Lave Tube Vertical Entrance 📷 Dave Bunnell
Lave Tube Vertical Entrance 📷 Dave Bunnell

The Virtual Cave

Caves are home to amazing things! Since the mid-90s The Virtual Cave has provided an online visual reference for cave types & cave formations. Learn more below.

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Cave Formations & Features

Caves form through a number of different mechanisms. Cave formations - also known as speleothems - found within can vary widely depending on how the cave formed. Click below to learn how different caves form and how that affects the cave environment.

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Solutional Cave 📷 Dave Bunnell

Solutional Caves

These are the caves most people are familiar with. Dissolved out of limestone or other carbonate rocks by acidic water, they can contain an astounding variety of speleothems, such as stalactites and stalagmites.

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Sea Cave 📷 Dave Bunnell

Sea Caves

Carved by the power of oceans, sea caves may be gentle or treacherous to explore. Found along coasts throughout the world, they can get surprisingly large.

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Glacier Cave - Jason Gulley

Glacier Caves

Caves may be eroded in a variety of rocks: granite, sandstone, even ice, by the power of water and wind-borne particles. Or water may simply melt passages through ice.

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lava_icon

Lava Tubes

Flowing lava often forms conduits. When those conduits empty, they form caves known as lava tubes or products. Some of these are miles long and thousands of feet deep. There are many fascinating things to be found inside.

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Erosional Cave - Dave Bunnell

Erosional Caves

Caves may be eroded in a variety of rocks: granite, sandstone, even ice, by the power of water and wind-borne particles. Or water may simply melt passages through ice.

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Salt-Cave-600x600

Salt Caves

Caves may be eroded in a variety of rocks: granite, sandstone, even ice, by the power of water and wind-borne particles. Or water may simply melt passages through ice.

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Formation Index:

Solutional Caves Formations & Features

Aragonite

Baldacchino Canopies

Balloons

Bathtubs

Bell Canopies

Blisters

Bottle Brushes

Boxwork

Cave Pearls

Chandeliers

Columns

Conulites

Coralloids

Deflected Stalactites

Draperies

Fibrous Speleothems

Flowstone

Folia

Gypsum Flowers

Gypsum Needles

Halite Flowers

Helictites

Hoods

Ice Formations

Mammilaries

Moonmilk

Mud Stalagmites

Phytokarst

Pool Fingers

Pool Spar

Popcorn

Raft Cones

Rafts

Rims

Rimstone

Rootsicles

Shelfstone

Shields

Showerheads

Soda Straws

Spar

Spathites

Speleogens

Splattermites

Stalactites

Stalagmites

Stegamites

Trays

Triangles

Lava Tube Formations & Features

A’a Lava

Apron

Backflow

Blades

Braided Maze

Breakdown

Bridges

Cauliflower A’a Lava

Color

Contraction Cracks

Cupolas

Cutbank

Drip Stalagmite

Entrances

Flow Ledge

Flow Lines

Glaze

Gutter

Lava Balls

Lava Fall

Lava Lake

Lava Rose

Lava Seal

Levees

Linings

Mineral Deposits

Pahoehoe Lava

Passage Types

Roots

Runners

Settled Crust

Sharktooth Stalactites

Sinuous Passage

Skylight

Spatter

Splash Stalactites

Stretched Lava

Sunken Plunge Pool

Tree Mold

Tube Slime

Tube-in-Tube

Tubular Lava Helictites

Tubular Lava Stalactites

Upwelled Lava

Welded Breakdown

Window