Obertraun, Austria
47° 32' N 13° 41' E
Oct 11, 2003 07:42
Distance 2km

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Yes, yes, ice caves!

Text written in: English

Since the weather was nice, we decided to take another shot at the Obertraun Ice Caves. This time, the ice caves and mammoth cave were open, so we took tours of both. The Mammoth Cave, as the name suggests, was huge. The tour only covered 2% of it, and it was in German only, but it was still really cool to see. The Ice Cave wasn't as big, but it was full of ice formations that grow every spring as water from the snow outside seeps in through the roof. Some of the ice was over 25 meters thick, and there was an "ice palace" over 8 meters high. This guide was also in German only, but there was at least a written guide in English that we got to take along. We almost missed the tour entirely, though; we left lots of time to walk up to the cave entrance, but were caught behind a busload of about 50 seniors that took up the entire path and walked really slowly. Matt kept wanting to use rapid stealth moves to get in front of them, but Cat was concerned about the possibility of accidentally shoving senior citizens off a cliff. Will kind of got caught in the middle of the debate. That seems to happen sometimes.

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Photos / videos of "Yes, yes, ice caves!":

The walls of the caves were still running with water from the summer melting. Catherine looks dubiously at the walls of the cave. The guide swore to us that the last cave-in had been thousands of years ago. Honest. View of Hallstatt from the top exit of the ice cave. This was a really cool scale model of the cave system in the area. This picture does nothing to capture the coolness of this model, but we did what we could. And the hippies say we're running out of trees. Fah! Sun goes down behind an Alp. Nifty, huh? View from the entrance to the Mammoth Cave. By the time we got to the top, where the entrance to the ice cave was (a cable car ride and a hike later), there was a fair amount of snow that was there to stay. Cat liked this dog a lot. View of Hallstatt and the lake from the top exit of the ice cave.
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