Cova de les Valls

A 45 m long cave at the Sau reservoir, Tavertet, located at the confluence of the Torrent de les Valls with the reservoir.

Tavertet • Osona 45m 1m

EspeleoWorld

Cova de les Valls

A 45 m long cave at the Sau reservoir, Tavertet, located at the confluence of the Torrent de les Valls with the reservoir.

Tavertet · Osona

Length: 45 m · Depth: 1 m

Updated record

https://espeleoworld.com/en/c/cova-de-les-valls

Information can change. Always verify coordinates, access, weather, and cave conditions before setting out.

Topographic map of the main entrance — Main entrance · ICGC topographic map

A 45 m long cave at the Sau reservoir, Tavertet, located at the confluence of the Torrent de les Valls with the reservoir.

Characteristics

Type: Cave
Municipality: Tavertet
Region: Osona
Unit: Cabrerès, el
Length: 45 meters
Depth: 1 meters
Major Unit: Serralada Transversal
Lithology: Sandstone
Updated on EspeleoÍndex: December 19, 2021

Location

It is located on the hydrographic left of the Torrent de les Valls, at the point where it meets the waters of the Sau reservoir when the reservoir is at its maximum level.

From the BV-5207 road from l'Esquirol to Tavertet, at approximately kilometre 4.5, you must turn right towards el Vilar, Sant Bartomeu Sesgorgues and el Moner; we will continue towards el Villaret de Dalt where the paved track ends, a few metres before reaching the padlock that bars the way to this farmhouse; on the right a track (4x4 only) starts down towards el Villaret de Baix; past this the track continues towards the house of les Valls; on reaching the height of the Roca de les Valls, we will park the vehicle and head without a path to the confluence of the torrent de les Valls with the reservoir where we will find the cavity. If the reservoir level is low, you only need to follow the shore of the reservoir until finding the best point to descend and go back up the torrent de les Valls to the mouth of the cavity. If the level is high, then you must look for the torrent upstream through the middle of the forest and go down its bed until reaching the reservoir.

A few hundred metres to the NW of the cavity there should be another cavity, LES TUNES, a cave of more than 300 m of passage studied by N. Llopis Lladó from the year 1935 (Speleon IV, 2: 64-83, 1953) until the beginning of the 1950s. Being located at a lower level than the Cova de les Valls (about 25 m), the cave remains flooded by the Sau reservoir. Perhaps if at some point the level dropped considerably, it would be possible to reach the two entrances, but it cannot be ruled out that the galleries are completely or partially filled by sediments.

Entrances

Always verify coordinates and access conditions before setting out.

Cova de les Valls
Elevation: 426 m
41.993956, 2.358783
UTM 31T (ETRS89) 446890 4649304
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Topographic

Cova de les Valls - Topography, Tavertet, Osona

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

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Photos

Cova de les Valls - Photo, Tavertet, Osona

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Description

Morphology

The 1.16x0.62 metre mouth is located a little more than two metres above the bed of the torrent when the reservoir level is low. Past the entrance mouth we still find the rails used in the years 2000-2003 to extract the earth that sedimented the whole conduit. In this stretch the gallery rises imperceptibly for 22 metres in which the gallery keeps almost the same dimensions; from this point the gallery descends slightly for about 5 metres where its section is reduced a little due to the sedimentation caused by the entry of the reservoir waters. At this point the gallery gains width and height and this is where we find all the tools that were used to remove the sediments (wheelbarrow, buckets, shovel, etc.). The gallery rises one metre due to the accumulated sediments and begins to descend over 12 metres until it becomes impassable.

Hydrology

Currently (December 2021) part of the rails that were installed to remove sediments are covered by the sediments brought by the reservoir water; along the gallery we find pieces of trunks brought by the water as well as various plastic waste. The cavity is likely to have been sedimented after the construction of the Sau dam; we only have data from the reservoir water flow record of the last ten years from the Agència Catalana de l'Aigua; in June 2020 the flow reached 96% of its capacity, making it necessary to open gates to drain, so it seems that it is when it reaches this level that water enters the cave.

History

At the beginning of the year 2000 Jordi Mor i Benedito(†), together with Pere Güell and other members of the Associació d'Investigacions i Recerques del Cabrerès, located an old spring that was no more than 20 cm in diameter and from which a strong air current came out. They began to remove the sediments, cleaning the conduit until reaching the rock walls and ceiling. To carry out this task they assembled some rails that are still preserved, along which a wagon circulated on which they loaded the extracted material. At 15 metres they located among the sediments a limestone axe of 10.5x5.5 cm with a bifacial structure belonging to the “Acheulean” period, apparently dated to the Lower Palaeolithic (according to Jordi Mor in the blog: arquehomo.blogspot.com).

At the end of 2002 they had opened 32 metres of gallery, having reached a higher and wider area than the previous stretch, but they saw a risk of collapse of the cave vault at this point and the dissolution of the group shortly afterwards due to disagreements among its members left the cavity in its current state.

The aforementioned risk point is practically nil, since in reality in this sector a stone and mud that held it have now fallen and the ceiling is now safe.

In 2013 Jordi Mor published some data about this cave in a personal blog, but as regards its situation he gives totally erroneous indications supposedly to make its location more difficult. This meant that different prospecting trips had to be used over the last three years until on 15 December 2021 it could finally be located.

As for the toponymy, we do not know whether due to the time elapsed since he was there or due to ignorance of the toponymy or he cites it erroneously, since he refers to the Casa de la Vall, Torrent de la Vall and finally the Cova de la Vall, when the correct names of these are the Casa de les Valls, the Torrent de les Valls and therefore the cave should be the Cova de les Valls, a name that we believe is more correct than the previous one and it is by this that we name the cavity.