This summer we had less manpower than last year, but were still attempting to set up a similar four-man camp at -550m and carry out deep pushing. Our exploration continued routes which were diverse in direction from camp—soon we were taking many hours just to travel from camp to the pushing front and back.As a result of the reduced man power, we unfortunately did not manage to contribute much towards the exploration of Kavkna Jama and the attempted connection of the Migovec and Vrtnarija systems.

Our efforts were considerably hampered by the weather. We had the wettest summer we’ve ever experienced on Migovec.A particularly memorable rainstorm of 48 hours near the beginning of expedition was rounded off by a snow storm. For two periods of 36 hours, underground camp was effectively cut off from the surface by high water levels in the cave system.

In all we discovered 2229m of new cave passage taking the cave to 11025m long and 888m deep. All these extensions have been made at depths greater than 500m, on multi-day trips based at an underground camp. Vrtnarija now has the vast majority of passage, over 8km, at depths of greater than 500m.

New survey:

http://www.union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving/slovenia/slov2011/gw_2011-08-30_colour.pdf

Expedition website:

http://www.union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving/slovenia/slov2011/