Monday, February 06, 2006

Caves of Liberty

I gave up trying to use the slow internet connection and the fading computer screen to update my blog. So I made some notes and now that I am back, I am updating the blog.

The day after snowboarding, we drove up to the Demänovská valley, in the Low Tatras National Park. Unfortunately the Demanskova Ice Cave is closed in January, but not far from there is another cave, known as Caves of Liberty.

Entrance to the caves is in the Tociste valley at elevation 870 m. You can access it by zigzag foothpath ( a very icy one) leading from the parking lot, where a height difference of 52 m must be gotover. The cave is created in middle Triasic dark gray Guttenstein limestones of Kriznansky nappe, along tectonic faults by former flow of Demanovka and its lateral hanging ponor tributaries. It represents morphologicaly the most varied part of the Demanovsky cave system. The cave length is more than 8400 m, 7624 m of the cave were measured. Out of the rich flowstone filling, flowstone water lilies and other lacustrine forms / sponge, coral, grape / as well as eccentric stalactites are unique. Mighty flowstone waterfalls and columns, sphaerolithical stalactites and many other forms of stalactites and stalagmites are captivating. There is a thick onflow of white soft flowstone in the Great dome. Underground flow of Demanovka flows through the cave and gets to the surface by the Vyvieranie cave

Our guide himself lived in the mountain. His grey hair and bushy beard gave away his true age, but you would have never guessed it otherwise. All that walking up and down the mountain and the cave made sure he was fitter than the rest of us.

Apart from the cave and the atmosphere in the cave which is undescribeable, the view from the top of the mountain, where the cave entrance is, also breathtaking.

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