A Cave, Špilja Vetervina

On a beautiful spring morning, we packed water, crackers & cheese and took a hike.  We live near quite a few foothills (planine ili podnožja?) with lots of marked hiking trails. Tom had seen a trail sign with a picture of a cave so that is where we headed. 

Hiking trail to (špilja = cave)

We have come along way,
Now when we hike we bring water (and sometimes snacks) with us. This was never the case when our boys were young, especially when we lived in VT   We would just jump in the car, drive somewhere, park and hike!  When I think back on the trails and places we hiked with them, never very prepared and way before cell phones; It really is amazing they made it and probably another reason why we only had boys . . . God knew!

 Ok, back on Špilja, the sign says 2 km (about 1.2 miles) doable. HOWEVER it didn't say anything about how steep the trail was . . .
hummm, could be age and life style?
Na, I'm sticking with the steep trail story because it was steep and most of the hikers we saw looked like they needed water too!

So we hiked up to the cave, on a steep trail, on a lovely day, only to find ...

THE CAVE was behind locked bars! What we didn't know is that you can't get in the cave without a tour guide, it's only open on weekends and even then not until 10:00am. So here we were, I'm taking pictures through the bars, a guide heard us talking, asked where we were from and offered an early tour in English ... 
We had a "private English tour". 
(We also didn't have the entrance fee, he let us bring it back later ... now that is trust!) 

Cave entrance - Only guided tours, the red lined area is the 1st 380 meters. The total length of the explored part of the cave is over 7000 m, the length of the main channel is 2,622 m

It was an amazing cave!  We got to walk through the first 380 meters (about 1/4 mile), then turn around and walk back.  This was the second weekend of the season and because we were the 1st tour in, some of the lights were not working, (damp?) making for a dark kinda spooky experience! The temperature was colder than outside, we were told it stays about 10°C/50°F year round. Before you go in they give you a helmet to wear, good thing, because some of the passage is very low and I hit my head a number of times! And yes there were bats sleeping over head and a few, waking up from their long winter nap, flying around!

Bats hanging from the cave ceiling - Fourteen species of bats hibernate in the whole cave.

Bones, fossils, a well, bear jaw...

*Cave ornaments

Underground water on karst locations is “hard” because of the dissolved limestone. By extracting the dissolved limestone through evaporation, and other processes, “cave ornaments” - dripstones form. Dripstones differ from each other by their form and origin. In Veternica cave we find stalagmites, stalactites, curtains, helictites, spaghetti (numerous thin stalactites which represent the beginning stage of stalactites) and many others. Average growth rate is 1 to 2 mm annually.

*Paleontology

Paleontologist Mirko Malez performed extensive paleontological research in Quaternary sedi entrance area of ​​the cave. Found 94 animal genera and species, as well as traces of the cave man Mousterian culture. The most numerous are found bones of cave bear that was prey Paleolithic hunter.

Besides cave bear findings there are numerous residual findings of other animals which lived in these parts at that time: cave lions, wolves, various deer, rhinoceroses, rodents, and many other animals.

Veternica Cave; Our private tour, our walk in some places - real dark to walk other very low!

The cave itself has a some interesting history (of course!). One of the unique 'rooms' is a concert hall, our tour guide told us up to 200 people would gather in there for concerts (hippies?).  It is this open area with a stage craved out, they did destroy the “cave ornaments”, (when the parks took over control in the 1970's they put a stop to them.) 

Along the trail

At the top of the Mt. there is a mountain house, Glavica, which has a restaurant, after we left the cave we continued up the trail to the top 

(took a coffee & strudel break there:) 

Yet another thing we didn't know . . . You can drive and park up there, although very limited spaces, then walk down the trail to the cave entrance in about 5 minutes! 

So glad we hiked UP and got to explore the cave, well worth the 30kn (like 5 bucks!),  So very glad there was an English speaking guide willing to take us in early, (not knowing IF we would come back with the fee . . . Of course we did :-)  

Yep, glad we had water... of course we will always take water, because not all trails lead to Mountain tops with restaurants.

And yes, the next day my calves did ache!!

And now we do know! CC

 *some info from and more can be found at:

http://www.ppmedvednica.hr/Medvednica_en/Medvednica_ponuda_Veternica_en.htm

Veternica cave is located in the southwest part of Medvednica, above the village Gornji Stenjevec. Its distance from the center of Zagreb is less than 9 km.

The part of Veternica adapted for tourists shows geomorphologic phenomena rarely seen in typical tourist-adapted caves: oval erosion forms made by water vortexes (which tell us about a former water stream), sand dunes left after the last underground stream which used to spring from Veternica, an extinct cave bear's ( Ursus speleus ) lower jaw, fossil mud, the Well of wishes in the Concert hall, the fossil of a shell from the genus Pecten , the sea urchin Clypeaster on the ceiling, the stone waterfall (a beautiful dripstone formation) etc.

Veternica is the fourth longest cave in Croatia in length, and the longest in northern Croatia . It is an important archeological and paleontological site,