A pair of skaters dance on a small frozen lake, deep inside a cave buried beneath the Alps. The music is supplied by a gramophone: it’s the 1930s and they’re training by candlelight to compete in the Olympic Games.
Eighty years later, the cave is only accessible in the company of a specialist guide and to reach the lake you have to climb 1,400 steps. But the effort is soon forgotten, when you find yourself surrounded by giant ice sculptures. Holding up a magnesium flare, the guide reveals the quirky shapes carved by nature in this chamber that goes by the name of Eispalast, the ‘Ice Palace.’
This fascinating cave labyrinth stretching over 42 kilometres lies beneath the Tennengebirge mountain range, about 50 kilometres south of Salzburg. Of those 42 kilometres, only the first is covered with frozen water. Nevertheless, it’s still the biggest ice cave in the world.
It's advisable to wear gloves during the tour, as the metal handrail is frozen. And it's best not to take children under the age of four.
The natural sculptures are lit only by the lamps carried by guides and visitors. And they’re all unique—living, dynamic figures that change as the ice melts and then refreezes when temperatures drop once again.
You can climb up on foot, although you’ll need a pair of strong legs to tackle the more than one thousand metre ascent. The round trip takes about one and a half hours. The easiest option is to take the cable car from the nearby town of Werfen. From the cable car stop it’s another 30-minute uphill walk to the mouth of the cave, which opens out to stunning views over the town of Werfen and its medieval castle.
Tours are limited to 2,500 people a day and run only from 1 May to 26 October.
The circuit around this living labyrinth ends in the first cave, Eispalast, the icy part of the cave system. Further on, access is only possible for authorised explorers. From the ‘Ice Palace’ a tunnel (U-Tunnel) runs all the way to Midgards, the biggest passage in the system, measuring between 8 and 30 metres in width and branching out further ahead. The explored section of the cave system (there’s still a lot more cave to be discovered) finishes in the ‘Neue Welt’ (New World) chamber
In the late 19th century, hunters in the Austrian mountains already knew about Eisriesenwelt, but it was forgotten about until 1879, when Anton von Posselt-Czorich, a naturalist from Salzburg, officially discovered them. He was able to get only 200 metres into the cave as he came up against an enormous and insurmountable wall of ice. He marked the spot with a black cross, now known as Posselt-Kruz, which is still visited today as one of the crucial places in the history of the cave system.
The cable car was built in 1955 and cut the journey time to the cave from 90 minutes to just 3.
In 1913, some scientists, including Alexander von Mörk, successfully climbed Grossen Eiswall, ‘The great ice wall,’ and finally conquered the underground world of the ice giants. What they probably didn’t imagine was that it would be used as an ‘Olympic’ ice skating rink, or that in the 21st century thousands of people would come here by cable car to see it for themselves.
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