Less than an hour from the city of Salzburg, home of Mozart and The Sound of Music, is the world’s largest ice cave, the Eisriesenwelt-or “world of the ice giants.”įor centuries, villagers would refuse to enter the cave, believing that it was the gate to hell and that the blustering wind escaping the entrance was the devil’s breath. Here are four of the most alluring ones to visit before they are gone. “When I go today, it’s really shocking to see how much ice has disappeared-it’s a prime example of climate change,” says Zagler, now 52.įor now, ice caves remain a magical gateway into our planet’s geological and climatic past. Georg Zagler, an Austrian geologist and avid spelunker, says he was surprised to see so much ice missing from a cave in Unstersberg, a massif along the Austrian-German border, which he first explored when he was 15. ( The Alps’ magical ice caves risk vanishing in our warming world.) report on the state of the world’s climate. The world has warmed 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the early 19th century, leading to extreme weather patterns that will only get worse as global temperatures continue to rise, reports Nat Geo’s Sarah Gibbens, citing a U.N. However, from the Arctic to Antarctica, ice fields, glaciers, sea ice, and ice caves are disappearing at an alarming rate. In some, the ice sheets are so thick that scientists describe them as underground glaciers, and in others, researchers date the ice to be more than 10,000 years old. Caves-formations made in soluble limestone, gypsum, and dolomite rocks-riddle our planet, enticing spelunkers to explore otherworldly landscapes of stalagmites and stalactites.īut in ice caves, garlands of icicles dangling from cavernous ceilings, frozen cascades of blue-hued waterfalls, and ice cones as tall a 10-story building steal the show. Beneath the surface of Europe’s most enigmatic mountains lies a hidden world that will take your breath away-then freeze it in an instant.
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