Go Inside These World-

Famous, Rarely Seen River

Caves
By Andrew Bisharat

Photographs by Robbie Shone

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 8, 2017

Slovenia is a world-famous caving destination, with around

8,000 jamas, or caves, located in a country smaller than Vermont. Of
those 8,000 formations, however, only around 20 are considered “show
caves”—caves that contain a unique beauty and scale that rivals many of
the much larger karstic topographies found in
southeastern China, Vietnam, Laos, and Papua New Guinea.

A number of powerful rivers traverse Slovenia, mostly overland, but at a

few unique locations the rivers will mysteriously disappear into the
ground, down into a hidden filigree of subterranean conduits bore
through the porous, cavernous limestone.

Robbie Shone, a photographer and caver originally from the U.K. but
now living in Austria, has been working to photograph underground
points in Slovenia where several of its most famous rivers—namely, the
Reka, Rak, and Pivka rivers—either disappear or emerge.
“The Reka river is the key to this whole project,” says Shone, who
dreamed of capturing these images for the past decade. “It strings
together the entire story.”

KRIŽNA JAMA
At 27,142 feet, Križna jama, aka the “Cross Cave,” is nearly as long as Mount
Everest is tall—yet it’s still considered a moderately sized cave for Slovenia. Križna
jama is a beautiful and heavily protected cave system (fewer than 1,000 permitted
entries per year) filled with interconnected emerald green pools that are mainly fed
by the Bloke plateau. Križna hosts a rich biodiversity that makes it one of the
largest single ecosystems in the world.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBBIE SHONE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

KAČNA JAMA
Shone had been wanting this shot for 10 years—ever since he first saw a similar
photo on the internet of this cave, Kač n a jama. Kač n a’s dual skylights are clearly
the cave’s most striking feature, but what’s not obvious from the picture is the
sheer scale of this chamber.

The entrance is actually over 250 feet above the skylights, and it’s another 250
feet down to the underground river below, making for a total of 500 feet of free -
hanging descent from rim to cavern floor. Getting back out would take an
experienced caver about 45 minutes to ascend the ropes using mechanical
ascenders, a physically grueling and airy proposition no matter how fit you are.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBBIE SHONE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC