Skip to main content
Avenc del Pla dels Albercoquers

Avenc del Pla dels Albercoquers

Avenc de 10 metres de fondària a l'Hospitalet de l'Infant.

Vandellòs i l'Hospitalet de l'Infant • Baix Camp30m10m

A 10-metre-deep pit at l'Hospitalet de l'Infant, with a 5-metre entrance shaft, a gallery with a 0.57-metre low passage and a final 3.5-metre shaft.

Characteristics

Location

On the N-340 road, going from l'Hospitalet de l'Infant to the Vandellòs nuclear power station, at kilometre 1,125.5 on the left-hand side, a narrow road leads off to the platja del Torn; after 850 metres you reach a viewpoint where there is room to park. From here you follow a GR that passes by the puig del Torn; about 50 metres before reaching it, on the right there is a marker from which a path leads to the cavity, along the route of which there are markers and red paint on the trees.

Mapa

Entrances

Always verify coordinates and access conditions before setting out.

  1. Avenc del Pla dels Albercoquers

    Elevation: 90 m

    40.967037, 0.882188
    UTM 31T (ETRS89) 321794 4537257
Download all entrances as GPX

Photos

Avenc del Pla dels Albercoquers - Photo, Vandellòs i l'Hospitalet de l'Infant, Baix CampView image
Click to enlarge

Espeleoindex · CC BY-NC 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ · Image © its author.

Image 1 of 7

Description

Morphology

The entrance gives access to a 5-metre-deep shaft, where there is a steep ramp leading to a chamber; in the middle of this chamber there is a one-metre drop that marks the end of the cavity. Back at the base of the entrance shaft, there is a gallery that begins with a low passage 0.57 metres high, which once passed gains height; at the end of this short gallery, on the right there is a 3.5-metre-deep shaft, the base of which forms a small chamber where there is a narrow conduit that leads to the final part of the cavity mentioned above.

Speleothems

The lithogenesis of the cavity, which in its day was quite abundant, is currently very damaged due to the plundering it has suffered.

Progression

The 3.5-metre-deep shaft can be descended without equipment.

History

J. Ferraté, in his collection of Tarragona cavities (1918), mentions, in a generic way, the Coves de l'Hospitalet and of them, with no. 21, cites, in the index, the Pla dels albercoquers. He specifies nothing more, neither cave nor pit.

It is not until March 1963 that the first exploration (at least by speleologists) seems to have been carried out, and it was done by Josep Castell and his group (at that time attached to the GES – CMB) who, accompanied by the village blacksmith, Mr. Domingo Vidal, located the pit. Inexplicably, at the entrance they painted “Emili Vidal” (the paint is still preserved), whereas in the GES activity book it is recorded as Domingo Vidal. The data from this exploration remained almost forgotten until Castell passed a heap of data to the authors of the Catàleg Espeleològic de Catalunya, who included it in volume 7, recovering the name given by Ferraté and putting the erroneous name of Emili Vidal as a synonym.

To complicate things further, in a work on molluscs published in Speleon no. 17, a long list of cavities appears (with many transcription errors) where the Avenc Emili Vidal appears again, with a collection contributed by Castell himself and locating it, by mistake, at Horta de Sant Joan!. The cavity that follows in the list is the nearby avenc del Coll Balaguer.

Despite being a cavity little known to speleologists, given its poor state of conservation it seems well frequented by anonymous visitors.

Bio

Coleoptera: Paranillochlamys velox Zariquiey 1940 (data provided by F. Fadrique, BIOSP).

User Comments (0)

No comments yet.

Be the first to share your experience!

Registered Explorations (0)

No explorations registered yet.

Register your visit to this cave!

Bibliography

  1. Borràs, J.; Miñarro, JM.; Talavera, F. (1984).- “el baix camp, el priorat i la ribera d'ebre”. Catàleg Espeleològic de Catalunya (vol. 7): 109 pp. Ed. Políglota. Barcelona.
  2. Ferraté, J.(1918).- Espeleologia de les Comarques Tarragonines.134 pp. Reus.

Source: Espeleoindex (espeleoindex.com), modified. CC BY-NC 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/