Glacières; or, Freezing Caverns

by Edwin Swift Balch

THE GLACIÈRE DE LA GENOLLIÈRE.

On Tuesday, the 11th of August, 1896, a cool and rainy day, I left Geneva and went by train to Nyon, where I found at the station a little victoria, in which I drove up to Saint-Cergues. The road lay across the plain to the base of the slopes of the Jura, and then up these in long zigzags; it was admirably built and on the hill slopes passed the whole way through a beautiful thick forest, principally beeches and birches. At Saint-Cergues, I went to the Pension Capt, where the landlady soon found a guide in the shape of the gendarme of the district, a right good fellow, Amy Aimée Turrian by name. He was in uniform, with an army revolver in a holster at his belt. We then drove about half an hour beyond Saint-Cergues, the road rising but little, and the thick forest giving place to a more open wood of evergreens, with patches of pasturage. As a forest sanitarium, Saint-Cergues seems unsurpassed in the whole of Europe. The carriage turned up a little country road, which soon became too rough for driving, so we proceeded on foot for about another half hour, through pine woods and pastures, to the glacière. Turrian enlivened the way with an account of his life as a gendarme, of the long solitary six hour patrols in the woods in winter, and of how he lay in ambush for poachers. He said he would not take long to fire on anyone resisting arrest, as that was sérieux.

The glacière is in the middle of a pasture, with several pine trees overhanging it. It is surrounded by a wall, built to prevent the cows from falling in. There are two pits, side by side and about three meters apart: they are some thirteen meters in depth, with a width of five or six meters. They open into one another at the bottom; the rock separating them, forming a natural bridge overhead. One of the pits is vertical on all sides. The other is vertical all around, except on the side furthest away from the natural bridge. Here the side of the pit is in the shape, so usual in glacières, of a steep slope. Down this slope we descended. It was slippery and muddy, owing to the recent heavy rains, and my ice axe proved invaluable and probably saved me some unpleasant falls. Under the bridge, the floor was covered with a mass of shattered limestone debris, among which there was neither ice nor snow; both of which my guide said he had found in abundance the preceding June. A little limestone cavern opened on one side below the bridge. A great, flat limestone slab formed a natural lintel, and, lighting our candles, we stooped down and passed under it into the cave, which was about the size of a room and in which we could just stand up. At the entrance and over most of the floor there was ice, in one place thirty or forty centimeters in depth, as I could see where a drip from the roof had cut a hole. There were no signs of icicles or columns. My guide said he had never penetrated into this chamber, which he thought, on his earlier visit, was blocked with ice and snow. I did not see any limestone stalactites anywhere, and I am inclined to think that the low temperatures of glacières have a tendency to prevent their formation.

After our visit, we went to the Châlet de La Genollière close by, where there were some thirty cows and calves. The intelligent berger or manager said that most of the ice from the glacière was used for butter making during the hot weather; and that between the inroads thus made upon it and from other causes, the ice disappeared every year before autumn, but that it formed afresh every winter; pretty good evidence to show that the ice in this cave has nothing to do with a glacial period. He also stated that when he first entered the inner chamber in the spring there were four ice columns there.

The glacière de La Genollière is a clear exemplification of the theory that the cold of winter is the sole cause for the ice. The whole glacière is rather small and is fairly well protected against wind. Although snow cannot fall directly under the rock arch, yet I should imagine it drifts under, or after melting, runs in and refreezes. To the inner cave snow, as snow, could hardly reach; and the cavern is probably filled, like most cave glacières, from frozen drip. The inner cave is, therefore, a true cave glacière, while the outer pits and the bridge are something between a gorge and a cave. La Genollière should, I think, be visited about the end of June, when the ice formations are certainly larger and more interesting than in August.

THE FRIEDRICHSTEINER OR GOTTSCHEER EISHÖHLE.

A little to the east of, and in about the same latitude as Trieste, is the small town of Gottschee, now reached by a branch railroad from Laibach. Gottschee is a German settlement almost in the centre of the district known as the Duchy of Krain, Austria, which is mainly inhabited in the north by Slavonians and in the south by Croatians. Gottschee lies directly at the western base of the Friedrichsteiner Gebirge, one of whose peaks is the Burgernock. On the eastern slopes of this mountain is situated the Friedrichsteiner or Gottscheer Eishöhle, at an altitude of about nine hundred meters.

On the 24th of June, 1897, I left Gottschee at half past six o’clock in the morning with Stefan Klenka, a nice little man. I had asked to have him come at six o’clock, but he did not turn up and I had to send for him. His excuse was, that tourists always ordered him for six o’clock, but when the time came, they were still in bed. He had taken a German officer and his wife to the cave the year before, and after keeping him waiting three hours, they started at nine o’clock. The result was that they did not get to the cave until two o’clock, and returned to Gottschee just at nightfall.

We reached the cave at half past eight o’clock. The steep and rough path went uphill through a fine forest, which my guide said was Urwald, i. e., primeval forest; and there were certainly some big trees and many fallen ones, and much underbrush. He assured me that bears were still plentiful in the neighborhood, and that Prince Auersperg, who owns the shooting, does not allow them to be killed, preferring to pay for any damage they may cause to the peasants’ fields or for any cattle they may dine on, rather than to have these interesting animals exterminated from his woods. He also said that there was a two meter snowfall in Gottschee in winter: a sufficient quantity to account for the glacières. At one place on the road we stopped before a small crack in the rocks, and Klenka dropped in some small stones, which we could hear strike two or three times a long distance below. There is surely an unexplored cavern at this spot.

The Friedrichsteiner Eishöhle is a large pit cave, well lighted by daylight. It is sheltered from any winds by the great trees which grow all around it and even over the rock roof. A long, steep slope leads straight into the pit and from the top the ice floor is in full sight. On both sides of the slope the rocks are almost sheer. Over the bottom of the slope the rock roof projects at a great height. The sides of the cave rise perpendicularly at least forty meters, and in fact, the cave suggests an unfinished tunnel set on end.