The new explorations of Athos Mt. Greece The second stage of the international project Study of the caves of Mount Athos (Mount Athos) - Greece. ended.
The same was initiated by the Bulgarian side and held under the patronage and with financial and material support of the European Federation of Speleology. The project team is composed Zhalov A. - Head, V. Gyorev , Zh.Vlaykov (Bulgaria), L. Makrostergios, J. Oykonomidis, T. Komaditis and M.Karidas (Greece), I. Agapov, S. Kaminski (Russia), A.Yamac (Turkey). The group works on an area from 1 st to 11 September. In this period were surveyed the areas of the monasteries , Diohar, Xenophon and heritages Kafrsokalivion, Little St.Anna, St. Anna and Nea Skiti. The distances between these holy places were mostly overcome with walking tours lasting from 1 to 4 hours, the movement by sea is carried by ferries. During the event were identified and mapped (according to preliminary data, information obtained on site and as a result of the search) about 45 underground sites. They can be divided into three main categories - caves associated with the lives of Saints, caves cells, usual and sea caves and artificial caves (catchments and reservoirs ). Along with it was collected many oral and photo information to other cave objects, which will be the subject of future studies. Preliminary data show that the team were surveyed 36 sites with a total length more than 350 meters. Other 9 objects was only visited and sketched among which is probably the longest cave in Athos for the moment. There were localized but not explored 2 more caves, one of which probably is so called The Big Cave of Athos. According the existing data (http://www.isihazm.ru/?id=1592) the cave over 150 m long. Its entrance is 50 m wide and around 80 m in high. The total number of the explored underground cavites under the project up to date is around 100.
The information for the results for the first stage and later for the expedition in 2012 is available at :https://sites.google.com/site/athosmistery/home