Some photos of the Cathedral Cave

The Cathedral Cave.

 

Marius van Heiningen

Introduction.

Within the Cantabrian Mountains there are an awful lot of places which are virtually unknown, especially to tourism. But this aspect is not restricted to the surface of these mountains, below ground there is a very rich subterranean patrimony. The deep caves of Picos de Europa, with depths of over 1500 m and the extensive caves of Cantabria and northern Burgos (eastern Cantabrian Mountains) are world famous in the speleological community. For instance, the Mortillano system, the Gándara system, the Alto Tejuelo system (all in Cantabria) and the Ojo Guareña (Burgos) each have over a hundred kilometrers of galleries. Nevertheless, in the rest of the Cordillera Cantábrica there are lots of less notorious caves and even quite a few which are totally unknown. That some caves keep being unknown to the public, even after they are discovered for the first time, is sometimes due to their incredible vulnerability. Some caves have large amounts of delicate formations which would suffer irreversible damage if they were visited frequently. In this post I will show some photos of the Cathedral Cave, named for the untouched formations and grandiosity of this cave. This cave was discovered some 20 years ago and the pictures are taken some 5 years ago. In all these years we have entered the cave only 4 times, and always with only 2 environmental conscious speleologists. The photos are taken by my speleo companion Julian Benito. To take clear photos in a cave is very difficult, among other reasons because of the great humidity inside the caves and because of the frequent awkward small passages which not invite to bring the most luxurious cameras. So considering I think these photos are quite good. There will be no explanation by the photos because the different cave formations will be treated in other posts, just enjoy the report.

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