Al Fahda Cave
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| | Difficulty:Cave 2A II PG (v2a1 II) Raps:
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| Best season: | Spring, Fall (avg for this region)
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32.3071, 37.1270
32.3071, 37.1270
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Introduction[edit]
Al-Fahda (“the lioness”) Cave (Al-Malabeh et al., 2006) was named after the local name for one of the youngest lava fields (K–Ar age 0.46 ± 0.01 Ma sample HAS-7; Tarawneh et al., 2000) in the Harrat. It was first mentioned without any speleological details by Helms (1981, p.138) as El-Mughara in connection with the investigation of the famous Bronze Age desert city Jawa. Helms described a channel that leads to the entrance of the cave, apparently dug in an attempt to store water in times of plenty in the cave for times of need. This channel led to the rediscovery of the cave by the second author, who followed it from Wadi Rajil (830 m a.m.s.l) in the north downslope to the main entrance (730 m a.m.s.l) (Al-Malabeh et al., 2006) and surveyed by us in 2005 (Table 2; Fig. 2). The cave is also known under the name of Khsheifa Cave and was surveyed in parallel by Frumkin et al. (2008) yielding astonishingly similar results (their length 920 m).The cave has a very low slope, according to our survey of about 0.7°. Such a low slope is typical for tube-fed pahoehoe flows. Al-Fahda Cave is unusually wide but very low and has a very flat floor (at least were the rock floor is visible) (Fig. 3). It appears that this was caused by a later invasive flow filling the lower part of the tunnel. It shows a blocky surface and ends in two flow lobes shortly before the cave itself ends. It remains unclear if this fill is autochthonous, i.e, generated within the tunnel as a terminal slump of a higher viscosity, or allochthonous, i.e. caused by an invasion of a later flow of the Al-Fahda flow field through a ceiling hole (above the current accessible section of the cave). The main entrance to the cave today is through a late central ceiling collapse, exposing a cross section through the primary roof. It is composed of two relatively thick layers, in contrast to other caves that have up to 12 sheets in the primary ceiling (in case of Abu Al-Kursi) (for a more detailed study of the cave see Al-Malabeh et al., 2006).
