danca-hole (Bertalan, Schőnviszky 1973–1974), Dancalyuk (Jaskó 1933), Dancza-cave (Balázs 1967), Dancza-hole (Jakucs 1961), Gancza-hole (Jakucs 1953), Ganza-hole (Szunyogh 2003), Ganzalyuk (Jakucs 1953), Pitics-cave (Balázs 1960), Piticsi-cave (Balázs 1960) and Piticsi-cave system (Kordos 1984). In 1914 it was first called Danca Cave in the literature, in Ottó Kadić’s study. There was a speleologist named János Dancza, but the Danca Cave was not named after him, although the name Dancza Cave also appears in literature about the cave.

Research History

Balázs Dénes’s 1960 study records that, according to a legend, villagers fleeing the Turks tried to hide in the cave, but the enemy set fire at the entrance and the villagers suffocated from the smoke. According to Balázs Dénes’s 1957 manuscript, the first report was given by Gábor Strömpl, who explored the area in 1911. However, the study published in 1912 about the results of his research does not mention Danca Cave.

In 1913 Kadić Ottó surveyed the cave and carried out trial excavations in it at the suggestion of landowner Pongrácz Jenő. He found recent human and animal bones, pottery fragments and bronze objects in the cave. The cave survey data he recorded were lost. In 1933 Jaskó Sándor examined the cavity system, which he estimated to be 85 metres long. In the spring of 1956 the Kinizsi Cave Research Group began to explore it and that year demonstrated with water dye that the waters of the Anonymous sinkhole appear in it, but the hydrological investigation with salination and an electrical resistance meter did not reveal a connection with the Gyökérkút sinkhole.