Molnar Janos

Team: Peter Gärtner & Manu Schoch, Clemens Schützenhofer, Oliver Ferner-Prantner, Jozsef Spanyol

A long awaited dream, the beta dive of the Molnar Janos in Budapest came true. We followed an invitation from Clemenzo from Team DIR-Austria. Clemenzo has very good contacts to Jozsef Spanyol, one of the exploration divers in the Molnar Janos, and had taken care of the organization in Budapest.

The first common meeting point with our Austrian friends was in Vienna, at the DIR-Austria headquarters. From here the trip continued together to Budapest. Luckily, because the maps of our navigation system ended in Austria. After a total of 10 hours of driving, we had a beer at the hotel and then it was off to the nest. The next day was going to be exciting.

The next morning we were picked up after breakfast at the hotel by Joszef and drove together across the city to Molnar Janos, which is located directly opposite a subway stop.

The entrance is completely hidden behind a huge iron gate. No one would suspect that behind these walls black frogmen disappear into the warm waters of underground passages.
There was already a lot of activity on site, with several groups preparing to dive and sorting their junk. First we got a detailed tour of the location including the private termal pool. Additionally we got the initiation into the secret of the famous "Rubberboat-riding". On the premises there are still the remains of an old Turkish bath, which is also used as a changing room.

We had planned an extended dive to get acquainted and possibly take pictures, planned 3 - 4 hours. We were all divers with rebreathers (type: AH1 and RB 100). Our dive should lead us once across a large part of the system.

We calmly assembled our equipment, launched scooters and stages and descended the steps already known from many pictures into the water. The entrance is very narrow, more like a vertical chasm and went down to 4m. The passage continued narrow and somewhat labyrinthine until the first larger room at 14m. Then our medium complex plan began. 

Ahead ... 6m gas drop ... back ... pick up scooter ... right away .... Drop 21m of gas ... back and then left. Anyway, something like this ............

After that, the actual dive began. We glided through the toasty warm water (18°C at 50m and 28°C at 6m), what a difference to our last dives in German waters. The passages between the subsystems were scootered, but the majority of the dive we explored on foot. Unfortunately, we had some bad luck and our visit collided with intensive excavation work. As a result, visibility was mostly poor at under 5m. The excavations are supposed to create a connection between the different passage systems. It was a bit better in the 50m chamber and in the northeastern part of the system, where visibility of 10 - 15m awaited us.

It was a great and eventful day, this dive has been on top of the wish list for a very long time. Together we let the evening end with delicious "running Sushi buffet".
On Sunday morning we started again on our 10 hour journey home. This long trip for a single dive had been totally worth it and was the perfect distraction before Manu's written state exam (which took place the next day).
Next time we will take 1-2 days more time to explore the city of Budapest as well.

Thanks again to Clemenzo, Jozsef and Oliver for this unforgettable experience.

In this sense,

Your Cavebase

Gallery

[module-227]