CEROVAC CAVES | The sixth entrance to the Crnopac cave system was discovered

The longest speleological system in Croatia and the Dinaric Karst - the Crnopac Cave System - got a new, sixth entrance - the Vlažna Mađarica cave, 20 years after the discovery of the first entrance to the Crnopac Cave System (June 23, 2004).

On Friday, August 16, 2024, the four-member team of the Estavela Speleological Association (SUE) and the SO PDS Velebit (SO PDSV) consisting of Lovel Kukuljan, Venio Fabijančić, Dino Grozić and Olga Jerković Perić, who have just returned from the demanding International speleology expedition Njemica 2024 on Biokovo, entered the Vlažna Mađarica cave, 199 m deep and 580 meters long on the northern slopes of Crnopac, and while exploring new channels they "fell into" the labyrinth of channels of the Crnopac Cave system.

This, the last action is the fifth in a series since May 2023, in which Dino Grozić led the teams (Speleological Association "Estavela" SO Velebit & SD Velebit SO Željezničar and SO HPK Sv. Mihovil) who spent four days in the first two investigations in the widening of a forty-meter-long narrow crack that took them almost an hour to pass in the later entries. Passing through the newly explored canals, they came within thirty meters of the large system and managed to connect it in the last survey. On the surface, they returned the same way, through Važna Mađarica, in the early hours of the morning. The same day, but late in the morning, they re-entered the system, but now by an easier route through Kita Gaćešina and continued to explore and topographically record new channels.

The Vlažna Mađarica cave was found in July 2010 by a mixed Croatian-Hungarian team while returning from a visit to the Munizaba cave, and even then they had to widen the narrow entrance to the cave in order to enter and descend to a depth of 59 meters.

In the period from 2011 to 2019, five more investigations were undertaken, during which speleologists from HPK Sv. Mihovil from Šibenik made the first draft of the pit, and several attempts were made to widen the narrow cracks from which a strong air flow could be felt.

Given that the previous length of the Crnopac cave system was 62,296 meters, it is likely that the new length will exceed 63 kilometers, which will be determined by arranging the measurement data from the last survey.

After the first connection of the Draženov Pufaljka cave with the Kita Gaćešin cave in 2009, and the Oaze cave in 2019 and the Muda Labudova cave and the Adela cave in 2020, the Vlažna Mađarica cave became the sixth entrance to the Crnopac cave system, which is a great joy for speleologists and a strong incentive for further research of our largest speleological system.

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