Underground Green Lake
By Diana Ungureanu/ Chisinau / Moldova.ORG/ -- A green lake in the Green Lake Cave is a miracle. The presence of water in a fossil cave, suspended in the strong fisurate limestones, is less common.
This particular cave is located in the massif of Buila-Vanturarita, Valcea County, in Romania. It is placed up at an altitude of 990 meters and 140 meters of the thalweg (line that connects the deepest points of a river course) of River Cheia Valley.
For the first time, the cave was explored and fully mapped in 1978 by a circle of speleologists from Ramnicu Valcea.
The cave has a relatively large entrance, about 6x4 m. Immediately after it there follow two galleries: the first, very narrow, with only 10 m in length. The other is wide and high, with the floor covered with small fragments in the first 15 m, then with large blocks of limestone fallen over old concretions.
After 35 meters of walk through the darkness of the cave, it is divided into two corridors that occur in the Great Hall of the cave. The main branch has a slope of 4 m, while the secondary is slightly downward, leveled and extra-large (25 m).
The Great Hall, which has impressive dimensions (30x20x10 m), has a floor quite broken, because many blocks have fallen from the ceiling of the subteranei.
The southeastern corner there starts a gallery, firstly ascending, with much clastic material, which is divided after 20 m. At the right of the gallery it ends with three small short extensions, and the left descends to a lake, enclosed between walls of a crack in a rock, with a width of 1 m, length of 10 m and depth up to 3 m.
The presence of the lake in the cracks of a fossil cave strongly fissured is pretty strange and it can be explicable by the deposits of clay that have blocked those cracks.
Through the openings of cracks, it is possible that the Lake to drain, as the Cave of Pagods, which is nearby.
For visiting, the cave does not require special equipment and can be admired by any person willing to with lighting sources, because the cave is not equipped for tourists.
The view of the lake with a slightly greenish color and very clear in the darkness of the cave is sensational.
The distance from Chisinau to the Green Lake Cave is 680 km.
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