Caves of the Summan Plateau

Limestone Caves near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Display Delicate Beauty

Jan 12, 2009

Saudi Arabia has hundreds of limestone caves located only a few hours north of Riyadh, offering visitors a cool underground climate and stunning crystal formations.

Deep sinkholes and complex labyrinths lie alongside Arabia’s desert sands, in particular on the Summan Plateau, in the center of the country. Many of these caves are home to foxes, rock doves and spiny-tailed lizards, but in the past were of little interest to human beings.

The Bedouin traditionally crawled into such holes only in a desperate attempt to find food or water, otherwise giving them a wide berth, because caves are said to be the homes of jinns (spirits). Today, however, cavers employ ropes and ladders to reach the bottom of pits up to 100 meters deep or to follow meandering passageways, shrouded in darkness, for kilometers.

A Cool Cave with Crystals

Perhaps the most visited cave on the Summan Plateau is Dahl Murrubeh. This cave has a large entrance 15 meters wide. A steep slope leads down to a large room softly lit by reflected sunlight. In the summer, the cool and pleasant temperature of this room makes it a perfect refuge from the intense heat on the surface, which can easily surpass 50° C (120° F).

At one end of this room begins a long passage whose walls are covered with sparkling crystals. At the far end of this passage, the ceiling is covered with small, delicate, feather-like formations of calcite or aragonite. In another difficult-to-access part of the cave, explorers discovered thousands of animal bones, two human skulls and the beautifully preserved, naturally mummified body of an Arabian Red Fox, carbon-dated at 2000 years old.

Squeezing into Surprise Cave

Unlike Murubbeh Cave, Surprise Cave has a tiny entrance hole, just over half a meter in diameter. Climbing ability is required to negotiate a 15-meter-high vertical shaft leading to the cave proper, which is a maze of passages totaling some 652 meters with many areas still unexplored.

The salient features of Surprise Cave are its dramatically beautiful and unusual stalactites and stalagmites. Scientists from Bern University in Switzerland attempted to date some of these formations and were amazed to find them so old that their age cannot be determined by any known method. The Swiss experts concluded that they must be at least one million years old.

Deep Pits

In addition to horizontal mazes, the Summan Plateau has many vertical pits. One of these is called Abalhol (Father of Fear) and is 75 meters deep. An explorer enters by rappelling down a single nylon rope suspended in the void like a spider on a silk thread.

Return to the surface is accomplished not by a winch but by simple man-or-woman power. Mechanical ascenders—devices that slide up but won’t slide down—are attached to the cord allowing a cave explorer to “walk up the rope” at a leisurely pace.

Unfortunately, some of the delicate formations in Saudi Arabia’s desert caves have been damaged or stolen by vandals. Hopefully readers of this article will reflect on The Golden Rule followed by cave explorers all over the world:

The copyright of the article Caves of the Summan Plateau in Caving is owned by John Pint. Permission to republish Caves of the Summan Plateau in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.