52281. The entrance to the cave, the shaft, is four meters deep and can be descended freely. The rope however facilitates lowering of the transport bag with the photo gear and other equipment.
Most images are approximately 768 by 1024 pixels. At the beginning of the descriptions are the serial numbers of the original photo files. Sometimes the names of cave parts are the author's. Vladimir Levašov participated in the field trip on May 15. In the text France Šušteršič, the driving force of Laški Ravnik exploration, is mentioned several times.
Page, texts and photos copyright (c) Primož Jakopin - Klok 2023.
52281. The entrance to the cave, the shaft, is four meters deep and can be descended freely. The rope however facilitates lowering of the transport bag with the photo gear and other equipment.
52282. View from the hall below the entrance to the entrance shaft and upper room
52288. View up the entrance drop
52285. About ten meters east of the entrance, and one and a half meters higher, there is a small depression, just above the chimney in Šerko's hall of the cave Najdena jama. Jožek Košir - Cox and his team started an excavation here years ago, but now it was densely covered with dry branches again. The author removed them from the entrance - the pile is depicted in the upper left of the photo.
52286. With a folding shovel, he also removed the surface debris from the hole.
52296. Map of Galacijevka, made by Gregor Pintar, connected to Najdena jama by France. While adding the Gregor's map to existing survey of Najdena jama and surface points, France noticed that Gregor's polygon closed so perfectly that there was hardly any need to adjust the map.
52298. View along the Main tunnel, to the north. The light on the left comes from the shaft, the third entrance to the cave.
52299. View back from about the same position towards the South entrance
52300. Supporting rock pillar at the bend of the Main tunnel, in front of the North entrance
52301. About 80 cm long (in height) round ceiling cavern, like half a sphere, to the right of the column from the previous photo
52302. View a little below the eastern edge of the kukava (very large collapse doline in local parlance) to the southwest. The scene is beautiful, truly alpine, only the spruces, which lost their tops during the February 2014 frozen rain disaster, later dried up and eventually fell over each other, making the passage quite complicated.
52304. The excursion, which was supposed to be a prelude to a renewed digging attempt in the blowhole, was initiated by France Šušteršič. Several decades ago, he and his friend and soul mate, Matjaž Puc - Tužak, became aware of the speleological importance of the Laški Ravnik and the possible discovery of large caves still hidden in its underground. The writer of these lines also has fond memories of Laški Ravnik, the first cave that he entered in the cave register, Gabrnška (Martinčkova) cave is situated here.
And if today there is no large cave on Ravnik comparable to the caves of Lanski vrh - The wind cave, which is the largest and also has a short underground water flow, is only 55 meters long and 34 meters deep - the collapse dolines, Laška kukava with a volume of about 4 million cubic meters is the largest, testify that sooner or later a large cave will be discovered here. In Laška kukava, the bottom of which is 436 meters above sea level, and the borders at 525 m a.s.l., Tužak discovered, during winter trips around 2000, discovered a large area of melted snow. It was situated on the SW side of kukava, and in its lower corner, about 480 meters above sea level, there was a blowhole, which is the subject of today's field trip. On December 12, 2004, France and Igor Maksim Košir surveyed a polygon with 33 points, from the road west of the kukava past the Vetrovna jama entrance to the blowhole in Laška kukava itself, to the bottom of kukave and to the top again, to the road east of the kukava. Later, the blowhole was lost, and found again at the end of the winter of 2015. At that time, the veterans who are now digging in Radošca 2 decided to dig the blowhole until a cave opens up. As the starting point they chose a place above the blowhole, diagonally upwards, about 20 meters higher. It looked as an easier dif because it wasn't in solid rock, they hoped to get to it soon. After a few excursions, they reached a depth of about 10 meters, still in the collapse with no solid wall in sight. Due to the danger of loose large rocks, the team abandoned further digging. The polygon just mentioned is also shown in the picture above, which was provided to the author by France. The blowhole is point 12, at the southern intersection of the polygon.
52303. For easier orientation, the author first descended to the bottom of the doline. To the west of it thereis a collapse slope, and above it an almost vertical wall with traces of a recent rock break.
52306. All along the way to the bottom, the author did not find a single piece of garbage, but right at the bottom there was this quite weathered car tire, no more than 30 years old, already Made in Slovenia (till 1991 it would bear the note Made in Yugoslavia). The tire had to be thrown over the west wall. It was quite a feat to haul it up to the surface and from there to the tire depot.
52307. View vertically upwards from the bottom of the kukava. A few smaller logs have fallen over it.
52308. While climbing to the top of the doline on the side where there might be a blowhole, the author could not find it, but he came across this rock shelter, some 20 meters below the edge.
52309. A meter wide, about three meters long and dry enough to crawl in for this inside-out shot.
52310. Sunset over the kukava
52379. After an unsuccessful April 22 search, France Šušteršič provided the author with the data of four legs of the aforementioned polygon, namely from point 16 (the bottom of the sinkhole) to point 12, the blowhoče at the southern intersection of the polygon (position-viewed point, distance, azimuth, inclination) :
16-15, 11.0 m, 158, +21 / 15-14, 26.0 m, 149, +22 / 14-13, 47.1 m, 151, +23 / 13-12, 17.4 m, 111, + 37.
Vladimir and I started with a polygon above the bottom of the sinkhole, which can be easily located to an accuracy of less than a meter. We only had a compass and a meter, we didn't need a clinometer, because the survey legs would go along the terrain. The branched and already well-leafed bushes made the work a little difficult, the meter was also only 20 m long and the longer legs had to be made "per partes", but after less than half an hour the survey ended with complete success. It is interesting that the last leg exactly crossed the point 12, the blowhole (over its center), just the distance from point 13 was 12 meters and not 17.4. As any such survey is approximate, the achievemt was excellent. The entrance to the blowhole (on the photo) is about a meter long and half a meter wide, vertical, the drop is one and a half meters deep. The number 12 is written in brown on the deciduous tree next to the cave.
52381. View from the top of the blowhole, the white plastic bucket on the shelf is probably from the spring 2015 digging, in a point on the upper side of the blowhole area. The cave runs along a fissure in the strata of the NW-SE direction, the blowhole bottom descends to the SE, where the dig would have to start. Unfortunately, there was no draft at all in the blowhole. The outside temperature, in the shade, was 15.5⁰C (half a meter above the ground), and the temperature in the plane of the entrance was 15.3⁰C. According to Vladimir, it would be a long dig, the broken zone through which the warmer air from the cave melted the snow in winter looks quite thick.
52380. View down the slope, to the south, from the blowhole. The spruce, wedged diagonally between the beech trees, is visible from quite a distance, and even more so is the approximately two-meter-high drop in the strata (left), it stretches from the bottom of the blowhole zone up almost to the top of the kukava.
52382. Vladimir also found the upper entrance, where the veterans dug in 2015. He told France that at least cavers from Borovnica and Logatec were also here, and Borovnica guys also did some digging. Probably someone else too. The location is important because, in France's opinion, this can hardly be anything other than a continuation of the Vetrovna jama (Wind cave) beyond the kukava, in the direction of Pušča (which is further SE on Ravnik, writer's note). The entrance was heavily littered with dry branches, which we removed, except for a fallen hornbeam that now grows across the entrance. The entrance is open to the slope, so the sliding snow in the winter also drags rocks with it, and there is a pile in the entrance, which closed the passage deeper into the abandoned work site.
Related pages:
Zelške jame, April 5
Markovščina shepherd's trail, April 27
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member of the Ljubljana Cave Exploration Society (DZRJL).
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The page was initiated on May 18, 2023 and last modified on May 26.
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