Sas-kő Small Cave

The Sas-kői-kisbarlang is one of the caves located in the Visegrád Mountains in the Danube–Ipoly National Park. It is in the area of Szentendre.

Description

The Sas-kői-kisbarlang is situated about 100 m north of the Sas-kövi cave, at the foot of the rock wall. Above the cave entrance, a map of Hungary on a red sheet of paper is affixed to the rock wall. The entrance is 2.3 m wide and 1.1 m high. 2 m above the entrance, a 50×30 cm spot of hematite layer can be seen on the wall.

The small cavity formed in the andesite tuff, very steeply sloping inward, is 2.3 m long. Vines live in the cavity.

Formation

There are two kinds of ideas about its formation:

Perhaps it was an outward‑sloping, mouth‑shaped cavity, and its current inward‑sloping state was caused by material that fell in front of the cavity and the debris and soil that fell into it.

It cannot be excluded that this cavity is also the upper part of an old storage‑ or research‑storage entrance (hematite layer on the wall).

Research history

In 1997, Imré Gönczöl and colleagues discovered it, described it, and mapped the cave. In the manuscript bibliography of Hungarian karst caves completed on 12 November 2001, titled *Bibliography of Hungarian Karst Caves*, the Sas-kői-kisbarlang appears in the cave name index. The cave name index mentions one literary work that deals with the cave. Item 366 does not mention it, item 365 does. In the study published in the 2014 *Karst Development*, it is stated that the Sas-kői-kisbarlang, located in Szentendre, is one of the 101 caves of the Visegrád Mountains, with a length of 2.3 m and a vertical extent of 2.5 m.