The Tatra Mountains—Host of the Deepest Caves in the Carpathians

The Tatra Mountains are the highest mountain massif in the Carpathian range, hosting the deepest caves in the belt, reaching a depth of 824 m in the the Wielka Śnieżna Caves System. Cave evolution started at the end of the Miocene and is related to the Tatras’ asymmetrical upliftUplift and, during the Pleistocene, to the existence of mountain glaciersGlacier. Karst in the Tatras is strongly controlled by fold-and-thrustThrust, thrusting setting, which influences both underground flow pathways and cave passage morphology. Caves in the Tatras are the only alpine-type karst phenomena in the Western Carpathians and can be defined by containing deep, epigenic multi-level cave systems with proglacialCaveproglacial vadoseVadose avens, all in the high-relief area shaped by glaciers. Although surface forms are poorly developed, the underground karstic landscape is rich and diverse, with more than 175 km of cave passages. During over a century of research, Polish speleologists have made numerous discoveries, and several of them have become embedded in the global literature, such as the theory of proglacial cavesCaveproglacial.