Jama Mamet (Mamet Cave) is located in the Velebit Mountains, an extraordinary cave location in Croatia. It is famous for its deep pit, among the deepest pits known on eart are located here. The reason is simple, the limestone is faulted by the Dinaric orogeny and is found from sea level to the highest mountain tops. The water enters the limestone and drains directly to the sea. This forms caves which are mostly vertical. Sometimes the roof of such pits collapses and forms deep daylight shafts. This impressive cave has been discovered by the Speleological Section Velebit (SOV), a part of the Velebit Mountaineering Club of Zagreb University, in 1968.
Jama Mamet is such a daylight shaft or pothole, a wide almost circular opening in the barren karst, 45m by 55m wide, which is more than 200m deep. The vertical shaft opens in a depth of about 70 meters, the diameter increases and it looks like the inside of a bell. The floor is pretty huge, 81m from north to south and 77m from east to west. The croatian term jama means pit, which is in contrary to the Slovenian term jama, which normally means a horizontal cave. Horizontal caves would be called Špilja or pecina in Croatian.
The biggest pits on earth are often a destination for base jumpers. There have been various such events in Mexico's Sotano de la Golondrinas. And in Europe it is Mamet Cave, which is the dream destination of all base jumpers. The most famous event was in 2004, when Austrian base jumper Felix Baumgartner jumped into the pit.
Obviously this 200m deep pit is extremely dangerous, even for good climbers and cavers. So we do not recommend to enter it, we even recommend to be very carefull at the rim. Nevertheless we recommend a visit to the impressive entrance, although it requires some mountaineering. The view is breathtaking as it is possible to see the bottom of the pit.