Photo by viorica.variciuc
The Cave from Rea Valley (Bad Valley) is one of the biggest, toughest and most beautiful cave in Romania. The cave is located in the Rea Valley – Cornu Muntilor, Bihor county, at 1350 meters altitude near the alpine goal, in the north-west of the karst plateau Padis.
In 1986 a team formed by Adrian Vălenaş and Liviu Vălenaş from Oradea Z, discovers the mouth of a pit, located at 1350 meters altitude near the alpine goal. The pothole is explored only in 1987 until a strait situated at -29meters. The obstacle is unrocked and it uncovers a series of straits that lead on the lip of a shaft, from which it penetrates the noise produced by a stream. In 1996 the siphon from -264meters is exceeds and is reached a new one at -320 meters. The current development of the cave from Rea Valley is 21 km.
The Cave from Rea Valley is one of the most difficult in Romania. A complex system of horizontal galleries, vertical shafts and chimneys, huge rooms, a underground stream that crosses the canyon, “gururi”, vortical boiling pans lined with spoons. Here is the highest waterfall in Romania, Fan Waterfall (Ventilatorului Waterfall) of 82 meters in one piece. Deposit and trickling formations, very numerous and very beautiful are far outweighed by crystallized ones. A true museum of mineralogy is strung along the galleries: only rare and unusual pieces. The geologists have identified 37 minerals, of which 6 are unknown until then and 23 in the composition of the cave’s concretion: Aragonite, gypsum, quartz, Celeste, malachite, rodocrozit, metatyuyamunit, Crystals of gypsum, calcite, aragonite formations, stalactites, stalagmites, crystals on tens of thousands of square meters in all sizes and colors available. The cave provides the highest richness and variety of the existing crystallization of gypsum in our country.
The cave is a scientific reserve, the access being strictly prohibited for tourism.
