Blautopfhöhle
| Blautopfhöhle
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 Dripstones in the Blautopfhöhle |
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| Location: | Swabian Alb . | |
| Height : | 512 m above sea level NN | |
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Geographic location: |
48 ° 24 '59 " N , 9 ° 47' 2" E | |
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| Cadastral number: | 7524 / 30b | |
| Type: | Water cave | |
| Overall length: | 14600 m | |
| Particularities: | Part of the blue cave system | |
The Blautopfhöhle (sometimes also referred to as the "Blauhöhle" or "Blautopf-Unterwasserhöhle") is part of the Blue Cave System , the largest cave system in the Swabian Alb . The large corridor cross-sections suggest an even greater extent despite the previously relatively short known length. The Blautopf , which forms the drain of the Blue Cave and feeds the Blau River , is particularly well-known .
Emergence
The Blautopfhöhle was probably created at a time when the Danube still flowed through the Blautal , at the time of its deepest deepening. At that time, the Blautopfhöhle could have drained directly into the Danube. Since the Danube was shifted to the south, the valley has been traversed by the Schmiech , Ach and Blau . These small rivers are unable to carry away the sediment material, and so the valley has been filled in about twenty meters. The cave was flooded and the water that still follows the Blautopfhöhle has to rise around 20 m from the original source to reach the valley floor. If the discharge were less, the blue would not have managed to keep this cave exit free. However, the exact relationships have not yet been conclusively clarified.
expansion
The Blautopfhöhle begins at the bottom of the Blautopf in about 21 m water depth and extends from there to the west. It quickly reaches 42 m water depth and bends to the northwest. The corridor rises and falls several times, but overall it rises continuously and finally reaches the karst water surface after about 1,250 m . For a long time this was considered to be the first point of emergence, but there are further points of emergence after around 380 m and 550 m ( cloud castle ).
Until August 2009, the blue cave system was driven over an estimated total length of over 10 km, of which, however, only 7063 m were precisely measured - 4900 m of this was accounted for by the Blautopf cave and 2257 m by the Vetter cave, which is part of the blue cave system . One can only speculate about the actual total length of the blue cave system. However, due to the large catchment area of the Blautopfquelle of 150 km² and the high flow rate determined in numerous dyeing tests, it can be concluded that there is an extensive network of open river caves several dozen kilometers in length.
Research history
After many unsuccessful attempts at diving since the 19th century, the Blautopfhöhle was finally discovered in the 1960s by the Göppingen-Eschenbach cave research group under the direction of Manfred Keller. In the following, the research was pushed forward , especially by Jochen Hasenmayer . The level of research was always dependent on the performance of the diving equipment and the diver. Hasenmayer did pioneering work that was unique in the world and continued to advance both the exploration of the blue cave and the technique of cave diving. This research culminated in 1985 with the discovery of the “Mörikedom”, the first large air-filled hall.
From a diving accident rabbits Mayers in Wolfgang is now a paraplegic in 1989, by which it, resulted in a multi-year break in exploring the Blauhöhle. However, together with the organ builder Konrad Gehringer , he developed a cave submarine called a Speleonaut , with which he has been diving back into the Blautopf since the 1990s. He was able to discover the following halls of the Mörikedom, the “central nave” and the “Aeon Dome”. These are comparably large halls that are separated by bridge-like structures that can be climbed over as well as submerged. With a certain justification, all three together can be described as a large hall 30 m wide and 30 m high, filled with a five to ten meter deep lake. At its end there is another underwater passage (“Speleonautenweg”) to the north, which splits after a short time, but both ends soon become too narrow for further exploration with the submarine.
Since the mid-1990s, the Blue Cave has been explored by a group of cave divers who founded the Blautopf Working Group in 1997 . The cave divers , who come from several regional cave clubs, came together across clubs. They have promoted the exploration in a variety of ways, for the first time the entire cave was precisely measured. They discovered the “cloud castle”, a large air-filled hall in front of the Mörikedom. The cave diving technique has been revolutionized by the availability of compact breathing apparatus, by rebreathers that recycle exhaled air again and thus extend both dive time and the necessary weight significantly reduced. In connection with diving scooters (propeller thrusters) they pushed the dive up to the Mörikedom from several hours to just under an hour, an important prerequisite for further exploration.
With the discovery of the so-called Landweg, an open river cave passage behind the Aeon Dome, the Blautopf working group achieved a great research success in 2005. In 2006 this corridor could be driven almost two kilometers and in 2007 it was also measured, up to an enormous hall, the Apocalypse . It measures 170 meters in length and 50 meters in both width and height. The hall was discovered by Jochen Malmann and Andreas Kücha (members of the Blautopf Working Group ) on September 23, 2006 and called the Apocalypse .
Since 2002 the working group Höhle und Karst Grabenstetten has also tried to dig a dry access to the large, air-filled halls of the blue cave system with the Vetterhöhle project near the Blautopf. From May 2006 several large halls were discovered in the Vetterhöhle. The connection between “Vetterhöhle” and the “Wolkenschloss” in the Blautopfhöhle was found in autumn 2006, as the “Arge Blautopf” and the “Arge Grabenstetten” confirmed on October 5th, 2006. However, this connection is not helpful as access to the “overland route”, because it is still followed by around 700 meters of diving distance.
For this reason, the parts of the cave far away from the day could only be reached by divers up to now, whereby further research work required two bivouacs due to the great difficulties involved in entering the cave . In this way, the cave sections “Hall of the Lost River”, “Urblau”, “Blue Canyon” and “Cemetery of the Stuffed Animals” were discovered behind the Apocalypse by October 2008 and measured in several research tours up to the end of July 2009. The current end of the cave is a fall about 4400 meters from the Blautopf.
At the end of April 2008, divers of the Blautopf consortium discovered a continuation of the corridor known as the “Stairway to Heaven” at the southern end of Mörikedom. This dry section of the corridor ends after 270 meters in a fall directly under the B 28 . The distance from the end of the Stairway to Heaven to the northern end of the Vetterhöhle is only 60 meters. A previous connection between the two caves in this area was probably destroyed by the valley formation. With the creation of a research tunnel right next to the B 28 on April 12, 2010, a dry access was drilled into the 17-meter-thick rock at that point.
The Blaukarst consortium in the Hessenhaudoline and the Seligengrund cave are believed to have further access to the Blautopf cave .
Media reports
The Blautopfhöhle has been in the media repeatedly over the past few decades. Several fatal diving accidents since the late 1960s made headlines and resulted in a general diving ban. Since then, diving in the Blautopf has only been permitted with a special official permit.
- Blue cave research was made popular above all by Ernst Waldemar Bauer's 1986 television film “Diving into the Cold Heart of the Alb” , in which Hasenmayer's film recordings of the Mörikedom were presented to the public for the first time.
- The latest research results were shown in January 2007 in the 45-minute documentary “Mythos Blautopf” on ARTE .
- In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on November 18, 2012, the status of the research in 2012 was reported on pages 62 and 63.
- The April 2014 issue of National Geographic Germany magazine reported on the exploration of the Blautopfhöhle on pages 38 to 65.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Current plan of the Blautopfhöhle 7524 / 30b (status 11/2018). ARGE Blautopf, accessed on January 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Richard Frank: The blue cave system 7524/30 - how it got the name and number (Laichinger Höhlenfreund 2007)
- ↑ Surveying documents from the Blaubeuren cave association, as of April 2010
- ^ Report on the ARGE Blautopf homepage - by Joachim Striebel, date of publication: May 9, 2008
- ↑ Joachim Striebel: Without diving deep into the blue cave Südwest Presse Ulm April 14, 2010 ( Memento from May 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
Web links
- Information website of the city of Blaubeuren
- Homepage of the Blautopf Working Group
- Results of diving research in the Blautopf cave with cave plan (status: 2001) (PDF file; 592 kB)
- Results of diving research in the Blautopf cave with cave plan (status: 2007) (PDF file; 547 kB)
- Presentation of research in the Hessenhaudoline
- Press release about finding the connection between Blau- and Vetterhöhle