Pădurea Craiului Mountains: Vântului Cave (Wind Cave)

Abstract

Pestera Vantului lies in a similar to 200-m-thick middle Triassic limestone and is the longest cave in Romania, with a surveyed length of over 50 km and vertical extent of 162 m. It is a multi-level cave, which consists of passages that are mainly sinuous tubes and canyons having their floor covered with alluvial sediments and breakdown blocks. Vadose flow is present in the lowest level of the cave, where significant amounts of black iron-manganese-rich deposits coat the gravels and the cave walls along the underground stream. Fourteen oxide and hydroxide minerals have been described in their composition, with braunite first documented in a cave environment worldwide. Gypsum speleothems are abundant particularly along the upper levels 1 and 2. Typical for Vantului Cave is its deep meandering canyons, which are best displayed in the Racovita Meanders section of the second level. From a speleogenetic point of view, it is a base-level cave, having its all four major levels developed in the epiphreatic zone, later connected in between by vadose canyons and shafts.