Glacières; or, Freezing Caverns

by Edwin Swift Balch

Some years ago, the Deutschen und Oesterreichischen Alpen Verein built a wooden staircase, in a series of zigzags, on the slope. This staircase should have been cleared off earlier in the year, but, of course, the matter was neglected. Down these steps we descended until they became covered with snow, and lower down with hard ice. All this was winter’s snow which fell directly on to the slope and gradually melted and froze again, so this was really a miniature glacier. It was not subterranean ice at all. We cut down the snow, but had to stop when we came to the ice, as it would have involved a couple of hours at least of the hardest kind of step cutting; and this my guide did not care to undertake, especially as he was nearly killed on this slope the week before. He had reached, with some tourists from Trieste, a place above that where we stopped, when he slipped and fell down the slope, shooting clear across the cave, where he remained until ropes were procured, and he was dragged out. He afterwards showed me the numerous cuts and bruises he had received on his perilous glissade.

We had to stop also for another reason. I had unwisely brought as wrap, a thick overcoat reaching to the knees, and this was such an impediment on the icy staircase, that I took it off, and soon began to feel long shivers creeping down my spine. This question of extra clothing for glacière exploration is hard to arrange. One must guard against most trying changes of temperature. For, on entering a big glacière, the heat of a July day without, will, at a distance of only a few meters, give place to the cold of a January day within, and nothing could be better devised than a big glacière to lay the seeds of rheumatism. It is difficult to plan a garb suitable to meet all the varying conditions, but the dress must be cool and warm, and light enough to permit free motion. The clothes I have found most practical are a thin waistcoat and thick trousers, and two short sack coats, one of them a heavy winter one. The coats should button at the throat, and it is well to place straps round the bottom of the trousers. Thick kid gloves should always be worn in caves, to save cutting the hands on rocks or ice in the darkness, and hobnails may prevent some unpleasant slips.

From the point where we stopped, some ten meters away from the ice floor, the largest portion of the cave was visible. The finest object was a big ice curtain or vorhang, as my guide called it, which, from a height of five or six meters, flowed down from fissures to the ice floor, and which covered the rocks on the eastern side. Under one point of this curtain, Klenka said that there was a deep hole in the ice. Smaller fissure columns also streamed from the rear wall to the ice floor. The ice floor itself was flat, of an ochre greenish tinge, and was covered with broken ice fragments. We could not see the western portion of the cavern, as the rocks jutted out in a sort of corner. Klenka said that there were several small pyramids there; a large one which he spoke of as the Altar; and a small ice slope, plastered on the side rocks.

The sides of the cave were of a dark gray limestone rock, and from the top of the slope they assumed a decidedly bluish tone, and I am inclined to think that there was already—we were there from eight-thirty A. M. until ten A. M.—a faint mist in the cavern. This is the most interesting phenomenon connected with the Friedrichsteiner Eishöhle. The cavern faces due south, and about midday, in clear weather, the sun shines directly into it, causing a mist or cloud to form in the cave on warm days; a mute witness that evaporation is connected with the melting, not with the forming, of the ice. The air at every point seemed still.

On my return to Gottschee, I called on one of the professors of the K. K. Gymnasium, and he told me many interesting facts about the surrounding country. Among other things he said that no traces of a glacial period or indeed of glaciers were found in the Krain; and as this district is particularly rich in glacières, this fact is a strong proof against the glacial period theory. He assured me also that many bears still existed in the neighborhood; that one family was known to inhabit the woods round the Friedrichsteiner Eishöhle, and that he had often seen bear tracks on his own shooting, some ten kilometers to the south.

THE SUCHENREUTHER EISLOCH.

On the 25th of June, 1897, I left Gottschee at six-thirty A. M. in an einspänner, and drove thirteen kilometers southward, over a good road, albeit hilly in places, to Mrauen, which we reached in about two hours. The weather was exceedingly hot. I took Klenka along, as he spoke German, and he entertained me on the drive by telling me that there were many poisonous snakes in the country, of which the kreuzotters or vipers were the worst, and that three or four persons were bitten every year.

Mrauen is in Croatia, and I could see a slight difference in the people and their dress from those of Gottschee. From Mrauen, the landlord of the Gasthaus Post, Josef Sirar, led us to the Grosses Eisloch. This is sometimes spoken of as the Eisloch bei Skrill, but as it lies in a patch of woods below the village of Suchenreuth, the Suchenreuther Eisloch seems the correct name. At least that was what Sirar called it. It took us about an hour on foot from Mrauen to get into the woods. On the way we met two guards in uniform, carrying Männlicher carbines with fixed bayonets, and it was agreeable to feel that the strong arm of the Austrian government extended over this semi-wild land. In the woods, following Sirar’s able guidance, we took a short cut—always a mistake—and were lost temporarily in a maze of bushes and brambles, in which I thought of the kreuzotters. After that, Sirar at first could not find the cave and had to hunt around for it, while I sat on a stone and waited impatiently.

At the cave a rather steep slope of wet mud, covered with dead leaves, led down through a rock arch. Sirar had to cut several steps in the mud with his hatchet, or we should probably have sat down suddenly. The archway opened into a moderately large cavern, which was about twenty meters deep, almost round and some fifteen meters in diameter. The slope continued right across the cave, and on some parts of it were logs of wood and much débris. On the wall hung a few limestone stalactites. In the roof of the cave was a great hole, and under this was a big cone of old winter snow, which had become icy in its consistency, and on which there was much dirt and many leaves. The temperature in the cave was several degrees above freezing point, and there was no ice hanging anywhere. Sirar said that when the weather got hotter, the ice would come; but as he said also, that he had been only once before in the cave, some ten years ago, his opinion was not worth much. Both men said that the preceding winter was unusually warm.