Ice cave

“ In all the caves or gullies I have examined myself, the main mass of ice is well below the level of the entrance, and even if the latter is sheltered against the wind, it is not sheltered against the cold air of winter. This is heavy, and by its own weight sinks well down to the bottom, freezing up in course of time all the moisture that may drip from the roof, or that may come into the cave in the shape of melted snow or cold winter rain. The summer air, which is warm and, therefore, light, can only enter the cave with great difficulty ”

“ The entrance had evidently been closed till very lately by a large column of ice, and we passed over the débris, between rock portals and on a floor of solid grey ice, into a triangular cave of any height the imagination might choose to fix. The entire floor of the cave was of ice, giving the impression of infinite thickness and firmness. ”

“ He represents that the mountain is abundantly covered each winter with snow, in the neighbourhood of the ice-cave, which is nearly within the snow-line, and the stores of snow thus accumulated in the cave have no great difficulty in resisting the effects of summer heat, since all radiation is cut off by the roof of rocks. ”

“ When the external frost of winter comes on, the account proceeds, the effect in the cave is the same as if fires had been lighted there: the ice melts, and swarms of flies and bats and hares take refuge in the interior from the severity of the winter. As soon as spring arrives, the warmth of winter disappears from the interior, water exudes from the roof and is converted into ice, while the more abundant supplies which pour down on to the sandy floor are speedily frozen there. ”

“ An American photograph is current in this country, in the form of a stereoscopic slide, representing an ice-cave in the White Mountains, New Hampshire; but it is only a winter cave, and in no way resembles any of the glacières I have seen. It is merely a [Page 270] collection of long and slender icicles, with beds of ice formed upon stones and trunks of trees on the ground; nothing more, in fact, than is to be seen in any tolerably severe winter in the neighbourhood of a cascade in a sheltered Scotch burn. ”

“ The memoir states that in winter the cave is filled with thick vapors and that after some trees were cut down near the entrance, the ice was less abundant than formerly: that people come for ice with carts and mules, but that the ice does not become exhausted, for one day of great heat forms more ice than could be carried away in eight days in carts and wagons: and that when a fog forms in the cave, there is assuredly rain the following day, and that the peasants in the neighborhood consult this curious “almanac” to know the weather which is coming. ”

“ They are therefore a very important factor, which may bring about the melting of the ice.”
“The snow slope at the mouth of a cave offers some protection against the rays of the sun, especially if it is no longer white, but covered with all sorts of dirt.”
“The larger the mass of ice, the longer is its duration.” “A certain thickness to the roof is of importance in preserving the ice. If it is less than 8 meters, then it is well if it is covered with outside vegetation.” ”

“ In the Dog-days, the frost is so intense that a small icicle becomes in one day a huge mass of ice; but a cool day promptly brings a thaw, and the cave is looked upon as a barometer, not merely feeling, but also presaging, the changes of weather. The people of the neighbourhood, when employed in field-work, arrange their labour so that the mid-day meal may be taken near the cave, when they either ice the water they have brought with them, or drink the melted ice, which they consider very good for the stomach. ”

“ Climbing over the rough boulders, and then descending into a rocky channel, where the water mounted over our knees, we entered the largest of these singular structures, when a wonderful sight met the gaze. We found ourselves in a cave of some 200 feet in circumference, whose sides of black volcanic rock were sheeted with ice, and festooned with icicles, all grandly and marvellously designed. ”

“ As soon as the snow begins to melt to so great a degree that the fissures are opened up once more, the extremely cold water resulting therefrom will descend through the limestone into a cave perfectly dry, and filled with an atmosphere many degrees below the freezing point, whose frost-power eagerly lays hold of every drop of water which does not make its escape in time by the drainage of the cave. ”

“ Livres—Beautiful Ice-stalagmites in the Cave of La Baume—The Schafloch—Ice Cataract in the Upper Glacière of St. Livres—Ice Cavern of Eisenerz—The Cave of Yeermalik—Volcanic Ice-caves—Æolian Caverns of Terni—Causes of the low temperature of Ice-caves.
Some caves, remarkable for an extremely low temperature even in summer, form natural ice-cellars, though unconnected with glaciers or snow mountains, and in latitudes and at altitudes where ice could not under ordinary circumstances be supposed to exist. ”

“ The greatest quantity of ice in the upper cave was at the head of the ice-slope, and it would seem as though there must be cracks or fissures in the overhead rocks there, through which the water is supplied to feed the ice, not only that of the upper cave, but also the larger portion of that of the lower cave. ”

“ On arriving at the entrance to the glacière, the end of a suggestive ladder is seen under the protecting trunks; and after one or two steps have been taken down the ladder, the effect of the cave below is extremely remarkable, the main features being a long wall covered thickly with white ice in sheets, a solid floor of darker-coloured ice, and a high pyramid of snow reaching up towards the uncovered hole already spoken of. ”

“ When the melted snows of spring send down to the cave, through the fissures of the rock, an abundance of water at a very low temperature, and the cave itself is stored with the winter's cold, these thicker rings of ice catch first the descending water, and so a circular wall, naturally conical, is formed round the area of stones ”

“ Behind the upper wave, five or six fissure columns streamed out to the beginning of the ice. One ice stalactite, at least two or three meters long, overhung the ice floor, and Gruber said about this: “Well, I wonder it has not fallen yet: they seldom last as late in the year,” a confirmation of what was clearly evident, namely, that the whole cave was in a state of thaw. ”

“ The roof of this inner cavern was hung with undripping solid icicles, and the floor was a conglomerate of ice and frozen earth. They were assured that the cold is always greatest within when the external air is hottest and driest, and that the ice gradually disappears as winter approaches, and vanishes when the snow comes. The peasants were unanimous in these statements, and asserted that they could sleep in the cave without sheepskins in the depth of winter. ”

“ The presence or absence of strong, apparent draughts, cannot be considered as a test as to whether a place is or is not a glacière; the presence of ice, for at least part of the year, alone makes a glacière, and this it does whether « 62 » there are or are not draughts. It seems to me more than ever clear, however, that it all depends on the movements of air, as to whether ice forms in a cave. If the movements of air take the cold air of winter into a cave, then and then only—provided there is also a water supply—do we have ice. ”

“ For a short distance the cave passes horizontally into the rock, in a westerly direction, and is quite light; it then turns sharp to the south, the floor beginning to fall, and candles becoming necessary. Here the height increases considerably, and the way lies over a wild confusion of loose masses of rock, which have apparently fallen from the roof, and make progression very difficult. We soon reached a point where ice began to appear among the stones; and as we advanced it became more and more prominent, till at length we lost sight of the rock, and stood on solid ice. ”

“ The ice floor is about 20 meters below the entrance and is about 38 meters long and 24 meters wide; at the rear, it rises for some 15 meters as an ice wall at an angle of about 60°, and then forms a second ice floor about 45 meters long by 19 meters wide. The front part of the ice is sometimes, about July, covered with water. The cave continues further back, in two branches, and Professors Cranmer and Sieger consider that it is a large windhole, in which draughts are infrequent, on account of its length and because the openings are near the same level. ”

“ The flooring of mingled ice and snow, on which we stood, sloped through about five vertical feet from the foot of the wall, and came to an end on broken rocks, from which the terminal wall of the cave sprang up. The effect of the view from this point, as we looked up the long slope of ice to where the ladders and a small piece of sky were visible, was most striking. The accompanying engraving is from a sketch which attempts to represent it; the reality is much less prim, and much more full of beautiful detail, but still the engraving gives a fair idea of the general appearance of the cave. ”

“ He made a plan of the cave and took many observations in April, August and October, and concluded that the interior condition of the cave does not change noticeably from winter to summer, no matter what the external conditions of temperature may be; that what people say of greater cold in summer, vanishes before actual experience and that, as a state of freezing reigns more or less continuously in the cave, it is not surprising if the ice accumulates. Apparently he was the first to notice and insist on the necessity of drainage to the cave through cracks in the rocks. ”

“ It was a fine forenoon in July, and all was in a state of thaw, the icicles dropping water, and the floor of ice covered with a thin layer of water; while the thermometer in all parts of the cave stood at zero of Réaumur's scale. The rock is compact unstratified limestone, in which so many of the famous caverns of the world are found. ”

“ A constant and strong current issued from the crevices, stronger and infinitely colder than the current in the famous 'blowing cave' of Virginia. A man had built a store-room for meat within the influence of one of these currents, and hard dry icicles were seen hanging from the wooden supports inside: the flies, too, which had been attracted by the meat, were found frozen on to the stones. This is not the only district where ice is found within temperate latitudes in North America. ”

“ The stream of ice falls gradually, spreading out laterally like a fan, so as to accommodate itself to the shape of the cave, which it fills up to the side walls; it increases in breadth from 28-3/4 feet at the top to 72 feet at the bottom of the slope, and the distance from the top of the first ladder to this point is 177 feet. ”

“ The first class includes those caves where there is one or more openings close together and those above the body of the cave. In such hollows the air in summer is nearly still, while in winter there are distinct rotary movements of the air as soon as the temperature outside is lower than that within. Almost all glacière caves belong to this class of caves without strong draughts in summer. Sometimes, however, ice is found in hollows where there are two or more openings, at different altitudes and at different ends of the hollow, and where there are draughts. ”

“ Under the low roof all was very dry, though even there the ice had not an average thickness of more than 8 inches. It may be as well to say, once for all, that the ice in these caves is never found in a sheet on a pool of water; it is always solid, forming the floor of the cave, filling up the interstices of the loose stones, and rising above them, in this case with a surface perfectly level. ”

“ This snow absorbs, in the course of melting, all heat which strikes down by radiation or is driven down by accidental turns of the wind; and the snow-water thus forced into the cave will, at any rate, not seriously injure the ice. It is worthy of notice that the two caves which possess the greatest depth of ice, so far as I have been able to fathom it, are precisely those which have the greatest deposit of snow; and the ice in a third cave, that of Monthézy, which has likewise a large amount of snow in the entrance-pit, presents the appearance of very considerable depth. ”

“ After penetrating a long way through difficult fissures, a square chamber is at length reached, measuring 300 feet in length and breadth, with a height of about 80 feet. The walls and roof and floor are beautifully decorated with ice, and reflect all the colours of the rainbow. There are groups of pyramidal and round columns, and in some parts of the cave screens or curtains of ice 10 or 12 feet broad hang down to the floor. ”

“ In 1896, a Western newspaper published the following explanation about the presence of ice in the cave at Elkinsville, Indiana; and it shows how the idea—long since exploded—of the ice being due to chemical causes, serenely bobs up on the discovery of a new cave: “Some have advanced the theory that the air is forced through under passages of the earth with such pressure as to make the strange formation ”

“ The roof of the entrance is at first a mere shell, formed by the thin crust of rock on which the surface-earth and trees rest high overhead; but this rapidly becomes thicker, as shown in the section of the cave, and thus a sort of outer cave is formed, the real portal of the glacière being reached about 60 feet above the bottom of the slope. ”