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Glacier Caves

Image: a glacier cave in Greenland, featured in the IMAX Film amazing caves, © MacGillivray Freeman Films.

Caves inside ice are only possible in ice, which does not melt away every year. This kind of ice is called glacier, and is found all over the world. Huge glaciers cover the north and south pole. Other glaciers cover mountains in Greenland, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, Alaska and Washington.

Image: a glacier cave in Greenland, featured in the IMAX Film amazing caves, © MacGillivray Freeman Films.

To remove ice from inside a glacier, all we need is a little bit of energy (aka warmth). The ice melts, and if there are cracks in the ice, the water flows out of the glacier.

Many glaciers of the world are in areas with seasons. In the warm season the surface of the ice starts to melt and the water flows down the ice shield. As it is a little warmer than the ice it also melts a little bit of ice where it flows, and so the water soon forms a gorge. As the ice is able to flow, the gorge closes some time after the water stops to flow. Only water flowing continually will keep the passage clear. But as it flows on the bottom of the gorge, the upper part of the gorge closes and the gorge becomes a cave.

A very special thing are the glacier caves of Iceland. This island has many volcanic regions, so it is rather common that volcanoes or warm springs are located below glaciers. This volcanic warmth melts ice at the bottom of the glacier thus producing a cavern inside. If the water has a way to flow out, it is air filled, if not it is water filled.

Examples

Paradise Ice Caves

EXPLORATION HISTORY

Heavy snow during the 1920s prevented access into the Paradise ice caves until F. W. Schmoe, a park naturalist, dug an opening with his ice axe. His published his cave observations (Schmoe, 1926) describe a white-water river flowing through a large domed room with numerous waterfalls, bridges, tunnels, and dark passageways. By the end of the 1920s, the Mount Rainier Guide Service was conducting regular tours into the caverns. Tours continued through to the mid-1940s, until glacial retreat had all but destroyed the downslope reaches of Paradise Glacier and its ice caves.

New openings were discovered at the head of the Stevens lobe of Paradise Glacier in 1946, but further exploration did not occur until the mid 1960s. Activities of the Cascade Grotto of the National Speleological Society (NSS) beginning in 1967 gave attention to newer openings on the Stevens Lobe snout, then located in the middle area of Stevens Basin (Anderson, et al., 1994; Halliday, 1976).

In the 1960s, exploration was confined to the main stream passage that followed Stevens Creek. By 1970, over 2 miles (1.2 km) of firn and glacier ice cave passages (cumulative measure) had been surveyed. Work was interrupted in 1971, due to record snowfalls that continued through 1972. It resumed in full force from 1973 through 1981, and then was carried on intermittently through 2001. By May of 1978, the combined length of mapped cave passages was 8.23 miles (13.25 km).

 Mount Rainier's Steam Caves

An early National Park Service photo showing climbers inside the steam caves In 1870, after Hazard Stevens and P.B. Van Trump wearily completed the first fully-documented ascent of Mount Rainier, an extensive network of steam caves at the summit saved their lives.

Lacking blankets for a bivouac or sunlight for a descent, they huddled in the eerie cavern for its wind shelter and relative warmth--though at just above freezing, they must have had one long, cold bummer of a night.

A few climbers since then have used the firn-snow caves for an emergency shelter. A few more have probably even ducked into the upper part of a cavern for some quality time in a makeshift outhouse. But after completing the grueling hike to the summit, few venture more than a quick glance into the icy, dark holes. As a result, not many know much about the caves--or even that they're there.

In 1970--exactly 100 years after Stevens and Van Trump huddled for life--Drs. Eugene Kiver and Martin Mumma, of Eastern Washington State College, made the first complete scientific examinations of the caves. Camping at the summit they explored and mapped the caverns with a tripod-mounted compass and measuring tape. Inside they found a main perimeter passage running parallel in an arc to the outer rims of each crater some 50-70 meters from the surface. Numerous exhaust passageways run perpendicular to the perimeter tunnel, up the crater slope to the rim.

The ground in the craters is mostly loose, igneous rubble, with some rocks as large as two meters across. Fumaroles--holes in the ground that exhaust the volcano's heat--are the engine that drives the melting process. The walls and ceiling are firn snow--the same age-hardened ice that comprises glaciers. This ice cycles like a glacier, accumulating on the surface and ablating (or, in English, melting) down lower.

Instead of melting as it slides to a lower, warmer elevation like a glacier, ablation on the summit comes as the mountain's heat melts the underside of the ice plug. The majority of this melted water escapes into the crater and finds its way down the mountain as groundwater.

The caves hid plenty of surprises for the explorers, however. Two passages led to large rooms. One room, over a hundred feet across, held a large reservoir of melt-water--in effect, a lake at the summit of Mount Rainier.

Another large room, this one dry, contained debris left on the summit that had subsided--that is, sunk through the firn snow through its accumulate-melt cycle --and fallen into the room. Among this included 50-year-old cans and wool gloves. They named it "the bird room" for the skeletal remains of long dead birds, fallen at the summit.

In general, the caves are extremely stable. Slight variation in width and shape occurs from season to season, but on an annual basis the snowpack and heat are in remarkable

Crater Ice Caves Mount St. Helens

History

• 2002 explored by an International Glaciospeleological Survey expedition.

The crater floor has been progressively covered by a layer of snow, firn, and glacier ice since as early as 1986. Heat, steam, and volcanic gases from the crater fumaroles have melted over 2,415 m (7925 ft) of cave passage in the crater ice mass.  The caves are in approximate balance with the present geothermal heat release. Geothermal activity influences the dimensions, location, ceiling, wall, and wall ablation features of these caves. Cave passages are located above fumaroles and fractures in and adjacent to the dacite dome.  Cave passages gradually enlarge by ablation, caused by outside air circulation and by geothermal sources beneath the ice.  The passages form a circumferential pattern around the dome, with entrance passages on the dome flanks.

Photos By Charles H. Anderson Jr.

 Descending passages have vertical sides and ceilings that are convex upward. Passages paralleling the slope contours are often shaped like right triangles with the 90-degree angle located at the junction of the downslope ice wall and the ice ceiling. Floors are composed of mud with up to boulder-size volcanic rubble and slope about 30 degrees. Against the Lava Dome flanks, the slope may exceed 40 degrees.

Kverkfjöll

 History

• 198? explored by an French expedition.

Description

This is maybe the most famous glacier cave in the world. It was formed by hot water from volcanic spring below the Vatnajökull glacier.

The cave was explored by a French expedition in the eighties. They were able to follow the cave about 2 km.

Glacier caves are always dangerous. So it is warned to enter the cave as the entrance is rather unstable. Blocks of ice may fall down.

Glacier caves are formed very fast, especially if they are formed by hot springs as in this case. On the other hand they are destroyed very easy by movements or collapses of the ice. So they are the shortest living caves at all.

	longest and deepest        glacier caves. ( )
Mise à jour le 5-5-2001
Renseignements :
	Philippe AUDRA	e-mail : audra@unice.fr

Les moulins
		moulin: aven-perte dans un glacier, alimenté par une bédière, ruisseau de fonte coulant à la surface (Choppy, 1985)
Dénivellation de + de 100 m
	Cavités	Pays	Prof.	Références
1.	Perito mecanico	Argentine	-180 m	Atlas non calc
2.	Moulin Isortoq	Groënland	-173 m	Atlas non calc
3.	Moulin Kapisigdlit	Groënland	-157 m	Atlas non calc
4.	Moulin	Pakistan	-140 m	Atlas non calc
5.	Eimfjellethaven	Spitzberg	-135 m	Atlas non calc
6.	Moulin d'Anorip Putua	Groënland	-130 m	Atlas non calc
7.	Moulin du Gorngletscher	Suisse	-130 m	Atlas non calc
8.	Puits-volcan de Phrihnüg kagipu	Islande	-121 m	Atlas non calc
9.	Crystal Cave	Spitzberg	-120 m	Atlas non calc
10.	Gouffre Félix	Spitzberg	-120 m	Atlas non calc
11.	Moulin	Pakistan	-120 m	Atlas non calc
12.	Moulin de la Mer de Glace	France	-105 m	Atlas non calc
13.	Puits du glacier Loven-est	Spitzberg	-105 m	Atlas non calc
14.	Moulin	Pakistan	-100 m	Atlas non calc
15.	Glaciologeraven	Spitzberg	-100 m	Eraso & Pulina
Développement de + de 1 000 m
	Cavités	Pays	Dével.	Références
1.	Perito mecanico	Argentine	1 021 m	Atlas non calc
2.	Cueva Piramida	Spitzberg	2 000 m	Eraso & Pulina

Les grottes sous-glaciaires
Dénivellation de + de 100 m
	Cavités	Pays	Prof.	Références
1.	Kverkfjöll	Islande	-525 m	Atlas non calc
2.	Riv. du glacier de Grise-Fjord	Ile Ellesmere	-147 m	Atlas non calc
3.	Gouffre de Vesletuva	Spitzberg	-112 m	Atlas non calc
Développement de + de 1 000 m