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Cova de la Calavera

Cova de la Calavera

Cova de 46 metres de recorregut amb dues boques d'accés.

Mont-ral • Alt Camp46m4m

A 46-metre-long cave with two entrances, known for the engraving of a face or skull found at the entrance.

Characteristics

Location

It can be accessed either from the enabled car park (paid in summer and at weekends) located after the ermita del Remei in Alcover, where the walk is a little more than 4 kilometres, or better from Mont-ral, from where you park to go to the gorges of the riu Glorieta; from this point the route is approximately 1.5 kilometres.

You must go down the path that leads to Alcover; after passing the Mirador de les Fonts del Glorieta you will pass beside the old reservoir of the power station, and soon you will turn right at a point where you will find a wide terrace crossed by a path; on its right side there is a small cliff of travertines in which several entrances without continuation can be seen. You must follow the path to the end, almost touching the cliff above the riu Glorieta. On the left you will see a fallen block that forms a small hole; on the right there is a terrace on a higher level where the entrance of the cavity is found.

Mapa

Entrances

Always verify coordinates and access conditions before setting out.

  1. Cova de la Calavera

    Elevation: 616 m

    41.279273, 1.100259
    UTM 31T (ETRS89) 340902 4571500
Download all entrances as GPX

Photos

Cova de la Calavera - Photo, Mont-ral, Alt CampView image
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Espeleoindex · CC BY-NC 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ · Image © its author.

Image 1 of 13

Description

Morphology

Standing at the entrance, inside it we find that it divides into two narrow passages; the left one, once past the narrow passage, places us at the base of a shaft of about 3 metres that opens to the outside, while the gallery continues about 3 metres forming a kind of chamber. At the base of the shaft, on the right, we find a narrow passage that connects with the gallery coming from the entrance on its right side.

A few metres further on we find a junction; an ascending step of 0.9 m and another descending one of the same measurements place us in two galleries at different levels that finally coincide through a very narrow passage. Following the descending gallery, after 1.5 metres we reach a junction; on the right the gallery becomes high and forms a couple of chambers, with a couple of small branches without continuation. Back at the junction, on the left we follow a narrow gallery that in its upper part connects with the upper gallery mentioned above. Following the gallery we reach a chamber with a height of more than 3 metres; through the lower part of this chamber a new passage leads us to a new fork; in the upper part we find a passage of 2.34 metres, and in the lower part another passage of about 3 metres long by two metres wide with a low ceiling; both passages connect at their final part.

Speleothems

In the cavity we find abundant formation, although there is also quite a lot of it damaged.

History

It seems that the cavity was already known in the area since ancient times; when it was explored by SIEP-CE Poblet in 1980 they already found beside the entrance an engraving representing a face or skull, which is where the cave gets its name. However, they wrongly placed it near the cascada del Niu de l'Àliga, which is more than six hundred metres away from where the cave really is and with a height difference of more than a hundred metres.

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Bibliography

  1. Cabeza, J.(1980).-”Bauma del Salt del Niu del Aguila, Cova Calavera”. Bol. Esp. SIEP (12):30-33. SIEP-CE Poblet. Barcelona.
  • Dades aportades per Juli Serrano (SIE-CEA) i Francesc Rubinat (ERE-CEC).

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