Glacières; or, Freezing Caverns

by Edwin Swift Balch

Fig. 6. Vertical Section of the Suchenreuther Eisloch.

THE NIXLOCH.

Near Hallthurm in Bavaria, a railroad station between Reichenhall and Berchtesgaden, is a well known congeries of windholes, called the Nixloch. I visited it on Friday, July the 2d, 1897, with a railroad employee, whom I found at the peasants’ gasthaus.

The Nixloch is ten minutes distant in the forest, on the slopes of the Untersberg. It is among a mass of big limestone blocks, and close by are the remains of the walls of an old castle or fortification. The Nixloch descends from the entrance for about two meters nearly sheer, and there is just room to get through. As I sat within the outside edge of the mouth of the cave, the smoke of my cigar was slowly carried downward into it.

Dropping down through the hole, we found ourselves in a small cavern formed of rough limestone blocks overhead and underfoot. It is possible to go still further down and my companion said that formerly it was possible to go through the cave and come out at a lower opening; this exit, however, was destroyed when the railroad was built. The draught, as tested by the flame of a candle, was still drawing in some seven or eight meters from the entrance. There is a second cavity immediately next to the entrance, and at the bottom of these holes, the inward draught was so violent as to blow the candle out. The thermometer outside in the shade was 28°C.; inside the cave, where the draught was still perceptible, it was about 20°C. Within the cave I noticed two large, dark brown spiders.

On returning to the gasthaus, I had a talk with some peasants who were dining there, and they told me that it was warm in winter in the Nixloch, and that ice never formed there.

THE DORNBURG.

If one draws a line northeast from Coblentz and another northwest from Frankfort-on-the-Main, they will intersect nearly at the Dornburg. The railroad from Frankfort goes, via Limburg and Hadamar, to Frickhofen and Wilsenroth, from either of which villages the ice formations of the Dornburg are easily reached on foot in half an hour.