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Wildenkuhle

The Wildenkuhle is a heavily sintered cave in the southern Kiersper district of Bahnhof, discovered by chance during construction work in April 2016.

Kierspe

The Wildenkuhle is a heavily sintered cave in the southern Kiersper district of Bahnhof, discovered by chance during construction work in April 2016.

Characteristics

  • Type: Cave
  • Municipality: Kierspe
  • Record updated:

Caves are protected biotopes (§30 BNatSchG). Caves used by bats as winter quarters must not be entered from 1 October to 31 March (§39(6) BNatSchG), except show caves and their developed parts.

Location

The Wildenkuhle is a cave in the southern Kiersper district of Bahnhof.

The entrance to the cave lies below the ground surface.

Map

Entrances

Always verify coordinates and access conditions before setting out.

  1. Wildenkuhle

    51.122426, 7.602952
Download all entrances as GPX

Description

Morphology

By August 2016, members of the Arbeitskreis Kluterthöhle had already explored 250 meters of the labyrinthinely extended Wildenkuhle and surveyed 200 meters of cave passages.

So that the Wildenkuhle remains accessible and can be further researched, an access shaft was created, which was sealed with a concrete plug.

Speleothems

In the cave, which is heavily sintered, there are stalactites, layered calcareous sinter and glass-clear sinter that covers entire areas.

In the southern part of the cave, button-shaped sinter formations were discovered on the walls.

Progression

The cave researchers Stefan Voigt, Andreas Kolarik and other cave researchers from the Arbeitskreis Kluterthöhle e. V. were already able to advance a stretch into the cave in April 2016.

Other details

The cave is located in Meinerzhagener Korallenkalk of the Upper Cultrijugatus beds in the Rhenish Massif on the right bank of the Rhine.

The Wildenkuhle was the subject of a research project as part of a bachelor's thesis on the climate in the cave. This was supervised by the geographer Michael Killing-Heinze from the University of Bochum, who is also the owner of the cave. The temperature in the cave is 8 to 8.5 degrees Celsius with extreme humidity.

History

It was discovered by chance in April 2016 during construction work for the building area between Heerstraße and Kölner Straße.

Bio

On the walls, 300 million-year-old fossilized corals were found, which were washed free over the course of time. These included, among others, prehistoric reef inhabitants such as stromatoporoids, tabulate and rugose corals.

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Source: Wikidata – cave items (Germany) (www.wikidata.org), modified. CC0 1.0, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Wikidata (CC0 1.0) · data as of 2026 · Source: German Wikipedia – article leads (cave descriptions) (de.wikipedia.org), modified. CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Wikipedia contributors (de.wikipedia.org), CC BY-SA 4.0 · Text by Wikipedia contributors (Wildenkuhle) · adapted by Espeleoworld (normalized, translated); the adaptation is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ · description · obtained 2026-11-13 · https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildenkuhle · data as of 2026