Kápolna Cave

Kápolna Cave is one of the caves located in the Pilis Mountains in the Danube–Ipoly National Park, in the area of Budakalász, which also appears in tourist guidebooks.

Description

On the east side of Nagy-Kevély, 230 m from the summit to the ENE, 200 m from the Devil's Staircase, and 50 m from the tourist trail marked with a red square towards the summit, the cave’s vertical entrance, oriented along the vertical axis, measures 2 × 1.8 m and is situated on the top of a large rock overhang. It opens about 100 m north of the Devil’s Staircase rock cavity and higher.

It formed under phreatic conditions in white, thick-bedded upper Triassic Dachstein limestone. Its broken entrance leads into a large chamber, the Chapel. From the Chapel, one can reach the March 15 chamber via a sloping passage and the Lapítón, and from that chamber into the rest of the cave. In several places dripstones can be observed in its passages. The unfinished cave’s horizontal extent is 26.5 m. The cave can be visited with basic caving equipment and without a permit.

In 1964 the cave was first called Kápolna Cave in the literature. The cave also appears in the literature under the name Kápolna barlang (Bertalan 1976).

Research History

In 1963 the Cave Research Group of the Department of Mineralogy and Geology of the University of Construction and Transportation Engineering dismantled the cave without success and therefore did not apply for a research permit for the cave for the following year. In 1965 the Cave Research Group of the József Szabó Geological Technical School had the research area and that year its members explored the cave. In the 1966 Karst and Cave Research Bulletin, the group report mentions that in the autumn of 1966, among the caves in the area, the only cave in which the group had not yet conducted research was Kápolna Cave, where the group members carried out trial drilling. The exploratory shaft dug in the debris is still rudimentary, but its continuation looks promising. The dismantling work uncovered many recent bone fragments, e.g., a ringed bat bone skeleton.

In 1967 the two members of the group, Péter Pék and László Kordos, surveyed the cave with lost points along a polygon, using a Freiberg hanging compass and a clinometer, and based on the survey László Kordos edited and drew the cave floor plan map, cross‑section map and longitudinal section map. According to the survey the cave length is 13 m and its depth 6 m. According to the 1967 report of the Szabó József Geological Technical School Cave Research Group, the group surveyed the Kápolna Cave in 1967 along a polygon with a hanging compass and clinometer, which is a karst object located at one of the group’s workplaces. In that year the group members dug a shaft in it, whose bottom reached the chert and therefore the exploration work stalled. They planned to deepen holes by hand drilling, based on which they could decide where the new shaft should be placed. In this cave as well, as in the other caves of the Kevély group, the very large amount of debris and clay meant that only large‑scale methods could be used for exploration work.

In the spring of 1968 the group members probably found forest owl droppings in it, which were fresh and from which László Kordos identified a meadow viper, a goat’s‑beetle, a beetle, a forest beetle, a large beetle, a black beetle, a mole and a wood mouse. In 1968 the members also dug a trench. In 1969 T. Sánta and Jenő Forgács collected insects, which were not identified.

On 11 April 1970 and 10 May 1970 two members of the Speleology Barankutato Group, László Nagy and Jenő Forgács, performed climatological measurements with an Assmann aspiration psychrometer. In the summer of 1970 they saw the owl when the owl flew out of the cave. The owl was probably the same as the one living in Kevély-nyergi-zsomboly and the Kápolna-cave could only have been its temporary resting place. The group's 1970 report describes this in detail. According to the report a few modern pottery shards came to light from it. László Kordos made a colour slide of the cave and to the right from the entrance some rock blocks are at risk of falling from the ceiling.

In the book 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 among the caves of the Pilis Mountains and the Visegrád Mountains there is the Kápolna-cave. According to the section describing the caves of the Pilis Mountains, the Kápolna-cave is located 200 m from the Ördög-lépcső, 230 m east‑north‑east from the peak Nagy‑Kevély, 50 m from the tourist trail marked with a red square towards the summit, and 50 m above the forest border. It is a 13 m long, collapsing and probably karstic cave. Maps of the cave made in 1967 appeared in the second half‑year 1975 MKBT Report.

In the manuscript titled Hungary's Cave Registry, completed in 1976, it is stated that the Kápolna Cave is located in the Pilis Mountains, in the Kevély group, in Budakalász. Its entrance is on the east side of Nagy-Kevély, 230 m from the summit to the east‑north, and 50 m from the tourist path. It is a 13 m long and 6 m deep cave passage formed by solutional processes. The part of the manuscript concerning the cave was written based on two literary works. In the 1981 issue 1–2 of Karst and Cave, it was made public that the cave registry number of Kápolna Cave is 4820/10.