Yelang Shibadong Cave
Located on the western slope of Gaoming Mountain in Shibadong Village, Huayuan County, Yelang Shibadong Cave has six entrances, most of which are fissure-typed shafts. The cave, which is more than 1 km long and 150m deep (not fully measured), is a shaft-gallery-chamber-typed cave. The cave body is developed in mid thick-thin layer limestone in the mid-Cambrian system. The cave passage is subject to the control of interlayer folds and secondary fractures, while the branch caves are interlaced with one another to form a labyrinth-shaped and multi-layer structure. Due to the impact of crustal uplift as a result of neotectonic movement, the subterranean streams of the cave continue to develop downward. Therefore, Yelang Shibadong Cave is known as the longest and largest cave system in the region with the most complex spatial structure. More than ten chambers occur in the cave, where diverse types and shapes of speoleothems are developed, such as soda straw, stalagtite, stone column, stalactite, cave flower, stone curtain, cave grape, rimstone dam, and terraced stone field, etc. (Photo 4-100).
Photo 4-100 Tall stalagmite and waterfall in Yelang Shibadong Cave
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