On our first day in Salzburg, Austria we each made verbal lists detailing three locations and or activities that we were interested in visiting. The top of my list contained visiting the ice cave way up in the mountains, our friends the Konons said it was a must see, so I took their advice seriously. My second and third choices were Gross Glockner, the glacier mountain, and the salt mine that gave Salzburg its name. Gross Glocknerstraße (straße means road or street) like many words in the Germanic alphabet includes this extra letter that is not a B and is pronounced like an S. We all enjoyed trying out the correct pronunciation after we learned it ourselves. We saved going to the salt mine as an excuse for another visit some other year.
When we decided that we would go to the ice cave, I was quite pleased. The problem was that nobody ever remembered that the ice cave was my number one pick. When we woke up early to see the glaciers I was aroused with a “get ready, remember that you really wanted to see this!” I did in fact really want to see it, so I was pretty excited but not as excited for it as I was for the ice cave. So Mom and Dad were close, thinking snow and cold, but still not quite there.
On the days leading up to going to the ice cave it was constantly confused with the salt mine, my third choice, so it would be referred to as the “ice mine” or the “salt cave.” By the day of the visit I had trained Mom, Dad, and Jack enough so that only on occasion would they mess up and call it something else. Unfortunately, by the day of our visit to the ice cave all of them had caught on to their continued mess ups and started either doing it on purpose or pretending the place didn’t exist entirely! I was thoroughly glad when we arrived and were able to take a picture with the sign to prove it was real.
On the new topic of signs, there was one that was posted on the ticket booth and at every fork in the path. This particular sign proclaimed a three minute gondola ride and then a twenty minute hike to the cave, it lied. The three minute gondola ride was true, as was the twenty or thirty minute hike on a steep path. None of the signs however, mentioned the equally steep, possibly longer, hike to the gondola!
Along the way, even more signs warned of the dangers of falling rocks and to not linger on the scenic path for that reason. We saw no falling rocks in motion and lingered all we wanted while enjoying the amazing views from the cliff’s edge.
Not all of the path was on the cliff though, for those a bit squeamish of being right next to the edge there was an option to go into a slightly damp, but not unpleasantly so, tunnel.
In the tunnel there was, for some reason, a dead end that couldn’t have been more than twenty feet long. We guessed whoever had made the tunnel had shrugged and said, “oh well, we tried,” and stopped there. Most of the time towards the end of the path there were covered walkways instead tunnels. The walkways at least had a bit of a better view, which is to say a great view.
Though it all seemed quite hazardous because the path was covered in slippery rocks whenever it wasn’t covered and sometimes when it was, we all had a good time with it, the whole experience provided an excellent workout.
We were very unlucky with our timing for the tour of the ice cave and had to wait over half an hour for one in English. Then we were beginning to wonder if they had tours in English!
A few hundred stairs up into the cave later, we came to a small plaque. Right under that plaque was a carving of the most boring thing ever, a tiny X marks the spot, from the first mountaineer that found the ice cave. It marked the place where he had to turn back because he wasn’t expecting the ice. We had quite a discussion about why he was randomly climbing way up there, however the conversation ended in mystery. Years later, explorers named some of the ice formations and started giving tours. The names probably seemed more fitting back then because the ice melts and refreezes all the time, creating different shapes over the course of a few years. Some of the land marks such as the “ice elephant” took a lot of imagination to see what people who first found and named them saw but we managed. That particular formation looked like a cloud according to me, so it could have been anything.
The only light they use in the cave is from open-flame lanterns that are the same model as the first tour givers used. Anyone is allowed to carry one around in the cave. According to our guide there have been fires on people, in the past. We children were thrilled as a matter of course, and menacingly held up the lanterns like one would with a flashlight for ghost stories. Besides that the guide carried magnesium strips that, thankfully, only he was allowed to light and hold. Otherwise we probably would have all wanted one. The tour was pretty long and not for the weak legged but we stopped every few flights to take in our surroundings full of beautiful ice which made everything worth it. By the end we couldn’t believe how many, admittedly short but steep, stairs we climbed. Somewhere around fourteen hundred!
We had lunch after and did the fun hikes and gondola ride down to the bottom where everybody but the drivers fell asleep on the drive back to our house.
I can picture it all! Great description!!!