There was another thread where someone was asking after an “ice cave” in Indiana and thought “Waht” How can there be a “cave of ice” in a variable temperate climate. I goodled it and these things really exist. Amazing!
The crystal caves are pretty amazing too
Sadly, with global warming, these are disappearing. I visited the Paradise Ice Caves on Mt. Rainier back in 1989. It was a several mile hike from the lodge, but well worth it (I suspect that the lodge was originally right next to the caves). The light diffused in through the walls of the cave (the caves were the result of melt runoff from the glacier) and it was a gorgeous blue.
Within ten years the caves were completely gone.
These were the largest ice caves to be completely mapped, and at one time were extremely extensive, with a vast main chamber.
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=yfp-t-980&va=paradise+ice+caves
There’s some really cool Ice Caves that form every year about an hour’s drive from where I live. In the summer, it’s just a slightly overhanging cliff with a waterfall; in the winter, the water freezes, forming a cave behind it.
There’s a nice picture here.
It’s about a mile hike in through some pretty woods, very fun to visit for an afternoon. Even more fun if you go on a weekday when nobody is around.
On vacation out west some years back, I noticed a notation on my road atlas of “ice cave” near where we were passing. There were no brochures in local tourist spots about the ice caves and the locals didn’t know about any. After some driving around we found a very small cave that we decided was the fabled ice cave.
A waste of an hour, but that’s how we roll on vacation. Sometimes we find great stuff that no one knows about, other times “attractions” are laughably unattractive. The Internet has taken a lot of the guesswork out of our trips though.
I saw what you did there.
Wait - we have those in Indiana? I thought it was just endless cornfields…