Caves of Klucze

Beneath the forests of the Klucze municipality, a few kilometres from the Błędów Desert, lie tens of metres of vertical fissures, shafts and chambers. One cave was found when cavers noticed snow melting in winter above a crack breathing out warm air; another turned up while a well was being dug in the middle of a village. Only one of them is really accessible to ordinary visitors, but a walk along a local nature trail shows what the karst landscape of the Polish Jura is like.

Karst in the Jura

The Klucze municipality lies on the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland (the Polish Jura), a landscape of limestone hills, rock outcrops, forests and the Biała Przemsza valley; a large part of it belongs to the Eagles' Nests Landscape Park and Natura 2000 sites. Among its karst features the municipality lists hills and rocks protected as natural monuments (including Szczypy, Maśnica, Winnica and Piecki) and the caves Błotna, Lodowa, Pod Porzeczką and Na Świniuszce. This is not a single show cave with a ticket office and lit route, but a scattered group of very different sites.

The most interesting caves

• Lodowa (Ice) Cave in Jaroszowiec – a vertical fissure up to 16 m high and about a metre wide on Pod Wieżą hill in the Góra Stołowa massif. Its lower part has a constant cold microclimate, and snow often lies here until late spring. It is at stop 5 of the "Góra Stołowa" nature trail and is visited often.
• Błotna (Mud) Cave – in the forest of the Stołowa Góra massif, off marked trails. It is 140 m long and 42 m deep, and the entrance is a 23-metre shaft only 25 cm wide at the top. Inside are large stalactites and delicate soda straws. Cavers from Bielsko-Biała discovered it in November 1988, drawn by melted snow above the fissure.
• Na Świniuszce Cave (also called Brzęczka) – on a hill near Rodaki, 127 m long and 37 m deep, the eighth longest cave in the Jura. The entrance is a tight vertical crack, and loose falling stones are a hazard inside.
• Mąciwody Cave – in Klucze itself, discovered in the 1950s while a well was being dug. You enter through a stone-lined well shaft, and the bottom at 19 m lies under water.

Interesting facts

Most caves here are fissures formed along cracks in Late Jurassic limestone, so their dripstone decoration is often sparse. The exception is Błotna, with calcite flowstone, basins and "rice-field" rimstone pools. In Mąciwody cavers were already diving the flooded passage (sump) in 1976.

Tripto tip

Błotna, Świniuszka and Mąciwody are only for trained cavers with rope equipment – do not enter without experience, a helmet and belaying. For visitors, the best option is the "Góra Stołowa" nature trail loop: Jaroszowiec church – Maniakówka rock – Błotna Cave – Lodowa Cave – Cieszyniec quarry – church. In spring, look into Lodowa to see the lingering snow. The walk takes 1.5–2 hours, and afterwards it is worth driving to the Czubatka viewpoint in Klucze for a panorama of the Błędów Desert.