Nettlebed Cave

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nettlebed Cave

Nettlebed cave.jpg
Location: Mount Arthur , Tasman District , New Zealand
Geographic
location: 		41 ° 15 ′ 18.1 ″  S , 172 ° 41 ′ 34.1 ″  E Coordinates: 41 ° 15 ′ 18.1 ″  S , 172 ° 41 ′ 34.1 ″  E
Nettlebed Cave (New Zealand)
Nettlebed Cave
Overall length: 38.252 km
Level difference: 1174 m
Particularities: deepest and second longest cave system in New Zealand
Pearse Resurgence , the exit point for water from the Nettlebed Cave

The Nettlebed Cave is a system of widely ramified caves and passages in the catchment area of Mount Arthur in the Tasman region in the northwest of the South Island of New Zealand .

Until 2014 it was registered with a depth of 889 m and a length of 24.25 km. However, since the beginning of 2014 it has been proven that the cave system of the Nettlebed Cave has a connection with the cave system of the Stormy Pot and is now considered to be the deepest and second longest cave system in New Zealand with a depth of 1174 m and a total length of 38.252 km.

Naming

Like many New Zealand place names, " Nettlebed Cave " is not an official government geographical name for the cave, it has been accepted and registered by the New Zealand Speleological Society (NZSS). The cave got its name after the nettle-like tree Ongaonga ( Urtica ferox ), a plant endemic to New Zealand , which is called nettle there and occurs at the entrance to the cave. The second part of the name bed stands for bed, thus composed of nettle bed cave .

geography

The entrance to the Nettlebed Cave is located in the Kahurangi National Park on the east side of the Arthur Range around 5 km west of Mount Arthur and 45 km east of Nelson in the north of the South Island . The cave system runs from the cave entrance in a north-westerly direction below the Arthur Range .

geology

The well-known large cave systems in New Zealand are in the " Marble Mountains " (Marble Mountains) Takaka Hill , Mount Arthur and Mount Owen . The Mount Arthur region where Nettlebed Cave is located dates back to the Paleozoic Era . The mountain range emerged from a fault, the rock from petrified sediments. Within the rock layers are limestone layers called Arthur Marble ( Arthur Marble). The cave system has formed in these layers through washout.

History of exploration

The entrance to Nettlebed Cave was discovered in 1969 during a Mount Arthur Expedition of the New Zealand Speleological Society , but was not explored further until between 1971 and 1973. Until 1973 only 1.3 km of the cave system was known. In June 1980 another expedition led to a depth of 341 m and 9.9 km in length. It was followed by three further expeditions by different teams between 1980 and 1984. In 1986 a connection to the Blizzard Pot was discovered and on October 16 the explored part was measured to a depth of 884 m. The cave was thus included in the statistics as New Zealand's deepest cave. Another expedition in 1990 measured a depth of 889 m. In 2010, the Nettlebed Cave had to give up the title of being the deepest cave in New Zealand to the 1,026 m deep Ellis Basin cave system until, in early 2014, a four-person team led by Kieran Mckay , when exploring the Stormy Pot cave, which has been known since 2011, a connection to Nettlebed Cave and since then the cave system with a depth of 1,174 m and 38.252 km in length got the title back and since then has also been considered the deepest cave system in the southern hemisphere .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Cave Statistics . New Zealand Speleological Society , accessed October 16, 2018 .
  2. ^ A b Anne C. Wright : Aspects of the geology and hydrology of Nettlebed Cave, Nelson, New Zealand . 1982, p.  144 .
  3. ^ Stephen RH Worthington : Hydraulic and geological factors influencing conduit flow depth . In: Speleogenesis and Evolution of Karst Aquifers . Volume 3, Issue 1 . Commission on Karst Hydrogeology and Speleogenesis, Union International of Speleology , 2005, ISSN 1814-294X ( Online [PDF; 487   kB ; accessed on May 24, 2014]).
  4. ^ Anne C. Wright : Aspects of the geology and hydrology of Nettlebed Cave, Nelson, New Zealand . 1982, p.  146 ff .
  5. ^ Anne C. Wright : Aspects of the geology and hydrology of Nettlebed Cave, Nelson, New Zealand . 1982, p.  143 .
  6. ↑ NZSS Landmarks . New Zealand Speleological Society , archived from the original on July 19, 2014 ; accessed on October 16, 2018 (English, original website no longer available).
  7. ^ A b Steve Deane : Cavers discover our deepest secret . The New Zealand Herald (Online) , February 1, 2014, accessed May 24, 2014 .
  8. ^ New Zealand's Stormy Pot Close to Connection with Nettlebed Cave System . Caving News , March 3, 2014, accessed May 24, 2014 .