During the International speleo-diving (or cave diving) expedition "Rokina Bezdana’’, on July 15, we visited two objects; Pasja jama (The Dog Pit), and cave  Mala Rokinka. They are both located near a viaduct on the Zagreb-Split motorway, at the south exit of the Mala Kapela tunnel. The objective was to survey topographically both objects for the elaboration of maps. Eszter Domina, Gabriela Koltai and Szofia Libor from the Hungarian SZKBE, and Marijana Jelić and me (Damir Pavelić) from DDISKF participated in this action.

First, we visited Pasja jama – Dog’s pit (the name was given to it as a memory of two dog corpses we had found there during our previous explorations of the pit).

After preparing the pit and the descent of our Hungarian colleagues, Marijana and I started surveying. The pit has a narrow entrance with a big rock which is fixed so it represents no danger. The pit has a shape of a knee, bell-shaped at the bottom, expanding into a big chamber. The vertical part is 42 metres deep, and the depth of the entire pit is 48 metres.

The bottom of the pit contains mostly clay sediment mixed with crushed rocks. There is also a small amount of garbage, which is unfortunately typical for the objects near the settlements. Since we arrived during the dry period of the year, there was water only at the bottom of the siphon, which is too narrow for diving. However, there are traces of periodical lifting of the water level in the range of several metres. That was our conclusion after seeing plastic bottles and other floating garbage found stuck in the cracks several metres above us. We did not find a possibility of further advancing due to all the potential channels being buried or too narrow.

After the Pasja jama, we continued surveying of the Mala Rokinka cave located in the vicinity. It is a cave with a big entrance turning into the main chamber. The very entrance probably resulted from collapsing of the parts of the ceiling. At the edges of the chamber there are small narrow extensions, where the way could be dug through.

In one of these extensions there is some air flow. The bottom is covered with rocks that had buried channels on the sides. There is a chimney too, but it is not promising due to the thin upper layer. Mala Rokinka is in the fossil phase, with traces of water acting at the very bottom, in the shape of small cascades. The length of all channels is 87 metres.

Dog's pit - outline

Little Rokina - outline