Szentgál Rockhole

The Szentgál Rockhole is one of the highly protected caves of Hungary. It is located in Szentgál in the Bakony Mountains. It is the second longest cave formed in dolomite in Hungary. The cavity also appears in tourist guidebooks.

Description

In the Balaton Uplands National Park, on the eastern slope of the Mecsek Mountains, above the Alszegi meadow, at an altitude of 370 m above sea level, 50 m above the valley floor, it opens. About a 1 km walk from the centre of Szentgál along the tourist trail marked with a red stripe towards the DK, the path marked with a red cave sign leads to the entrance. This tourist path is a little over 100 m, very steep and leads to the entrance.

The length of the cave passages is 420 m and the depth is 39 m. Its entrance faces DNy, is 4.2 m wide, 2.5 m high, closed by a iron door equipped with a bat flap, and a partially collapsed rock wall. Near the horizontally deposited upper Triassic main dolomite thick‑bedded rock, structural lines and faults formed generally narrow fissure‑like and high passages. Small chambers created by collapse formed only where fault lines intersect. They probably originated due to mixing corrosion.

Among the cave formations should be mentioned the helictites of the Great Hall, the few preserved sheet‑like calcite crusts, the few stalactites up to 0.5 m high and sometimes as thick as a finger, which are rare in dolomite caves, the flowstones and draperies, whose formation is still ongoing today, as well as the pea‑stones visible in some places on the walls.

Its temperature is average, about 10 °C. It is an important winter shelter for bats. Eight bat species have been observed there, of which two are strictly protected species. Its greatest zoological significance is that the large-footed bat also occurs here occasionally. In the upper parts, sometimes shrews live. The cave is locked and a permit from the Balaton Uplands National Park Directorate is required for its visitation. During the bats' winter hibernation period it cannot be visited. The cave can be walked with basic equipment.

Hungary's second longest cave formed in dolomite. Hungary's longest cave formed in dolomite is the Kessler Hubert Cave.

The cave appears in literature under the names Kő‑lik (Bertalan, Schőnviszky 1973–1974), Kőlik (Dornyay 1927), Kőlik‑cave (Gazdag 1990), Kő‑lik‑cave (Futó 1992), Kő‑lik cave (Ilon 1993), Kő‑lyuk‑cave (Futó 2003), Mecsekhegyi Kőlik (Bertalan 1938), Mecsek‑hegyi‑kőlik (Kordos 1984), Mecsekhegyi‑kőlik (Futó 2003), Mecsekhegyi‑kőluk (Kordos 1984), Mecsekhegyi rock cavity (Bertalan 1976) and Szentgáli Kőlik (Gyurkó 1993).

Research History

The first printed description of the cave, which saw daylight in 1927, was written by Béla Dornyay. The 1927 guidebook titled Bakony states that on the southern side of Mecsek Hill (451 m), accessible by climbing through dense forest, there is a small cave called Kőlik in the main dolomite rock wall of the hill. The entrance of the cave facing north is 2 m wide. The cave is 4 m long, 2–3 m wide. From the cave a steep downward passage called a funnel leads east, which is 80 cm wide and 50 cm high. In the 1932 book *The Aggtelek Stalactite Cave and Its Surroundings*, in the section about the caves of the Bakony Mountains, it is mentioned that Kőlik is located near Szentgál, in the dolomite of Mecsek Hill. The description was written based on one literary work. In the 1937 book by Gyula Szeghalmy it is written that near Szentgál, above a canyon‑shaped deep valley, rises Mecsek Hill, whose dolomite rock wall hides the cave named Kőlik. From its findings it is inferred that the cave dweller's ancestor was one of its farms.

In the 1942 volume of Országjárás it was mentioned that at the end of Szentgál, in the dolomite rock wall of Mecsek Hill, there is the cave. In 1951 it was placed under archaeological protection. The Bakony guidebook published in 1955 describes the cave in detail. In the manuscript titled *Hungary's Cave Register* completed in 1976 and written by Bertalan Károly it reads that the cave in the Bakony D region, the Szentgál Mecsek Hill Kőlik, is also called Mecsek Hill rock chamber. It is located 2.5 km southeast of Szentgál, 1100 m east‑north of the summit of Mecsek Hill, at about 400 m above sea level. The crawling passage originating from the collapsing stone chamber was formed in primary dolomite. The cave is 12 m long, 1–4.5 m wide and 4 m deep. The part of the manuscript concerning the cave was written based on four literary works.

In the *Hungarian Speleology Bibliography* compiled by Bertalan Károly and László Schőnviszky and published in 1976, the cave named Kő‑lik in the dolomite of Mecsek Hill near Szentgál in the Bakony is mentioned. The cave name index lists five literary works that deal with the cave. In the national cave list of the book *Caves of Hungary* published in 1984, the cave appears under the name Mecsek‑hill‑kőlik with the name variants Mecsek Hill rock chamber and Mecsek Hill‑kőluk. Associated with the list is a 1 : 500 000 scale map showing the geographic location of the caves of Southern Bakony, the Balaton Highlands and the Keszthely Mountains, indicating the geographic location of the cave. According to the compilation *List of Bakony Caves* published in 1984, the Mecsek‑hill‑kőlik is located in Southern Bakony, in the 4430 cave‑cadastral region, at Szentgál. The karst cave is 12 m long and 3 m deep.

In 1985 the Heliktit Cave Research Group began the investigation of the seemingly insignificant cave. Thanks to the increasingly intensive exploratory research, the length of the passage soon multiplied several times and valuable archaeological finds, such as Iron Age pottery shards, Bronze Age urns and pottery fragments, Roman coins, as well as Árpád-era pottery remains, were uncovered. The filling also contained paleontological finds, for example a cave bear skull bone. Based on the urnfield culture from the 9th century BC, it is assumed that the site was used for burial rituals.