Zjatva – The Bottomless Pit

According to popular tradition, where Zjatva is today there was once a large dolac (a fertile karst field). Its owner was once ploughing it on St. Elijah’s day. A traveller passing by reproached him, but the owner snapped back, “Let Elijah blaze across the heavens, and I’ll plough the earth!” The moment he said it, he and his oxen and labourers plunged into a great pit that opened up beneath their feet. And so Zjatva came to be.

“At first sight Zjatva instils in a person a sense of immense dread, for one passes right by it without even properly seeing it.” So writes Stipan Banović about Zjatva in the journal Priroda in 1938. He goes on: “From Rogata Spila (on the lower side) it is very difficult and perilous to squeeze through the crags to Velika vrata, and only certain local folk do so — those who, grazing goats among those crags, are very skilled and fearless at clambering, or as they put it, “free”.”

Zjatva, the “bezdanka” or “bottomless pit”, is a relief feature on southern Biokovo above Zaostrog. It lies at the foot of the Tribić peak (889 m), and is a pit at the top of the hill measuring 70 x 100 m and about 120 m deep. All its sides are extremely steep, and the southern one is a vertical cliff that curves at the bottom into the Velika vrata tunnel (the “Great Gate”), over 25 m high, which opens onto the southern side of the mountain with a view of Zaostrog, the sea and the islands beyond it. As if that were not enough, above Velika vrata there is also Mala vrata (the “Small Gate”)! Spectacular enough?

The trek to Zjatva starts from the last house of the Upper Village of Zaostrog. There is little room for parking, and we left the car at the last bend. There is a little more space along the road just before that, but not enough for any serious tourism.

On the way there “Mrs. Google” tried to divert us off the Adriatic coastal highway back in Drvenik and lure us onto an odyssey along field tracks that are mostly used to reach the old olive groves at the foot of the hill. Don’t listen to her — instead, turn off for Staro selo (the Old Village) in Zaostrog.

The route to Zjatva follows an old trade road that once connected the coast and the interior. More precisely, the road leads behind the hill towards Kokorići. It was once travelled on foot and with mules/donkeys, but the latest information had told us that the lower part of the road was overgrown and unusable, and that one had to climb straight up the scree. To our great surprise, however, just past the last houses we were met by a well-marked and well-maintained trail that ran the whole way through shade, parallel to the scree, joining it only beneath the cliffs below the hilltop. Since we had expected a straight-line ascent, we did not turn on the GPS for the first few hundred metres, so take that part of the map with a grain of salt and just follow the hiking markings. Once we realised it was a freshly maintained path, we switched on the GPS to map at least part of it.

After some 500 m of gentle ascent, the trail finally turns onto the scree and continues horizontally towards the east in an effort to skirt the steepest cliffs. Take this “horizontal” more as a description of direction, because the climb is still continuous, and the terrain rocky and at times quite rough. The view of the cliffs is impressive, and once you come out onto the scree you can see the opening of Zjatva’s Velika vrata from the lower side. That is the side which the 1938 article says was climbed only by a few local “free” men. Without mountaineering equipment and skill, an undertaking of that kind is risky and perilous. The direction from which it is relatively easy to descend into Zjatva is the one from the upper side, and the hiking trail, once a trade road, leads exactly there.

After some 2 km, you cross a pass into the canyon between two peaks, where people once found the only convenient point to get to the other side of the hill. This part of the road is partly collapsed, and reconstruction is planned. These are the last 200 m, after which you emerge onto the hilltop. Zjatva is right there, but as the old text says, you still don’t see it. Here the trail forks in two directions. To the left you continue along the old trade road and climb the stone steps towards the prominent summit, from where there is a magnificent view in all directions. Pelješac, Korčula and Hvar lie right in front of you. To the west the view falls on the Biokovo massif, to the east on Rilić, and to the north you can see all the way to Čvrsnica, Velež and Prenj. The hiking trail that goes right at the fork skirts Zjatva from the east and leads to the northeastern approach to Zjatva. That approach to the pit is the easiest.

There we met a crew from the local mountaineering society, the main “culprits” behind the maintaining and marking of the trail. Besides maintaining the trail, they were preparing the ground for the installation of a via ferrata that has been planned for quite some time, with our famous alpinist Stipe Božić as the main initiator. After a short conversation, the mountaineers tell us that even this easiest, northeastern approach to the pit requires, at one section, a rope for a vertical descent of a few metres. When we were preparing for the trek, we came across no such information anywhere, so that is yet another sign of how cautiously information about lesser-known locations should be taken.

We decided to descend into the pit, at least as far as that vertical drop, to peer through Velika vrata and see whether it might be possible to reach the bottom without a rope after all. We put on our helmets and set off. The descent is relatively steep, but we wouldn’t classify it as difficult. That part of the approach to the pit is in fact a cut between the rocks. It is overgrown with low vegetation that is handy for securing yourself. When we reached the rocky section, I took off my backpack and climbed down to the final vertical drop. After a brief study, the descent seemed feasible, but it was questionable whether the climb back up would be possible without a rope, especially with the knee injury I have been dragging around for some time. Since there is no signal here, in the event of any emergency the whole thing would be somewhat risky. The sun was already well to the west, and perhaps the crucial half hour was exactly the one “Mrs. Google” had stolen from us at the wrong turn in Drvenik. The promise of a via ferrata is only mild consolation, and the lesson learned is that you should carry a rope even when you don’t plan to use it.

Zjatva is one of the most interesting phenomena of Biokovo