Glacières; or, Freezing Caverns

by Edwin Swift Balch

I have said above that motion in subterranean ice is practically wanting. This is proved by the lack of crevasses on the ice slopes or ice walls, and also by the fact that basins and cones appear year after year in the same spots, where they remain whether they are increasing or diminishing. But this statement cannot be held to cover the entrance snow and ice slopes of some of the open pit caves such as the Gottscheer cave, or Saint-Livres or Haut d’Aviernoz. Here the snow, which falls on the entrance slope, must gradually gravitate to the bottom. The question is whether it only descends in the shape of water after melting or as snow before solidifying; or whether it ever slides down at all after becoming somewhat solidified. Probably, however, the ice of these slopes, judging from the fact that crevasses are entirely lacking, remains stationary.

Color Effects.—The color effect of every glacière cavern has a certain individuality, according to the color of the rocks, the quantity of ice, and the amount of daylight admitted through the entrance. In my opinion, the white note given by the ice, makes a fine glacière cave the most beautiful of all subterranean hollows. In this respect it seems to me that they are similar to high Alps, which are certainly most impressive with coverings of snow and glacier.

There are, however, two distinct notes in the color effects of glacière caves and these may be described as the partly subterranean, or as the wholly subterranean. In the former case the local tints stand out more clearly. For instance, at the Kolowratshöhle the ice is beautifully transparent and of a pale ochre-greenish hue: the limestone rocks are streaked with iron, and thus have a reddish hue, while, owing to the entrance admitting plenty of daylight, the effect is only semi-subterranean. Again, at Chaux-les-Passavant plenty of daylight is admitted: the rocks are a yellowish brown, and the ice is white and blue. At the Schafloch or the Frauenmauer, on the contrary, the effect is wholly subterranean: daylight is so completely absent that black is the predominating note, the ice itself looking gray. Dóbsina is an exception, as, thanks to the electric light, white is the conspicuous tone, even though rocks and shadows dull many places and corners into a sombre gray.

More than once, on returning to daylight from the intense blackness of a cave, I have seen the rocks near the entrance appear a dark blue color, exactly simulating moonlight. This effect is common to both glacière caves and ordinary caverns. It is a striking but rare phenomenon, and depends apparently on the shape of the cave. This moonlight effect only seems to occur when a cave makes an elbow directly after the mouth and then goes straight for some distance. When the daylight is actually in sight, the moonlight impression vanishes.

Carbonic Acid Gas.—Carbonic acid gas, judging from the most recent explorations, is more of a rarity in rock caves with normal temperatures than is generally supposed. There appears to be only one case on record where this gas was observed in a cold cave. This was in the Creux-de-Souci,[33] which is rather a cold than a freezing cavern, but which on one occasion was found to contain snow, and whose temperature is always extremely low. From the present state of knowledge, therefore, it may be assumed that if carbonic acid gas does form in glacière caves, it does so only seldom.

[33] See Part III.: [page 207].

Fauna.—No attention whatever has been paid, practically as yet, as to whether any distinctive animal life exists in glacières. So far, I have seen none myself. The Rev. G. F. Browne, in four instances, found a large red-brown fly nearly an inch long, which is supposed to be Stenophylax Hieroglyphicus of Stephens; and at Chapuis, he obtained an ichneumon of the genus Paniscus. At Font d’Urle, Monsieur Villard captured a blind specimen of a coleoptera, Cytodromus dapsoïdes. A variety of rotifer, Notholca longispina, is now living in the Creux-de-Souci. In Skerisora, remains of bats have been found, not very different from those now living in the neighborhood.[34] It is, in any case, certainly remarkable that the same kind of fly should have been discovered in several glacières in different localities; and it may some day be shown that there is a special insect fauna. Certainly the subject is worth investigating.[35]

[34] See Part I.: Ausable Pond, [page 81], and Part III.: Creux-de-Souci, [page 207]; Font d’Urle, [page 213]; Chapuis, [page 216]; La Genollière, [page 219]; Skerisora, [page 245].