The Green Lake Cave

It is located on the western wall of Mount Stogşoare, at 990 m absolute altitude and 140 m relative altitude to the Cheia river, on the western slope of the detritic area called Ogaşul Ursului.

It was explored and mapped in 1978 by the Speleology Circle “Niphargus”, from Râmnicu Vâlcea.

The entrance is rather wide, around 6x4 m. Immediately after, there come two galleries: the first, very narrow, is only 10 m long; the other one is large and tall, with a plane floor, covered in small fragments, on the first 15 m, and large limestone blocks, fallen over some old concretions, afterwards.

35 m further, the gallery divides. The two ramifications go round a verybig pillar and then meet back in the Big Room. The main ramification has a 4m inclination, and the secondary one is slightly descending, not concretioned and very large (25 m).


The Big Room (30x20x10 m) has an accidented floor because of the numerous fallen blocks. From the the south-eastern corner starts another gallery, in ascent, in the beginning, with a lot of clastic sediments, that gets ramified 20 m further. On the right, the gallery ends in three short passages, and the one on the right descends to a small lake, surrounded by the walls of a crack and by a lake 1 m wide, 10 m long and 3 m deep.

The explanation for the existence of a lake in a fossil cave, suspended in heavily cracked limestones, lies in the impermeability of the pitch of the gallery due to the decalcification clay. It is possible that the lake could drain due to the widening of some cracks, similarly to the lake in the Cave of Pagodas.

Visitors don’t need any special equipment; light sources are sufficient.