Jama Na Meji - 5th Aug 2009
Wednesday August 5th 2009
Members present: Alexander Stelfox, Chad B, George Bunyan, Louise Bell, Matt Gosling, Matthijs Bouwman
Report by Matt Gosling
It resides in the forest, tucked into a small embankment between sprinkles of trees, the gaping darkness of its entrance lazily yawning at the leafy sky. I abseiled off the rope that I had rigged to an overhanging tree backed up to another tree a few feet further up the embankment. There was some rope rub at the top but the rock seemed very smooth so I decided to abseil straight in. As I abseiled a few feet down I suddenly reached the end of the overhanging ledge of rock that I had been supporting myself against and the pitch became free-hanging. For the first time I was able to view the full profile of the chamber I was descending into, a spectacular sight. I realised that the entrance is actually a small skylight in a fairly expansive ceiling. Half way between my location, hanging just below the ceiling, and the floor of the cave, a large rock bridge swept across the venue, one side of the bridge falling into the main body of the chamber and the other forming a six foot diameter “eyehole”. Below the bridge the floor itself twisted and corkscrewed into the earth around to the right. I descended onto the rock bridge and steadied myself looking for bolts or spits over the larger ledge. I couldn’t easily see anything further to rig off so deciding that any rope rub would be minimal and that “this is what caving abroad is all about!” I threw myself over the side and abseiled to the floor.
I detached from the rope and called it free shouting for Chad (who had originally been the one to successfully find the cave) to bring the rope protector which I knew had a great deal of potential to become useful on the return journey with the rub points in the system. I then made my way across the chamber to a point in which I could easily view people coming down the pitch and wow, what a view I was greeted with. Shards of glinting, canopy stained sunlight streamed in through the entrance scattering off the dust in the air and the odd gracefully tumbling dead leaf, dousing the chamber in a hollow glow. At one point I thought I actually saw the owl gliding into the entrance but in hindsight I think that this was probably just a bat or the romantic part of my imagination getting carried away in the moment. The rock bridge stood proudly above me and all around small dried out calcite formations loomed.
Once everyone had touched down from the entrance pitch we made our way down into the depths of the chamber to a choke in the floor with a dodgy loose rock that someone had labelled “danger!” in some kind of red paint. Once through the choke we arrived in a further chamber that was well decorated with flowstone and further dried out stalactites and stalagmites. In some places the earth and rock was stained a very rich red colour adding to the strangeness off this place. Alex and George were as enthusiastic as usual tearing up the loose dig and any other nook and cranny they came across trying to find further reaches to the cave. We left them to it and began to make our way out. On the way back up the entrance pitch I managed to find a spit on the side of the rock bridge and put in a rebelay with a rope protector positioned directly beneath it. We found a damp discarded ground mat in a corner of the chamber and got Matt B to take it up and position it over the rock face at the entrance to prevent further rope rub. After all getting out safely we headed off into the forest in search of further adventure, feeling very contented with our first caving experience in Slovenia (and my personal first cave outside of England).
