Gyurkó-lápa Cave

Gyurkó-lápa Cave is one of the highly protected caves of Hungary. It is located in the Bükki National Park. It is one of the two highly protected caves of Varbó, the other being Szamentu Cave.

Description

It opens in the steep mountainside, at the foot of a rock wall, about one kilometre north of the Friendship Garden on the northern edge of the Bükk high plateau’s Little High Plateau. Its entrance is divided by a root the thickness of an arm. It formed in Upper Triassic limestone.

It consists of a chamber elongated in a northwest–southeast direction, from which a large, 10‑metre‑high dome with a wide cross‑section rises above the entrance level. It was probably a water‑draining cave that is no longer hydrologically active, but this is difficult to determine at present because the ceiling has almost completely collapsed and the original morphological features are barely recognizable. The fact that it was once an active water‑draining cave is supported by its slope, depth, and its position on the edge of the high plateau. Non‑karstic rock debris has filled the droplet‑stone rubble that forms its ceiling.

It is rich in various speleothems. It contains stalactite clusters, stalagmite formations, hair‑thin roots hanging from the surface, saw‑tooth speleothem flags, wavy‑edge speleothem flags and heliktites. Large areas are covered by snow‑white speleothem crust. Special, very slender pea‑stone formations two to three centimetres long have also formed on the wall beneath the dome. The walking level consists of large fallen stone blocks, and on the blocks yellow‑brown and white speleothem flows and stalagmites have developed. The latter reach up to one and a half metres. The hanging speleothems are underdeveloped compared with other hanging speleothems found in Hungarian caves.

The base plant of its root formations is the mountain maple. Based on earlier descriptions and photographs it can be determined that formerly there were nest-like, low root stalagmites and hair‑root dense root networks on the surface of the cave’s calcite stalagmite formations. It is inhabited by bats throughout the year, as evidenced by the separately located guano spots. Observed in its system are the western barbastelle, the common bat, the pointed‑nose bat, the small leaf‑nosed bat, the large leaf‑nosed bat and the round‑nosed leaf‑nosed bat. Because of the significant amount of bat droppings its insect fauna is rich, although this has not yet been studied in detail.

Visiting the sections of the cave that are not opened to tourism can be done with permission from the Bükki National Park Directorate. It cannot be viewed in winter in order to ensure the tranquility of the bats sleeping their winter hibernation. The cave can be traversed with basic caving equipment, because only the designated route may be used in order to protect its formations.

It was named after a side valley of the Harica valley, whose name is Gyurkó‑lápa, the other name being Örvény‑lápa. In 1984 the cave was first called Gyurkó‑lápai‑cave in the literature. In the literature it also occurs as Gyurkólápai I‑cave (Lénárt 1977), Gyurkó‑lápai 1. sz. cave (Kordos 1984), Gyurkólápai‑cave (Láner 1959), Polish‑cave (Lénárt 1975), Sövénykúti‑cave (Lénárt 1979), Sövény‑kúti‑cave (Ferenczy 2003) and Sövény‑lápai‑cave (Kordos 1984). The use of the name Polish‑cave can be misleading because there is also a Polish‑cave in Gerecse.

Research history

On July 27, 1958, with a brief excavation, Balogh Tamás, a researcher of the Zsomboly Exploration Section of the Nagymiskolc Group of the Hungarian Hydrological Society, uncovered the Gyurkó‑lápai void. At the time of the Gyurkó‑lápai cave exploration it was navigable for 30 metres in length and 10 metres in depth and a nest‑like formation of stalactite threads was also found. Lénárt László called this a stalactite basket in 1979, something of which no similar example was then known in the country. It was suspected that there are further passages to be explored, but research was halted due to lack of a blasting permit. In 1975 the MEAFC Marcel Loubens Cave Research Sub‑group produced photographic documentation of it for the forthcoming national cave catalogue.

In the manuscript titled *Hungary's Cave Registry* completed in 1976 it reads that the Gyurkó-lápa Cave is located in the Bükk Mountains, in Varbó. On the Kis-fennsík, from the Harica loading point to the EK, at about 600 m above sea level, is its sloping and narrow entrance. The cave is 30 m long and possibly 10 m deep. It consists of a single circular chamber from which blind tubes originate. The part of the manuscript concerning the cave was written based on one publication. In 1976 the group carried out geodetic measurements in it for the preparation of its map. The floor plan map was completed in 1977, which was surveyed in the cave by Zsuzsanna Majoros, Erika Danyluk and Mária Hajdu in 1976 and edited by Zsuzsanna Majoros. The map appeared in print in the 1977 MKBT Report.

In the book published in 1979 and written by László Lénárt the cave is described under the name Polish Cave and a small cavity is mentioned under the name Sövénykúti Cave. The very beautiful dripstone Polish Cave is located not far from the Friendship Garden tourist house and consists of a large chamber. The cave ceiling in some places is only soil cemented with dripstone, which roots try to break through. A great many dripstone‑covered root coatings can be observed in the cave. A very beautiful formation called a dripstone basket is visible in it. Most of the dripstones are still intact. In the vicinity of the Polish Cave the small cavities of the Gyurkó‑lápai Caves open, some of which appear in the literature as Sövénykúti Cave and Harica‑side Cave. The publication contains three photographs on which several cave formations can be seen. The first photograph shows a hanging dripstone group, the second a dripstone flow, the third a root‑filament dripstone. On the map attached to the book, which shows the Bükk Mountains area richest in caves, the geographical location of the Polish Cave marked with number 98 can be seen.