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The caving program is especially made for people who want to explore and
discover the richness of Romania’s caves. Romania has an enormous variety
of caves (over 12.000!) and by exploring the caves of the Apuseni Mountains,
we will only touch the top of the iceberg. Depending on the success of the
program further explorations will be made the following years. Caving in Romania
is not visiting nicely prepared tourist caves but visiting them as the first
explorers have seen them. That means that you’ll have to climb, use ropes,
to crawl and to creep to see the splendid beauty of them.
You don’t need experience for the proposed program, but a good physical condition
is required, you shouldn't have claustrophobia and you shouldn’t be scared
to get dirty. The initial program is not a special easy program but it can
be customized if there is demand from the whole group. The guiding will be
done by experienced guides. The guides have followed intensive training
and won’t take any risks by guiding you in the caves. Due to some weather
circumstances -heavy rainfall- some caves may have difficulties to be explored.
We’ll try to give you in those cases a similar program, or we might change
the order of the program.
The guides are also very well aware of the ecologic importance of the underground
world, and won’t allow any damage or environmental obstruction in and around
the caves. During your fascinating trip they will give you a treasure of
information about the karst system and the specific caves. They stay the
whole program with you and will be happy to help you with all your questions.
Accommodation:
You sleep in comfortable hotel rooms in the settlement
Doda Pilii, near the caves.
Highlights of the trip
You visit 7 caves under which the
biggest in volume in the country.
You visit as well active as fossil caves.
During your trip you will see about all possible speothems or formations.
You'll see underground rivers and waterfalls. You learn
to use the ropes and other special caving
techniques. The guides have 15 years experience and
are active members of caving clubs. In their free time
they further explore caves, map them and spend a lot
of time underground. They know about everything
related to caves and like to share their passion with
you.
THE PROGRAM
Day 1:
Arrival and transfer to Doda Pilii where you sleep in hotelrooms.
Day 2:
Visit of the Lespezilor cave. The cave is part of a
complex system. The part we'll visit is fantastic decorated with 'montmilch'.
Transfer to the
Virtop Poiana where we stay for 3 nights.
We visit first the Onceasa
Dragon Cave.
the cave is just 310 m long, but interesting to visit, especially because the
cave is considered a graveyard for the since long disappeared cave bear. There are many interesting stalactites
and stalagmites and other speo-thems in the Galeria Nordica and in the Galeria
Domnului.
After that we visit the
Virtop
Glacier Cave: It is a small cave, only 165m long but has the
3rd biggest volume of ice of the country. The Glacier cave
Virtop has a 35m high iceblock.
Day 3:
Instruction day. We teach
you rope techniques and safety procedures for caving.
The instructions take place
on a special prepared cliff close to the camp ground where everybody will
have training in descending, climbing and horizontal movement with ropes.
Nobody should have acrophobia (height fear) or claustrophobia.
Day 4:
Exploration of the Humpleu
Cave.
There are 37km fully explored
and drawn on maps, the rest of the cave is almost completely explored but
not put on a map yet. It is certainly the most voluminous
cave of Romania, with 12 enormous rooms, each exceeding 100m. The biggest
room lies on the upper level of the subterranean river that corresponds
with the Poienita Cave and is 530 m long, 111m wide and 35m high. The
cave has Romania’s largest underground river, 5.6km long with 38 duck-unders.
The cave further contains all possible speothems. One day won't be enough
to see it all, but you will have a good idea of what the Humpleu Cave offers.
Day 5:
Transfer to the Onceasa Poiana
We visit the entrance of
the Ponorului Cave (to difficult to enter the cave) and the Avenul
cu Vaca.
The
Avenul cu Vaca is in fact the same subterranean system as the the
Cerbul Cave (next day).
You descend the Aven 37m
(total till down is about 150m) We descend till the room with snow. You
turn back via the path along one of the walls of the dolina.
Day 6:
Visit of the
Cerbul Cave.
Cerbul Cave, named after a fossiled stag, is a cave with 5,2 km of galleries.
The entrance is by a vertical aven of 7m and you arrive at a narrow place
from where you enter a gallery with all kind of formations. The gallery
has several meanders. The big gallery is 7-10m wide and 10m high, 1.5km long.
In this gallery is a waterfall, all kind of formations, coralites, helectites.
Day 7:
Visit of the Alunului Cave
and the Coltului Cave. (in case of high water we divert to the Ceata cave)
The Alunului Cave is
a big karstic system (4,8km). We visit a part of it (about 1,5km). We enter
the cave by the active gallery with small entrance and climb to the fossil
part of the cave. We enter a gallery of 5 to 7m wide and 10-15m high gallery
where we see all kind of erosions and where we see also the subterranean
river. The gallery is nice decorated with all kind of speothems as stalagmites,
stalactites and helectites. We descend further in the active gallery where
we see a drainhole and the specially nice eroded gray –pink riverbed
Coltului cave is
a big cave (1,8km) with a strong air current in the beginning. The entrance
is very small (1x1m). The gallery widens fast and there a vertical descent
of 15m. After that you enter a room. The room descends to a gallery
with clusterites. At the end of the room there are a lot of spectacular
underground waterfalls and they make an enormous fascinating noise. You
have to go along the falls to enter a 40m high gallery.
Day 8:
End of program and transfer to
Cluj Napoca
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