Andrea Benassi takes us to the discovery of a piping cave, a rare and little-known phenomenon in the speleological world
Jumping from gully to gully, Andrea Benassi has finally discovered a piping cave in the ‘Badlands’ of Emilia Romagna.
This cave, about 40 meters long and with a difference in height of about fifteen metres, winds under one of the infinite incisions of the gullies, in the scaly clays of the Ligurian unit.
This chaotic mineral world, partly very ancient, today presents itself in the form of beautiful labyrinths of ridges and valleys.
In this labyrinth, a cave really suited us! Judging by the comparison with satellite images, this phenomenon does not appear to be too ephemeral, given that it has existed for at least 20 years and in this period of time it is evolving in relation to the surface erosion of the gully.
It is a real stump of a ‘piping network’ destined to enter into coalescence with the outside, contributing to the evolution of the gully.
A pseudokarst phenomenon which adds to the presence of the many traces of micro-piping present in the younger blue clays.
Until now, the possible existence of accessible caves in the clays of Emilia Romagna was only known as a phenomenon thanks to Gianluca Azzi’s 1914 article which testified to the existence of a ‘cave’ in the clays measuring approximately 16 meters in length.
However, this cave no longer exists and was probably destroyed by mountain reclamation works.
At present, the cave discovered and documented by Andrea Benassi appears to be the first piping cave currently existing in the Emilia Romagna region.
Photo and caption text: Andrea Benassi
The bibliography on pseudokarst phenomena is significantly smaller than that on ‘normal’ caves.
It is an apparently ‘strange’ topic, the study and research of which attracts a subset of the already few speleologists.
However, from the Atlas of non-calcareous cavities published in 1997, no clay caves are mentioned in Italy, while in the continuously updated lists present on the cave-exploring.com website, there is a specific ‘piping cave’ category where 84 this type documented on the planet with a length ranging from 2000 to 40 meters of development and no ‘Italian’ presence.
This cave would therefore rightfully enter this strange list and would be one of the few of this type currently known in Europe.
Obviously, if there is one there may be others, perhaps even larger.
The Ocean of the Badlands is vast and in this case it goes without saying that the search has only just begun.
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