Kolkbläser Monster Cave System

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The Kolkbläser Monster Cave System is a cave system in the southern slopes of the Steinernes Meer in the Berchtesgaden Alps .

Portal monster cave at 2077 m
Main course with overlaying Ricardo Da Vinci course
Snow cone in the "North Pole" hall in the Kolkbläser monster cave system. In late summer, the connection to the shingle head frieze endoline, which is 140 m above, is sometimes accessible.
NS elevation of the most important corridors and shafts, status 1988

Dimensions of the cave system

The 20-meter-long entrance to the monster cave can already be seen from the valley floor in Saalfelden under the summit of the Schindelkopf . The ascent from the valley requires a good level of fitness (1400 meters), orientation skills and alpine experience. The oldest traces of exploration, an old newspaper, go back to the 1950s. In 1975 a systematic survey of approx. 700 m was carried out by the State Association for Speleology in Salzburg . The significantly smaller entrance to the Kolkbläsers , which is 60 m higher, was only explored to a narrow point within a few tens of meters. In 1982 the Speleological Working Group Aachen (SAGA) started research in the Schindelkopf area. Behind the bottleneck in the Kolkbläser, a five meter long silt, lies the longest known cave system in the State of Salzburg (cadastral number 1331/25/141). As of 8/2006, it has been explored to a length of 44.5 km and a depth of 723 m, although the system only extends over an area of ​​approx. 1.5 km². Up to nine levels of corridors lie one above the other. Sometimes they are connected by shafts, but often kilometers of detours are required to get 100 m deeper. But it is also faster: the Pentecostal shaft system leads over a 170 m deep single shaft and many smaller shaft steps to a narrow and gloomy water-filled siphon at a depth of 711 m below the entrance. This previously required 36,200 hours of underground research.

The cave passages were measured with a measuring device, the top profile, specially developed for the needs of cave research . A 500 m spool of thread, compass and inclinometer are housed in a top profile so that the surveyors can create a polygon through all accessible parts of the cave. The calculation of coordinates, compensation of errors in the rings and the final drawing in Indian ink are then carried out in post-processing. In addition to the Kolkbläser monster cave system, the Windbachkopf cave system (4.5 km in length) and the Hennenkopf cave (approx. 3 km in length) are directly adjacent. These two caves are genetically related to the Kolkbläser monster cave system. However, a connection could not be found despite intensive search and digging actions.

Formation of the caves

Millions of years ago - before the uplift of the Alps - there were huge networked cave systems in the northern limestone Alps, of which today, despite the imposing length, only small remains exist.

Lime is dissolved by acid. The acid is the carbonic acid, which is contained in the air to 0.03% and is dissolved in the rain. During the soil passage in the so-called covered or green karst (e.g. Sauerland, Swabian Alb, Jura), the water in the soil passage is strongly charged with carbonic acid and dissolves the lime. At first, the first initial tubes appear very slowly. With first order solution kinetics, there is no calcium saturation even with very long flow paths. When the diameter of the gap has grown to 1 to 2 mm (this can take 100,000 years) and a turbulent flow sets in, the karst tubes grow faster. The more tubes close together, the faster they grow at the expense of the smaller tubes.

This is how the first karst systems arose in the northern limestone Alps, a limestone plate that was still undivided around 20 million years ago. When the Alps slowly rose in the south, large amounts of water streamed off to the north in the direction of an ancient Danube . These then met the limestone plate of the northern limestone Alps and led to the formation of huge, almost horizontal river caves as they are today e.g. B. in China and Laos. Today the limestone plate is broken up into individual plateaus and the plateaus have already been eroded to below 2,000 m + NN. Only in the peaks on the edge (e.g. Schindelkopf in the Steinerne Meer, 2,356 m) are the remains of the huge systems, so that they are referred to as ruin cave floors.

Subordinate sub-horizontal systems formed later, but they no longer reach the dimensions of the ruins of the cave floor. These passages often end in rubble. The vertical shaft systems (in the Kolkbläser Monsterhöhle system over 4 km) are usually much younger and usually do not represent a suitable path down. The shafts, which are often still spacious, are repeatedly connected with extremely narrow and winding meanders. The exploration of the caves in the Stone Sea is just beginning. In large parts of the approximately 80 km² plateau, no caves are known yet.

literature

Web links

Commons : Kolkbläser-Monsterhöhle-System  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Association of Austrian Speleologists: The longest caves in Austria , as of October 2016 (pdf).

Coordinates: 47 ° 29 '17.6 "  N , 12 ° 53' 2.3"  E