Planetskier: Catalonia caves I

After working several weeks straight with not even weekends free, I thought I would be completely free today and can just leisurely drive around the Pyrenees and look for interesting stuff. Well, it turned out that I still had to listen to some conference calls while driving. But it was an interesting drive in the canyons leading towards the northern border. And I was hunting some caves. Turned out I didn't really properly find the caves that I was looking for but did find some other interesting ones :-)

Plus a very interesting canyon/dam area, man-made tunnels and small natural holes.

Let's go through my findings in chronological order of the day:

Cova de l'Arena in La Maçana. The coordinates are supposed to be N 41.905245 E 0.8905533. But I didn't find a cave matching that description here or anywhere nearby, though I found exactly at the right place a smaller hole, or possibly the advertised cave was filled with some rock material by someone. Anyway, the area is steep, full of impenetrable bushes, so I am not sure if I looked hard enough. But in the claimed coordinates there is a small hole, maybe just enough for one person to go fully inside.

Photos:

Cova de l'Arena tunnel. The coordinates are N 41.903612 E 0.888949. This is a man-made tunnel, peeked inside for a bit... but this is likely a tunnel related to the dam upstream, so ... at any time there could be a massive flood of water coming down. Not recommended!

Photos:

Cova de l'Arena mini cave. This is a side cave of the above. Coordinates: N 41.903164 E 0.888772. A tiny hole, but still. And yes, with toilet paper inside ... sigh.

Photos:

Central hidroelèctrica d'Alòs de Balaguer in Riu Segre. This is the dam. The coordinates are N 41.906208 E 0.893146. You can walk on a walking platforms a bit forward on the sides of the dam, to get a view. Wonderful views. This is a smaller dam and power station, and next to the much bigger built right across the river, the Camarasa dam and power station. There appears to be also longer walking routes on both sides of the gorge, would have been interesting to take them, but did not have time of that during my day. More information here and here.

Photos:

Cova de la Figuera in La Maçana. The coordinates are N 41.916889 E 0.867899. Read more here. This was my surprise find, just something that stared me from road. Literally, it is two eye-shaped openings looking down on the road from the cliff side. Very interesting cave.

I tried to do a 3D scan, but my phone run out of space and battery... sigh.

Photos:

Forat de l'Or in Camarasa. The coordinates are N 42.0391572 E 0.8849846. Read more here. This is something that I had researched about, easy to find, but turned out to be challenging at first to get in. The main entrance was not easy to enter due to a concrete water basin construction. I was sure I could get in but I wasn't quite sure I would have been able to get out. Fortunately I had to take a leak behind the bushes and realized that behind those bushes was actually also a second, side entrance to the cave. The cave is long, 2213 meters. But only part of it is actually accessible by on foot, as it sumps fairly quickly. I also didn't have my cave suit on, so ended up going as far as I could by walking, didn't resort to crawling through mud pools, as tempting as it would have been :-)

Photos, first the canyon bridge next to the cave, then the main entrance, and then the side entrance:

See also my follow-up caving efforts here (alt. link).

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.

This article was originally published in the Planetskier Blogspot article series.