Öreg-kői No. 2. Pothole

The Öreg-kői No. 2 pothole is a cave located in the Gerecse Landscape Protection Area of the Danube–Ipoly National Park, in the outskirts of Bajót. It was one of Hungary's specially protected caves.

Description

In the Gerecse Mountains, on the steep, rock‑wall‑segmented K side of Öreg-kő in the outskirts of Bajót, in a forest at 286.1 m above sea level, the cave has a natural, irregularly shaped entrance facing east, 2.5 m wide, 2 m high and oriented along the horizontal axis. The entrance of the Öreg-kői No. 2 pothole is 7 m from, and slightly lower than, the entrance of the Bajóti Ördög‑lyuk. From the centre of Bajót, the entrance of the Öreg-kői No. 2 pothole is situated beside the tourist trail marked with a blue cave sign that leads to the Jankovich cave. Walking along this path, after the Öreg‑kő spring, and leaving the Bajóti Lepkés‑cave located at the beginning of the rock walls on the right side of the trail, one must ascend the bushy and steep hillside to reach the entrance opening at the foot of the rock wall of the Öreg‑kői No. 2 pothole.

Avar, plant debris is accumulated on the clay floor in the parts near the cave entrance. The cave walls here are very algal, mossy, and there are many inscriptions on the right side. The entrance corridor that rises inward, which is higher relative to the entrance, is 10 m forward, 1.2–2.5 m wide, 1.5–3.5 m high, but much narrower further in. (In the entrance corridor there is no longer sufficient natural light, so a lamp must be used here.) In the dusty passage decorated with beautiful free-standing spherical columns, decaying stalactite poisonings, small stalactite beads and stalactite slabs can be observed. Painted inscriptions are also found here, but there are also torn small pendant stalactites. At the steeper part, on the left side (upon closer inspection) small tetrapod pools and small wolf‑tooth flags are visible (these are still intact). From here the internal height lowers, then follows a crossing, above which there is a window. After a quadruped‑traversable lower part and a crossable upper part, at the 10th and 12th meters of the corridor two (vertical) small pits (i.e., a double pit) begin, which after 2.5 m merge and lead to the lower part of the cave lying 9 m deep.

Above the double shaft there is a trumpet closed with cemented rock rubble, while above the shafts, after passing through, a few‑meter‑long small passage leads to the end point of the upper part, where the walls are already wet. Spiders, insects, fox excrement, dying dripstones and montmilch can be observed here. It is worth sliding down the collapse on the side of the double shaft entrance, where drying cracks are visible. A few meters lower the two branches merge, tied to a wall‑embedded iron hook with an old rope, which was probably used by occasional cave visitors for gripping. To the right a narrow little crawl starts, whose end is blocked; in the past narrow passages were also known there, according to the oral report of Márton Juhász. Further down again there is a right‑hand branch, here the walls are already wet, the clay floor is covered with rock rubble and debris. From here a few more meters can be descended, then the broken end of the cave follows. Pea‑size stones are visible on the walls, but there are also painted inscriptions, and the floor is covered with rock rubble and wood debris. The shaft can be traversed by simple rock climbing.

The cave was formed along the E–E–N–D–N oriented fault lines in the upper Triassic thick-bedded limestone (Dachstein Limestone Formation). Based on its form, it can be determined that it was created by the expansion of a thermal karst cavity below the karst water level (due to dissolution below the karst water level). In the upper part, beautiful spherical and spherical-chamber dissolution forms are visible, whereas the lower part is distinctly fissure-like. The upper part’s walls are adorned with small but varied speleothem formations, and the lower part is decorated (in small patches) with pea‑stone protrusions. The lower terminal part is generally moist. Air movement is generally not detectable in the cave. In summer and autumn the carbon‑dioxide content of its air can reach 4–5 % by volume. In the cave that can be visited without permission, only an electric lamp may be used for illumination.

Foxes often visit the cave. Small-footed bats and common bats have been observed in the cave. Based on detection data and occasionally found fresh droppings, the cave can be considered a permanent winter and occasional summer bat roost with a small number of species and individuals.

In 1982 the cave was first mentioned in the literature as Öreg‑kői 2. sz. zsombolynak. The cave also appears in the literature as II. sz. aknabarlang (Leél‑Őssy 1954), II. sz. zsomboly (Leél‑Őssy 1954), Bajóti 2. sz. zsomboly (Polacsek, Ba 2018), Bajóti Öreg‑kői‑zsomboly II. (Bertalan, Schőnviszky 1976), Öreg‑kői 2 sz. zsomboly (Székely 1994), Öregkői 2. sz. zsomboly (Kordos 1980), Öregkői II. sz. zsomboly (Jakucs, Kessler 1962), Öregkői 2. zsomboly (Bertalan 1976) and Öregkői II. zsomboly (Vigh 1937). In the 2003 book *Magyarország fokozottan védett barlangjai* it is mentioned that one name variation of Öreg‑kői 1. sz. zsomboly is Öreg‑kői 2. sz. zsomboly.

1913–1954

The 1913 *Barlangkutatás* mentions that besides the Öreg‑kői 1. sz. zsomboly there is another pit on Öreg‑kő. It is located at the foot of the Öreg‑kő É‑slope, near the valley floor. It is smaller than the Öreg‑kői 1. sz. zsomboly, its floor is reachable, but it does not branch. It is silted, like other similar water‑draining pits. According to a study published in the 1931 volume of *Turisták Lapja*, the Bajóti clerk requested the Hungarian Geological Society’s Cave Research Section to explore the two pits that open on the D‑slope of the Öreg‑kő ridge. Imre Gábor Bekey then, together with Károly Jordán and Pál Scholtz Kornél, visited this known site, but they did not reach the bottom of the pits because Károly Jordán said that, in his opinion, the two pits were filled with carbonic acid. Their lamp indeed went out. However, the pits could not have been filled with poisonous gases and the lamp was probably extinguished by a draft, because shortly after them two brave young men, without rope equipment, descended to the bottom of the two pits, where they found many guano.