LEDANA PIT - HIDDEN TREASURE OF NATURE

RIBNIK, JULY 24 /SRNA/ - The pit Ledana is the largest underground ice facility in Republika Srpska, located on the southern slopes of Mount Bobija, in the village of Vučja Poljana, in the municipality of Ribnik.

The pit is 180 meters deep and is surrounded with lush coniferous forests.

The area of the Ledana pit is completely preserved in its original form, and certain terrain elements and ice shapes represent a rarity in their appearance and manner of expression, which is marked as geodeposits.

The large ice mass is formed from dozens of layers of ice of varying thickness, and the icebergs are up to 15 meters high.

The interior of the cave has not yet been sufficiently explored and represents an interesting speleological phenomenon that shows the development of ice deposits and jewelry in the ice formed due to the specific morphological climatic conditions.

The logs at the entrance to the pit were used by the local population to carry ice before the refrigeration devices. The local population at the time would place chunks of ice from the pit in woven sacks filled with sawdust, believing that this would make the ice last longer, and then transport them in horse-drawn carts to a nearby town and sell them to confectioners.

The Ledana pit is under the protection of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural, Historical and Natural Heritage of Republika Srpska and is a third-category natural asset.

It is protected as a natural monument, that is, an underground form of karst terrain with a vertical entrance and large horizontal underground galleries, and as such, in terms of size and attractiveness of ice deposits, it represents the most significant discovered speleological object in Srpska.