May 12th. 2012.

We woke up to a rainy ugly, really cold day like Dr. Anna's weather prediction called for. We were really glad that we went up to Krippenstein the day before.

We cooked breakfast, because we had appartmants in this hotel with full kitchen. We left for Werfen and the ice cave around 11 a.m.

This is the google map showing the rout from Hallstatt to Werfen.

It took us about 90 minutes to drive to Werfen and from there we took the narrow mountain road to the cable railway station. This road  had  a dirt surface, with steep inclines and hairpin bends scratching up the side of the mountain. We parked at the top of the road and supposedly had an about a 10 minute walk to reach the cable railway station. However Whitney felt sick so it took us just a little over an hour. We could see the valley and the river far below, and the castle which sits on a small hill outside Werfen. The weather was pretty bad, however the view with the fog and clouds were incredible.

The cable car was a small one, holding only six people standing. There were two cars on a continuous loop of cable which kept the load fairly well balanced at all times. There were tremendous concrete counterweights which moved in some fashion when the cars moved up and down.

From the upper station we had about a 20 minute walk to the entrance of the ice cave.

"The Eisriesenwelt (Austrian word  for "World of the ice giants") is a natural limestone ice cave located in Werfen. The cave is located in the Hochkogel mountain which is part of  the Tennengebirge section of the Alps. It is the largest ice cave in the world, extending more than 42km.

The Tennengebirge mountains were formed during the late Tertiary period, during the Würm glaciation period of the Pleistocene. The mountain range, one of the massifs in the Austrian Alps, is the largest karst plateau in the Salzburger Alps, and the Eisriesenwelt is located at the rim of this plateau. Although the cave has a length of 42 km, only the first kilometer, the area that tourists are allowed to visit, is covered in ice. Eisriesenwelt was formed by the Salzach river, which eroded passageways into the mountain. The ice formations in the cave were formed by thawing snow which drained into the cave and froze during winter.
Since the entrance to the caves is open year-round, chilly winter winds blow into the cave and freeze the snow inside. In summer, a cold wind from inside the cave blows toward the entrance and prevents the formations from melting."

This was the walk way from the cable car to the cave.

The 30 minutes walk took us about 2.5 hours. Everybody was freezing it was high altitude and pretty misereble to get up there.

When  entering the cave in a group of about 30, a carbide miner's lamp was given to about every 5th person. We moved into the entrance and were immediately walking over a sheet of ice on a wooden catwalk. In a long single file illuminated by the periodic lamps, we moved through the cave on well-constructed wooden walks, ramps and stairways. We were told not to take pictures, but of course we did. However it was hard because there was no electricity in the cave, so everything was dark except for the carbid light in people's hands. The tour guide burnt Magnesium for us to see the wonders of this fantastic cave.

This is an official picture of the cave.

These are the pictures we were not suppose to take.

 From Allison Major's Journal

The cave was gorgeous! There were walls and columns of stalagmites and stalactites all around us. There were so many stairs to climb up and down throughout the cave. The guide would  light up the caves with a long strip of Mg that made the cave glow with the most beautiful shades of blue imaginable. Some of the ice walls were 45 feet thick! The only lights in the cave were our small ancient looking carbide burning lanterns and the occasional periods when the guide would light the cave with his long strips of Mg. The cave consisted of limestone, like the rest of all the Alps, that glittered with frost. It’s another one of those things that the beauty of it couldn’t be captured in any other way than with the eyes. However unprepared and hard this day was on everyone due to the cold, high altitude sickness and hellacious winds on top of the mountain this day held its own kind of magic and I’m happy we went.

After the cave we drove back to Werfen cold and hungry, soon we found a cool restaurant and had a really good dinner before driving back to Obertraum to our hotel.