Cavers ‘Caving’ in Armenia

Chavdarian has been to Armenia three times — in 2007, 2010 and 2011 — to continue to explore and photograph the natural, wild caves and also to visit and photograph church caves and cave villages.

In addition to Vayots Dzor, his travels have taken him to Syunik and Lori provinces, and to Nagorno-Karabagh. The initial, and most significant caving expedition in 2007 was supported with a National Speleological Society (NSS) grant in the US and organized with assistance from AdvenTour in Yerevan.

The first trip included a visit to four caves, including Arjeri (Bear) Cave, Mozrovi Cave, Karmir (Red) Cave and Mageli Cave. Mozrovi Cave includes about 300 meters of known passage and is noted for its multi-colored limestone formations. Arjeri Cave — at 2.3 miles of passage with many types of formations — is the largest of Armenia’s caves and included many challenges for the group such as walking through narrow passageways, crawling, climbing up and down and using hand lines. Karmir Cave was at the highest elevation of the caves that were explored — nearly 7000 feet. A visit to Mageli Cave, with 1.1 miles of cave passage, found the cavers in the midst of a huge bat colony, narrow squeezes, climbs, crawls and even tall, long passageways. The team visited Geghard, a manmade cave monastery carved out of a side of a mountain. Known by St. Gregory as the “Monastery of the Spear,” a visit to this site resulted in a deeper understanding and appreciation for our ancestors’ devotion to Christianity, and the importance of geography for the survival of the people and their edifices.

The team also visited Jerovank, a water church cave, located at the end of a narrow, picturesque canyon in Vayors Dzor near the village of Arpi.

In fact, it was while traveling through rugged, mountainous Armenia, that Chavdarian soon realized the difficulty of getting around, and came to understand why churches were placed everywhere. True to Armenian hospitality, when the expedition set up campsites, the nearby villagers would bring them food throughout their stay in a given area.

Chavdarian’s slides helped to educate all as he identified various types of beautiful cave formations that are part of living caves, including bacon strips, pipe organs, stalagmites, stalactites, coral, draperies and flowstone —all composed of limestone. The caves in Armenia are also multi-colored, due to both mineralization and organic matter leaching into the solubilized limestone and then depositing in the caves resulting in colored cave formations. The magnitude of colors in the Armenian caves, which are quite stunning, are, in fact, rarely encountered to this degree in caves around the world.