This page was translated from Hebrew and has not been reviewed yet. The Hebrew page is the reference. עברית

Har Saharonim Cave

Grid ref.: 1425/0001
Location: South of Makhtesh Ramon
Elevation: 525 m above sea

General:

Har Saharonim Cave is a medium-sized cave (cumulative length 42.5 m and total height 17.8 m) composed mainly of an elongated passage. The rounded outline of the cave passage as well as the many dissolution domes opening in it indicate that the cave was formed by phreatic-hypogenic dissolution processes that operated in limestone of Turonian age (Shivta Fm.).

The cave entrance was discovered in the winter of 2011 by Shmulik Avidan. On 19.1.13 the cave was examined and mapped by Vladimir Boslov and Boaz Langford.

Description of the Cave:

The cave has a rounded entrance (2.6X2.8 m) opening in the middle of the sloping cliff that forms the southern face of Har Saharonim. The cave entrance leads to a wide, semi-lit space in whose ceiling a well-developed dissolution dome opens. The entrance space is in fact the southern part of an elongated passage extending from the entrance to the northeast. The passage floor consists of a uniform rock layer, sometimes covered with light-colored sediment and a little gravel. The rock layer that forms the floor rises steeply from the cave entrance toward its inner part. It seems that the cave developed in accordance with the dip of the rock layers, which dip in this area at 35 degrees in the direction of azimuth 310. In the ceiling of the cave passage well-developed dissolution domes open. High domes that developed in the middle of the passage were cut through by weathering of the surface above the cave, so that today a pair of openings, looking like narrow chimneys, open in the cave ceiling. Near the pair of chimneys the cave is crossed by a fault line whose direction is perpendicular to the main passage. Along the fault line a secondary passage developed, narrow and high.

The end of the main passage, from the area of the chimneys to the end of the cave, looks like a narrow, low passage whose walls are coated with white-translucent cave deposits.

Notes:

The cave entrance can be reached on foot along the southern slopes of Har Saharonim.
In the cave there are cave deposits formed from the crystallization of bat urine. In the cave ceiling, in the semi-lit area, there are mud nests of swifts. In the area of the swift nests several geckos were also observed. The arthropods observed in the cave include: a bristletail, a pale cricket (lacking pigment, with prominent black eyes), and mud nests of a mud-dauber wasp.

Written by: Boaz Langford