Riesending Cave
Pit cave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Riesending Cave (German: Riesending-Schachthöhle) is a pit cave in the Untersberg near Berchtesgaden, Germany, and Salzburg, Austria. At 1,148 m it is the deepest and at 19,300 m the longest cave in Germany. It was discovered in 1996. In June 2014 it became well known because of a large effort to rescue a lead speleologist.
Description
The Riesending Cave (German for "huge thing") is a pit cave in the Untersberg, near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria. At 23,800 m[1] it is the longest and 1,148 m the deepest in Germany.[2] Riesending was discovered in 1996 by Hermann Sommer and Ulrich Meyer.[3]
In June 2014, Riesending became well known to the general public for the largest ever rescue effort, the rescue in the Riesending Cave, taking eleven days by 700 members of a multinational group of cave rescuers to rescue then-52-year-old Johann Westhauser, one of the original and principal researchers of the cave, a physicist, speleologist and cave rescuer himself, who had been injured in a rockfall deep in the cave.[4]
See also
- Schellenberg Ice Cave
- Kolowrat cave
- Windlöcher
- Fürstenbrunner Quellhöhle
