Hárs-hegyi Szent Miklós Cave

The Hárs-hegy Saint Nicholas Cave is one of the caves located in the Danube–Ipoly National Park, in the Buda Hills, in Budapest District II, on Nagy-Hárs-hegy.

Description

It opens at the foot of a 3 m high limestone overhang on a steep mountainside, 380 m D–DK from the summit of Nagy-Hárs-hegy. It is located about 250 m K–ÉK in the direction of the quarry on the Ny–DNy side of the hill. The cave is not far from the trail that runs past the quarry.

Its entrance is stone‑door‑like, 2 m high and 1.3 m wide. It formed in Oligocene sandstone, with only the entrance part created in upper Triassic Dachstein limestone. Its passages are spacious and lie along a crack oriented ÉNy–DK. Further passages would probably become known through exploratory work.

In 1992 the cave was first called Hárs-hegyi Saint Nicholas Cave in the literature. It was named after the day of its discovery in 1992, based on Saint Nicholas Day.

Research history

In the book published in 1973, *The Mysterious Bátori Cave*, a nameless cave on the side of Nagy-Hárs-hegy is described, which is probably the Hárs-hegyi Saint Nicholas Cave. At the top of the cave entrance a 30 cm long, slightly rounded, triangular drill‑and‑chisel iron imprint was found by György Vajna and László Zolnay. The cave does not appear in the national cave list of the book *Caves of Hungary* published in 1984.

Members of the Acheron Cave Research Department discovered the cave on December 6, 1992. According to the descriptions in the manuscript, the cave is located 380 m from the summit of Hárs-hegy in the direction D–DK and no one had written about the cave before them. According to them the cave had been known earlier because unknown origin collapse marks were found in it. In 1992 Dianovszki T., Hűvös A., Kocsis A. and Kárpát József surveyed the cave, and using the survey the floor plan map and the length‑section map of the cave were produced. The maps depict the cave at a scale of 1:100. The map sheet indicates the east direction. According to the survey the cave is 18 m long and 12 m deep.

The department’s 1992 report contains two colour photographs that illustrate the cave. The report published in 1992 in *Karszt* and *Barlang* states that during field work the members of the department discovered the 18 m long and 12 m deep cave. On October 12 2004, Egri Csaba compiled the photographic documentation of the cave. From 2007 to 2009 the Anubisz Cave Research Group and the Adrenalin Cave Research Association carried out excavation work in the Hárs-hegyi Szent Miklós Cave and cleared the cavity.