Huge glaciers were covering Northern and the Central Europe, Alps were under the ice. The landscape has changed dramatically. Nowadays glaciers are only a pale picture of the past. Only a decade ago Slovenia had three small glaciers in the Alps (which were only modest miniatures of the huge Ice Age glaciers): Triglavski ledenik, Ledenik pod Skuto and Ledenik pod Prisankom. Today there are only gravel and moraines which indicates that there were glaciers.

Thousand kilometers southern in the Southern Balkan, glaciers of the Dinaric Mountains most probably disappeared in the time period of the end of the last Ice Age. Exceedingly interesting area was Orjen massif, which is situated on the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina, precisely Republika Srbska and Montenegro above the Bay of Kotor. The mountain range of Orjen is geologically from the s limestone of the Cretaceous period. The whole area is with the evident glaciokarst. The process of the karst is very distinctive but the former glaciers left evident landscape with U-shaped valleys and cirques. This area is with the precipitation of over 4000 mm up to 6000 mm and even more, which is among the highest in Europe so the expectation was that the process of the karst was very fast and intensive.

But where were the edges of the glaciers? Where was the lowest point? Was there a connection with the Bay of Kotor? How glaciers behaved on the karst and what was the influence of the ice to the karst processes?

click here to view Strong karst processes,
deep craks in limestone, Duboki do (1250 m), East side of Orjen

Those were some questions which lead Slovenian geomorphologists and climate researchers and their students to study this area in the summer 2007.

The base of the study was the detailed research of the ground navigating over the old Austrian military roads which are surprising still appliable for the transport even not renewed after the 150 years, and hiking over the wilderness. The part of the terrain research and the study has taken the place over the late spring with the final conclusions in the beginning of the September 2007.

The summer 2007 was extraordinary - the extreme lack of water so we had decided to carry the needed base potable water supplies from Slovenia. The group was divided into three teams of 6-7 persons, each team with the specific task and the area of the interest. The area was remote with no electricity so the only technical tools were GPS-s and classic maps, no notebooks with digital maps and GIS-s software tools. However... my tool, beside GPS was digital camera with the fisheye lens which I used to map the geomorphological landmarks of the area of Orjen and present them with the VR-panoramas.
Base camps of the expedition were in the territories of Republika Srbska (BiH) and Montenegro on the altitude of 1200 m up to 1800 m which was quite high as the sea was only few kilometers away. The highest peak of Orien is Zubački kabao (1894)

click here to view
The highest peak of Orjen massif, Zubački kabao (1894 m)

As the summer was dry there were constant burning forests and the bush. The result of the fire was a dim landscape which is evident on the displayed panos. Once we were even fire-fighters...

click here to view The peak of Vučji zub (1802 m),
dim landscape caused by the burning forests and bush

The evidences of the former glaciers were different moranines which remained after the glaciers melted away. We followed

click here to view The border
between the karst area and the moraine (glacial landscape)

the lateral moraines and map the extremes. The landscape with U-valleys and cirques indicated "classical" mountain glaciers but we found also traces of the glacier which maid be the plateau type. The findings were surprising and somehow "weird" but the picture was every day clearer as we had composed our separate findings.

click here to view Location Crkvice (940 m),
the early morning meeting before the ground work

The ground work was from the early morning to the late afternoon or even the night, but as it was interesting the day ran out even too fast.

My role with the expedition - I was only the observer, I specialize with the study of the karst and the geomorphology and the GIS (Geographic information systems) which is the logical continue of my previous study of informatics 20 years ago, that's why the expedition was interesting. Scientists were from different institutions: Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana - the Geography department, Institute for the karst research in Postojna.
The conclusions about the glaciers and the relation with the karst area were presented last wednesday on the International meeting of the geomorphology researchers in Pecs (H).

Boštjan Burger was born in 1966 in Ljubljana – Slovenia. He is geographer and head of an experimental multimedia and computer enterprise Eurovista.info (commercial) and Burger.si (non commercial). The majority of his work is on the ground - hiking with GPS, writing notices of the nature and taking photos - including VR's. Computer work is a night shift...

Previous articles about Boštjan Burger:
THE UNDERGROUND CAVES OF SLOVENIA
A CONVERSATION WITH BOSTJAN BURGER
BOSTJAN BURGER - VR PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE
SUMMER IN SLOVENIA: 10 REASONS TO VISIT THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE ALPS THIS YEAR
MEDIEVAL TIMES AT ERASMUS KNIGHT'S TOURNAMENT