No 8 Cave of Róka-hegyi quarry

The No. 8 cave of the Róka-hegy quarry is a cave located in the Budai Landscape Protection Zone of the Danube–Ipoly National Park, in District III of Budapest.

Description

The cave is situated on the top of one of the non‑operational (Ibolya Street) quarries of Róka-hegy, the southeasternmost hill of the Pilis Mountains, within a nature‑protected area. The cave lies about 5 m from the collapse of the conglomerate quarry. The cave has two entrances, the lower one being about 3 m below the upper entrance.

A very narrow ridge connects the two entrances. From the lower entrance a narrow fissure leads into the interior of the cave, but it becomes impassably narrow after a few metres. The cave can be traversed without equipment, but rope protection is recommended to reach the upper entrance. The cavity formed in Eocene limestone under phreatic conditions. The cave is suitable for further exploration, because additional sections would likely be revealed by widening the narrow fissure. Calcite occurs in places on the walls. The cave contains a lot of rock debris.

The cave appears in literature under the names Conglomerate quarry‑cave (Sásdi 1997) and Róka‑hegy conglomerate quarry cave.

Research history

The cave was discovered as a result of stone mining. The Budapest Lexicon, which saw the light of day in 1973, mentions that from the depressions of quarries operating or abandoned on the top and sides of Róka‑hegy two small (water‑origin) pits and several small artificial cavities open. The cave’s name does not appear in the national cave list of the book *Caves of Hungary* published in 1984. The cave was surveyed on 22 March 1997 by László Sásdi and Rita Babay, after which László Sásdi prepared the plan map and longitudinal section map of the Conglomerate quarry‑cave (Róka‑hegy, Ibolya Street quarry) based on the survey. Both maps present the cave at a scale of 1 : 100. The plan map shows the location of the longitudinal section within the cave.