Vecsem árvízi Spring

The Vecsem flood spring mouth is a cave located in the Aggtelek National Park. Together with the other caves of the Aggtelek Karst and the Slovak Karst, the cave has been part of the World Heritage since 1995.

Description

From the centre of Bódvaszilas, 1.6 km to the east‑north, on the side of Alsó-hegy, above the Vecsem spring cave, 15 m north of the spring cave, at an altitude of about 193 m above sea level, in a specially protected area, the cave entrance is in a shrub‑filled rock cleft. The location of the Vecsem flood spring is marked on some tourist maps with the name of the spring. The cave entrance is of a broken type, triangular, 1 m wide, 1.3 m high and oriented vertically along the axis.

The cave is the inactive flood spring mouth of the Vecsem spring, but it may be periodically active. It has a branching spatial form. It formed in middle Triassic Wetterstein limestone. Holocene animal remains have been recovered from it. The cave can be visited without a permit with basic caving equipment.

The cave also occurs in its literature as Papkerti spring ancient eruption site (Kordos 1984), Vecsem-árvizi spring mouth (Nyerges 1996), Vecsem árvizi spring mouth (Vlk 2019), cave above Vecsem-árvizi spring mouth (Nyerges 1996), Vecsem-árvizi spring mouth (Nyerges 2002), Vecsem-spring árvizi spring mouth (Dénes 1960), Vecsemspring árvizi spring mouth (Bertalan 1976), Vecsem-spring árvizi eruption sites (Dénes 1959), Vecsem-spring flood spring mouth (Kordos 1984), Vecsem-spring cave (Kordos 1984) and Vecsem-spring-cave (Csernavölgyi, Hegedűs, Molnár 1977). The last two names are misleading because they are the names of the nearby Vecsem-spring cave. According to one part of the manuscript written by Károly Bertalan and completed in 1976, the ancient eruption site of the Papkerti spring in Bódvaszilas is identical to the Vecsem-spring árvizi eruption sites. This information is already drawn on voucher number 128. The name Vecsem-árvizi spring mouth (Nyerges 1996) is a variant of the name of Vecsem-spring cave.

Research history

In the summer of 1958 the Budapest Red Meteor Cave Research Group examined the Vecsem-spring flood eruption sites and began to explore them with blasting at two locations. At one flood spring mouth the demolition was promising. The flood spring was still active at the time of the work. Many debris were removed here and a few meters were managed to be penetrated behind the spring mouth. They planned to continue the exploration that year. The group continued the demolition of the flood spring in the summer of 1959. In April 1961 the Red Meteor Cave Research Department removed the rocks that had fallen during the last blasting from the flood spring mouth.

In the summer of 1964 the Red Meteor Cave Research Group had a research team at the Vecsem spring, where the researchers deepened the basin to the floodplain spring mouth. In 1969 the VMTE Toldi Cave Research Group removed the collapse of the floodplain mouth of the Vecsem spring. In his contribution related to peat genetics published in the 1970 issue of Karst and Cave, Dénes György writes that his attention to the fossil spring traces above the Vecsem spring was drawn by István Szenthe and, according to Dénes György, fossil spring traces are found on average at a height of 70 metres above the Tapolca spring and the Vecsem spring, evidence of the uplift of the Lower Hill.

On 18 March 1975 László Csernavölgyi delivered animal remains (land snail, frog, snake, Apodemus, red fox and badger) from the fossil spring opening located 6 m to the left above the Vecsem spring to the Museum of the Hungarian State Institute of Geology. The finds are probably Holocene. Its fauna is the same as the fauna of the Vecsem spring. The report issued in the 1975 MKBT Report and written by Dénes Jánossy mentions that in 1975 bone material was collected from the filling of the Vecsem spring, which László Csernavölgyi handed over to the Paleontological Subcommittee of the Hungarian Karst and Cave Research Society.

In 1976 the VMTE Central Cave Research Group had a research permit to study the Vecsem spring system. In the first half of 1976 they prepared for their summer camp on site. In the summer of 1976, during their summer camp, they excavated 8 m at a designated spot with great effort, and the group members advanced in the flood‑water cavity system in the hill‑side debris. At the end of the camp they probably reached the chert on one side, or a large, easily soluble rock fragment. The preparatory work carried out in the first half of the year was therefore successful. On site it was observed that in the flood‑water spring mouth stone quarry the material that had been excavated and accumulated in previous years blocked the outflow of autumn precipitation through the flood‑water mouth.

The spring water backed up a little and flooded the excavated passages. They could not remove the blockage during the summer camp, but planned to dismantle the debris dam in the spring of the following year. In the summer of 1976 the VMTE Tectonics Cave Research Group tried to dismantle the old flood‑water spring mouth, but without success. On card number 128 in the manuscript written by Károly Bertalan and completed in 1976 it reads that in Bódvaszilás, on the Lower Hill, are the Vecsem spring flood‑water eruption sites (Vecsem spring flood‑water spring mouth). The flood‑water spring cave is a few meters long. The part of the manuscript describing the cave was written based on two publications.