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In 2003 film about the Bear Cave was made.
The film was shot with the use of DTS surround sound system.
The film makers showed to us, apart from the main Tourist
Route, also the Lowest Parts of the Cave, which contain the
dripstones much greater than in the Upper Parts. The trip to
the Lowest Parts is more complicated – one needs to wear a
special suit and often crawl through the muddy corridors.
The road is full of narrow cracks. All that is accompanied
by a temperature of 5-6°C and almost 100% air humidity –
therefore creating a challenge which not everybody can face.
The film though is an opportunity to see all those
inaccessible places in more comfortable conditions.
Fragment of the film in DivX ( 3 MB
<<Download>>) |
Section showing the parts of the Bear Cave |
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The lowest parts of the Bear Cave is a strictly protected reservation area.
Still some excavation and exploration works on the development of the Cave are conducted there.
The entrance to this part lies below the bridge over the Great Crack. We need to go down some 30 meters to the very bottom of the Great Crack,
where there are the Old Wrocław Parts (towards the entrance hall).
Opposite there are the New Lowest Parts, where the explorers found the dripstones which exceed the mid parts dripstones both as
the beauty and the size are concerned. |
Plan of the Lowest Parts |
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Passage to the Lowest Parts |
Great Crack |
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TRIP TO THE LOWEST PARTS OF THE BEAR CAVE |
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Old Wrocław Parts
– heading towards those we pass by the Bats Corridor on the left (some cal lit the Giraffe Corridor).
We go farther along the Crack Hall and we move towards Kleśnica stream. Another stage of our trip is a long corridor,
full of narrow passages, which leads to the Waterfall Hall (we are now under the bottom of Kleśnica).
It is the part of the Cave which is still being developed, as the stream takes an underground shortcut here and when the
water is high it brings different deposits with the flow. |
Stream at the bottom of the Wrocław Parts |
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Squeezing through the rocks |
New Lowest Parts – we are coming back to the bottom of the Great Crack and we go through the rocks towards south-east.
We are squeezing through the numerous cracks (e.g. Shelf) up to the Hall with the Window.
The muddy forms with the bones reaches even up to this part of the Cave.
There is the system of corridors and cracks over this hall. You can see the bear bones spreading everywhere.
They are usually extracted from the mud, lie on the bottom, stuck in the cracks or stuck to the rocky shelves.
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Dripstones on the walls |
Curtains In the Champagne Hall |
Fragment of the Great Cascade |
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We go towards the Wall of Cry and up. Our next obstacle is the Muddy Corridor and behind it there
is the Champagne Hall. Its central point is the Great Cascade (over 15 meters high). The whole hall, with
the Maurycy’s Chimney at the top of it, is of a total height of 50 meters. |
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Fragment of the Great Cascade |
Dead Basins |
Dripstones |
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Next part of our trip is the rocky place with some cracks along which we move to the hall called the Roundabout.
There are a few corridors spreading as radii and a “calcite stream floating down”. In the stream floating at the bottom of the hall we
can meet the Niphargus tatrensis (an invertebrate living in caves) and in the upper part of the hall – the bats. One the right there is
a passage to the Diamond Hall.
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Macaronies growing out of the cover |
Stalagmites and Curtains |
Macaronies and Stalactites |
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In front of the entrance we need to change the speleological uniforms for the white
ones so that we do not spoil the snow-white dripstones with the mud from the other halls. The dripstones in this corridors are much bigger
than in other parts of the Cave. We will find here beautiful dead basins with numberless calcite flowers, fairy cascades and curtains. |
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Wonderful Cascades |
Dead Basins |
Wonderful Cascades |
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Snow-white Covers |
Calcite Flowers |
Various forms of Dripstones |
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From the Diamond Corridor there is another corridor leading out which
Has no dripstones. Behind this corridors there can be further halls and corridors hiding more calcite forms which are still to be discovered… |
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