New Athos Cave
New Athos Cave is one of the largest caves in Abkhazia. It is located under the slope of Iverskaya mountain. It is a huge karst cavity with a volume of about 1 million m³. Near the cave is located Novoafon Monastery and the Church of Simon the Cananite.
Video: Novoafon cave
Contents- General information
- How to get there
- Ticket price
Underground route - Halls of New Athos
- Interesting facts
General Information
Getting to Novy Afon is easy. The city is stretched along the coast, transportation goes along the central highway. From nearby settlements there are shuttle buses, both direct and those that go towards Psou and Gudauta. From the central square of Pitsunda and from the railway station of Sukhum there are buses and shuttles. The road is good – 20 minutes and you are in New Afon. Tourists going to the New Athos caves, you need to get off at the stop “Shell” and take as a landmark visible from everywhere New Athos Monastery.
.Ticket price
Halls of New Athos
Anacopia Hall
The lowest hall of the New Athos cave. It is 150 meters long, 50 meters wide and more than 20 meters high. Here are two underground lakes – Anatolia and Goluboe. The mirror of the lakes lies at 36 meters above sea level, their average depth is more than 25 meters. Once the water level in the lakes rose, and the waters flooded most of the hall. Traces of these floods have been preserved – dark brown horizontal stripes from the surface of the lakes almost to the ceiling. Now the cave waters exit through a drainage tunnel into the Manikwara river gorge.
.Hall of Makhajirs
The largest hall of the New Athos Cave is named in honor of the memory of the Makhajirs – Abkhazians who were forcibly relocated to Turkey and Middle Eastern countries. Among the piles of dark stones of the cave stands the White Mountain. Near the mountain – white columns of emerging stalagmites, a little further – a dark depression with yellow fangs of limestone blocks. Sometimes a cold, murky lake can be seen here.
.The calcite floor of the side gallery is broken in places, and in the holes you can see the second bottom, along which a transparent stream runs almost silently.
.Nartaa Hall
The hall is covered with clay layers. At the lowest point of the hall, at 36 meters above sea level, there is a “living” lake of the cave – it is inhabited by colonies of crustaceans. In the cracks of the clay floor there is a beetle Trechus, which has no eyes. On the southern wall of the hall one can see fanciful figures made of stones. Near the Nartaa Hall there is the Corallite Gallery, the walls of which are covered with corallites – snow-white balls stuck to each other by the hundreds of thousands.
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Hall of Speleologists. Hall named after Givi Smyr
The Hall of Speleologists is the highest hall of the cave, its height reaches 97 meters. From the round bottom of the hall, piled with blocks, up rise sheer walls, at a great height converging into a dome. The stone vault of the hall is mottled with many tectonic cracks and oval holes. These are the vents of karst wells opened by ancient rockslides, the so-called “organ pipes” – the lower part of karst systems through which water and air enter the cave. Bats live in this hall – relatively low humidity and moderate temperature create favorable conditions for them.
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In the southern part of the Hall of Speleologists – a passage to the hall named after Givi Smyr, which is located above the other halls of the cave. The floor of the hall is covered with frozen waves of cream-colored limestone. The most important decoration of the hall is a magnificent stone jellyfish.
.Hall “Ayuhaa”
The length of the hall from north to south is more than 100 meters. Along the dark yellow ten-meter walls of the hall along the entire length of the black horizontal stripes – depressions in the rock, filled with clay particles. Such cracks in limestone separate the ancient lower strata from the younger upper ones. But both were formed hundreds of millions of years ago. The hall is decorated with hundreds of stalagmites made of translucent orange and red calcite.
.Apkhärtsa Hall
This small hall has excellent acoustics – the arrangement of ledges and niches in the walls and ceiling create amazing conditions for the sound of music. Music is played in the hall, sometimes artists of the Abkhazian State Choral Chapel give concerts, performing Abkhazian folk songs.
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Apsny Hall
There is a four-meter stalagmite in front of the entrance to the hall, and an unusual cave “waterfall” in the hall itself. From a thirty-meter height from a hole in the high steep wall “falls” a huge frozen stone shaft. Water flows on the smooth surface of calcite “waves”. In this hall is always the maximum humidity.
.Helictite Grotto
The grotto is characterized by the amazing beauty of rare natelic forms. The wall is covered with sparkling white calcite, and orange, lilac, greenish and yellow stalagmites stand against it. The patterned floor consists of many small tubs with thin walls. These are gurus, remnants of puddles that once stood here.
.The main wealth of the grotto – helictites. It is still unclear why these mysterious cave formations grow sideways and upwards. The ceiling of the grotto is covered with thousands of small gelictites of many different colors, from dark red to light pink. Some gelictites reach more than 10 centimeters in length. Excursions in the Helictite Grotto are not conducted, as the presence of humans changes the temperature and humidity of the air, which can lead to the death of unique formations.
.Interesting Facts
- The discoverer of the cave in 1961, Givi Shalvovich Smyr, has been the director of the Novoafon Caves complex since 2001.
- The largest hall of the cave is the “Speleologists” hall. Its length is 260 meters, height – up to 50 meters, width – up to 75 meters. However, this length is obtained only if you count the hall “Speleologists” and the hall “Vanishing Lake” for one hall. But even in this case, contrary to popular belief, it will not be the largest hall in Abkhazia. It is only the third largest cave hall in Abkhazia (after the “Throne” hall in the Snezhnaya cave (length 309 m, width 110, height 40 m.) and the hall “X” (also in the Snezhnaya cave – 270 m by 70 m at a height of up to 58 m). ).
- The New Athos cave is also not the largest cave in Abkhazia neither in length nor in volume of the cavity. In volume it is much inferior to Snezhnaya cave, and in length is not even in the top ten longest caves in Abkhazia. .
- The highest hall of the cave is the hall “Moscow” (“Temple”). Its height is 54 meters. .
- The most beautiful halls of the cave – Halls named after Givi Smyr, “Anakopia”, Heliktit grotto and Corallite gallery (gallery of “Stone Flowers”). .
- One of the attractions of the Hall “Anacopia” is the lake “Anatolia”. The area of the lake is 1000 m², depth 26 meters, water temperature 10 degrees Celsius. Also in this hall is the “Blue Lake” with a size of 1250 m². .
- In the “Helictite Grotto” hall, reserved for scientific work, there is a large number of scale-drop formations – helictites. Here there is a stone waterfall “Apsny”, which is 20 meters high and 6 meters wide (pictured). .
- The Novoafon cave has 4 entrances, 3 of which are artificial (in the halls “Anakopia” and “Apsny” they enter to the underground railroad stations), as well as a specially pierced from the hall of the “Disappearing Lake” drainage gallery. The only natural entrance, through which the cavity was originally penetrated, can be seen in the ceiling of the “Anakopia” hall. On the surface, this exit is adjacent to the village of Eshera, in the form of a deep cavity. .
- On the territory of the cave takes place the action of the novel “Blinds” by D.S. Ermakov from the series “Metro-2033”.
