Austria: Eisriesenwelt Caves

Eisriesenwelt literally means “World of the Ice Giants”, and is the biggest ice cave in the world. It is located in the heart of some of the steepest and least accessible mountains in Austria. Just getting to it is an adventure – first you have to take a bus going up steep switchbacks up the mountain. Then you hike up for an hour through wet tunnels. Then you take a cable car that just goes almost vertically up – the mountains are essentially a wall. Then from the top platform you hike another hour steeply up to the cave’s entrance. The cave is 42km long but only the first kilometer has ice – insane amounts of ice, 9-12 meters deep, and also forming stalactites, columns, frozen falls. The temperature is constant at the freezing mark so the ice almost doesn’t melt. You continue in the cave steeply up for 750 steps and ladders over icefalls and then down a different route through ice tunnels. The lighting is only from candles so the pictures don’t come out that great, but it’s truly one of the wonders of the world and an awesome bucketlist experience.