Klotild Cave

Klotild Cave is one of the caves located in the Pilis Mountains in the Danube–Ipoly National Park. It is among the caves specially protected in Hungary. Guanidine was mined there because of its guanidine phosphate content. The cave is also described in tourist guidebooks.

Description

The cave is located in the administrative area of Pilisvörösvár, most easily accessible from the red cross sign on the Klotild Trail. Old printed tourist maps also mark it, but in the wrong place, because in reality it opens in a valley one kilometer to the south. It is on the northern edge of Cseresznyés Hill, on the steep side of a gorge‑like cut valley, about 50 meters relative height above its entrance.

Formed by dissolution below the water table in Triassic Dachstein limestone. According to Sándor Láng it may be an inactive spring cave. Its forms include stalagmites, dissolved wall surfaces and spherical chambers. The high‑lying cave is in a strongly deteriorating stage and bats also occur in its passages. It is freely visitable and basic caving equipment is required for entry.

Name

The local population called the cave Ördöglyuk.

Imre Gábor Bekey named it Klotild Cave in 1914. This name was taken from the nearby Klotild Trail. (Klotild Trail got its name from Princess Klotild of Szász‑Coburg‑Koháry, wife of Archduke Joseph Karl of Habsburg‑Lotharingia.) The cave appears in literature

Klotildbarlang,

Klotild Cave (Kadić 1920),

Klotild dripstone cave (Mezei, Páli 1955),

Klotild‑Devil Cave,

Devil Cave,

Devil Cave

and also under the names Ördöglyuk.

Research History

From the 1914 Cave Research it is known that Imre Gábor Bekey, using projected images at the specialist session of the Cave Research Department held on 12 January 1914 and based on his own investigations, presented Klotild Cave. The cave is located at the forest cart track between the railway stop of the Klotild holiday settlement near Piliscsaba and Pilisszántó, at the midpoint of the track. The low entrance facing east leads rather steeply down into a Z‑shaped cavity, whose rear part ends in a spacious chamber. Much debris fallen from the ceiling covers the floor of the cave. This would greatly hinder any possible excavation. In some places the accumulated bat guano has already been completely mined out. The minutes of the specialist session were prepared by Ottó Kadić.

In the 1915 Bar Exploration, in the study titled *A piliscsabai Klotild-barlang* written by Imre Gábor Bekey, it is stated that near one of the main tourist routes of the Pilis hills, but not visited by hikers, there is a spacious cave that is interesting in several respects. The cave is located at the railway stop of the Klotild holiday resort near Piliscsaba and beside the forest cart track between Pilisszántó, at the midpoint of the track. Through the foothold of the southern slope of Homok Hill one must descend again into the valley, where a concealed hill marked on the map as 352 m high, deviating left from the road direction, can be seen; on its slope the bushes grow sparsely and white limestone rocks protrude here and there. Soon between the cart track and the hill there is a gradually deepening ditch, whose high, grass‑overgrown edge toward the hill shows traces of a long‑unused cart road.

Following this, on the right side, toward the K direction, one can reach the deep valley of the Kő‑árok, where from the meeting point of the previously followed road and the cart track descending from the high slope toward Pilisszántó, on the D‑slope of the concealed rocky hill, 50 m above the valley, hidden among bushes, a narrow horizontal opening can be seen, which was recently widened by a clever entrepreneur so that the former abundant bat guano found there could be more easily removed. The cave lies on the estate of Count Karátsonyi. The estate’s lime‑kilns smoke in the valley below, a few hundred steps away. Its location is known to the local population only because of the workers mining guano there, and it has been given the widely spread name Devil’s Hole.

In the Pilis Mountains, on a relatively small area, three caves known to the people as Devil's Holes (the other two being the Solymári Devil's Hole and the Szopláki Devil's Hole) are known. The people call Devil's Holes the most varied types of caves. Because this greatly hinders orientation, Imre Gábor Bekey named the currently detailed cave Klotild Cave due to its proximity to the Klotild settlement. The entrance of the cave facing east is 2 m wide and 1.4 m high. By crouching one can pass through the entrance, after which a 4 m wide and 4 m long antechamber is found. Its floor slopes steeply inward. In a straight line, through a round opening at the base of the opposite vaulted, sloping-down wall, one can crawl on all fours into a hall that turns right at a right angle and then left again. Thus the cave is Z‑shaped in its overall extent.

At the crossing, the humus‑mixed guano floor is horizontal for a few steps, then in the interior continuation of the cave it suddenly becomes steep toward the right side. In this place one must proceed carefully because the floor is muddy, slippery, and soaked with water droplets constantly falling from the ceiling. The continuation, a chamber‑like widening that opens to the left, has its floor covered with a large amount of debris that has fallen from the ceiling, which greatly hinders walking. The chamber is 5 m high, 5 m wide and about 12 m long. On the right side of the central, deepest part of the chamber a small pool forms, but its depth is not yet significant. In the rear and left parts of the chamber a 1 m thick guano layer has been completely mined out, and its traces are still clearly visible. Here, which is the driest part of the cave, the chamber narrows and ends in a slanting upward‑directed niche and a channel.