Vass Imre Cave

The Vass Imre Cave is the fourth longest and one of the most extensively studied caves of the Aggtelek Karst. Together with the other caves of the Aggtelek Karst and the Slovak Karst, the cave is part of the World Heritage. It is one of Hungary's specially protected caves. A part of it is equipped and can be visited with a guide rope.

Description

The entrance of the cave, formed in Triassic limestone and dolomite, opens about 3 km from the centre of Jósvafő towards ÉNy, at the end of the Tohonya valley, at an altitude of 273 m above sea level.

The cave is 2 185 m long, with a vertical extent of 56.6 m. A section of the main branch, about 600 m long, of which nearly 300 m is equipped with electric lighting and can be visited with a guide rope. The parts not opened to mass tourism may be visited with the permission of the Aggtelek National Park Directorate, equipped with basic caving gear and climbing knowledge. There is no permanent water flow in the cave.

The cave received the name of Vass Imre. Vass Imre was the first to describe the Baradla Cave in Hungarian from a scientific point of view. (He also prepared a very realistic map of the Baradla Cave.) In his literature the Vass Imre Cave also appears under the name Vass Imre Cave (Kordos 1977).

Morphology

The original fissure character of the cave is clearly visible on the east–west sections of the main branch, with heights of up to 10 m and widths of 4–5 m in places. The cave is largely horizontal, its floor consists of clay sediment, and it has no permanent water flow. During floods, water appears at the current end point, disappears in the cave water sink called the Black Siphon, and then rises from various places to fill the main branch. Characteristic of the cave are the various coloured dripstone flows, such as the Orange Waterfall, but, compared with the other caves of the Aggtelek Karst, we find a significant amount of white or translucent dripstones and flows, whose white colour is due to the infiltrating water that creates the formations being almost completely free of impurities.

The cave's special features are the unusually numerous helicites, which are curved dripstones growing not vertically but in various other directions, possibly in bends. There is still no proven and accepted explanation for their formation, although it is very likely that they originate from the lime present in the cave's air. In Baradla Cave, for example, helicites are scarcely found.

Tour in the cave

The cave can be visited in groups of up to 10 people after prior registration, which requires no special equipment, although it may happen that we touch the walls in a narrower section, or if a flood has recently receded the floor may be muddy, so it is advisable to choose shoes and clothing accordingly. Only one group may be in the cave at a time. Guided tours start from the ticket office (Tengerszem Inn) at the Jósvafő entrance of Baradla Cave, from which the cave entrance is reachable by a three‑kilometre walk. The travel time there and back is one to one hour, and the tour lasts an additional hour in the cave.

The original entrance begins with a 7 meter deep vertical shaft, but later researchers opened an artificial entrance for faster and more comfortable movement, which bypasses the narrow and unstable part of the explorer's branch. After the short artificial section we reach the Lenke chamber, then directly into the main branch beside the lace‑rimmed dripstone Rococo Gate. Walking along the passage we can see the Eskimo hut, the Eresz, and then the almost completely white Ghost formations. The passage gradually turns north, and after covering about 100 meters it sharply turns west. After the turn is one of the cave’s most beautiful formations, the Orange Waterfall. On the surface of the bright orange dripstone flow we can also see sparkling calcite crystals.

Further on, on the passage heading west, we can admire the variously named formations called Snow Blanket, Medusa and Baldacchino, then follows the Cidri passage, whose name may derive from the fact that it slopes inward, so during wet periods researchers moving forward in the continuously deepening water become increasingly wet inside it. The relatively straight passage changes direction again in the part called Jungle, which got its name from the difficult-to‑climb upper passages above the walkable level. Here we can typically see corrosion rock formations.

Leaving the Jungle, another straight, fissure‑like section follows, then we reach the end of the easily walkable, electrically illuminated part of the cave, the Museum Canvas. Guided tours here turn back about 300 meters from the entrance. An interesting fact is that the cave lighting is bidirectional, so different light sources illuminate the extremely spectacular formations on the way in and on the way out.

From the Cidri stream, at two levels, the Desert and the Diamond Lake branch, one can reach the narrow Lagoon siphon that descends below the floor of the cave. In rainy weather this is filled with water, and then the further parts of the cave cannot be approached. Crossing the siphon leads to the narrow and high Grand Canyon, after which the cave is divided into three levels, the Black branch, the Egyptian branch and the Eldorado branch.

The passages converge again in the chamber called the Dome, from where, after leaving further formations and climbing roughly five metres upward, proceeding along the Cyclops path leads into the cave's largest chamber, the Hall of the Cyclops. The huge hall, about 600 metres from the entrance, was already split by a fissure after the cave's formation, and the continuing path is blocked by debris. According to geophysical measurements, after the endpoint there is a debris zone of about 100 metres, which so far has not proved passable. However, investigations indicate that the main branch may continue for several kilometres towards Slovakia.