Glacières; or, Freezing Caverns

by Edwin Swift Balch

IN THE REAR OF THE SCHAFLOCH.

Fig. 4. Vertical Section of Démenyfálva.

We then continued our course beyond the rock portal along the upper cavern for about two hundred meters. It was a fine large gallery or passage and during the first fifty meters or so, we found numerous small ice cones, perhaps a hundred of them, from tiny little ones to some about forty centimeters in height. Many of these were columnar in form, nearly as large at the top as at the base: in some cases the top was flat, and the columns then looked almost as if an upper portion were sawn off. I have seen this shape of column nowhere else. In places there were slabs and bits of ice on the floor. The last hundred meters of this upper cave was free from ice and was exceptionally dry. It was formed of a pale yellow limestone rock, almost dolomitic in color, and many stalactites, in their thousand various shapes, hung from the roof and on the sides. In one spot, one big limestone stalagmite towered up directly in the middle of the gallery. We did not go to the end of the cave, where ice has never been found.

Retracing our course past the rock portal to the entrance pit, we descended on the long staircase for some eighty steps more, the amount of ice on the rocks steadily increasing. In places, frost crystals had formed in small quantities on the roof and walls. At the bottom of the pit, another lateral gallery, directly under the upper gallery, opened to the right. Entering this, we passed over broken limestone débris, which seemed to overlie a mass of ice. Limestone stalactites were noticeable all through this lower cavern, and frost and icicles had sometimes formed over them, in which case the ice stalactite assumed the form of the limestone stalactite. Advancing a few meters, we went by, on our right hand, an ice pyramid of a couple of meters in height. Just beyond this, the cave turned to the left like the upper cave, and we descended to a level floor of transparent ice, into which we could see some distance. At this spot, numerous icicles, generally of inconsiderable size, hung from the roof and on the sides of the cavern.

At the further end of this ice floor or ice lake we reached an ice slope, the Eiswand, which flowed to the ice floor from the upper cave in several waves. It was some six meters wide and twenty-five meters long; and it was not steep, perhaps fifteen degrees in the steepest portions. On the slope some old, nearly obliterated steps were visible, and at these Misura proceeded to cut, and with torch in one hand and axe in the other, gradually worked his way up, until he once more reached the level spot whence we had looked down the ice slope. Here he stood waving his torch, a proceeding indeed he did constantly throughout the trip, for he seemed exceedingly proud of the beauties of his cavern. This waving of torches, however, is exceedingly foolish, as their smoke quickly blackens stalactite, and in fact nothing but candles and magnesium wire should be carried for lighting purposes underground. The ice of the ice slope was hard, gray and opaque, quite different from that of the ice lake. The ice floor is formed of new ice, which is gradually refilling the place from which Misura said the ice for Buda-Pest was taken out twenty-five years ago. To prove this assertion, he called my attention to the side of the lake directly opposite the ice slope. At that spot, under the limestone rubbish over which we came, there was an outcrop of perpendicular opaque ice about a meter high. Misura said that the workmen began to cut at the ice slope and that they dug out a couple of meters in depth from the ice lake, until they had cut back to where the vertical outcrop was standing.

The explanation seemed to be in accord with the facts, and if so, it would go to show that the ice in this cave is of slow formation and great permanency; as seems also proved by the steps on the ice wall, which—we were the first party in the cave in 1896—had remained over from the preceding summer. Misura told me he had never seen so much ice nor seen it so hard as during our visit, and he added that there was generally water on the ice lake, and he thought there would be some in two or three weeks more. 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.

The heavy winter air would naturally sink down into the entrance pit to the lower cavern, and some of it diverge into the beginning of the upper cavern, which at first is distinctly a down slope. A little beyond the portal at the head of the ice slope, the upper cave is either horizontal or in places slightly ascending. Probably this prevents the cold air from entering further, and probably also, the heat of the earth neutralizes the cold air of winter beyond a definite spot.