2012 Photo Contest, Nature, 2nd prize

Infinite Cave

Photographer

Carsten Peter

<em>National Geographic</em> magazine

29 March, 2010

Hang Son Doong, in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in Vietnam, is believed by many to be the largest cave on earth.

About the photographer

Carsten Peter

Carsten Peter is a regular contributor to National Geographic magazine, and specializes in going to extremes: scuba diving in a glacier on Mont Blanc, crossing the Sahara on a ca...

Background story

Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, Vietnam

Hang Ken, only recently surveyed, is 3.8 kilometers long. Hang Son Doong, in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in Vietnam, is believed by many to be the largest cave on earth. It is more than four kilometers long, with a continuous passage as wide as 90 meters, and, in places, well over 180 meters high—spacious enough to accommodate an entire New York City block of 40-story buildings. It is part of a system of 150 or so caves, many still not surveyed, under the Annamite Mountains, formed two to five million years ago, when river water scoured a tunnel along a fault in the limestone.

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