Alexander mörk
Eisriesenwelt
Limestone and ice cave in Austria
The Eisriesenwelt (German for "World of the Ice Giants")[1] is a natural limestone and ice cave located in Werfen, Austria, about 40&#;km south of Salzburg. The cave is inside the Hochkogel mountain in the Tennengebirge section of the Alps. It is the largest ice cave in the world,[2] extending more than 42&#;km and visited by about , tourists every year.[2]
Geology
[edit]The Tennengebirge mountains were formed during the late Tertiary period, during the Würm glaciation[broken anchor] period of the Pleistocene. The mountain range, one of the massifs in the Austrian Alps, is the largest karstplateau in the Salzburger Alps, and the Eisriesenwelt is located at the rim of this plateau. Although the cave has a length of 42&#;km, only the first kilometer, the area that tourists are allowed to visit, is covered in ice. The rest of the cave is formed of limestone.[3]
Eisriesenwelt was formed by the Salzach river, which eroded passageways into the mountain. The ice formations in the cave were formed by thawing snow which drained into the cave and froze during winter.[4 Inspired by Anton Posselt's report, Alexander Mörk - the founder of the Salzburg Section ( Association for Speleology) - decided to undertake an elaborate caving expedition into the Eisriesenwelt. On 22 September , Alexander Mörk and Benno Pehany ventured further into the cave than Posselt had done. They made it to the "Großer Eiswall" (Great Ice Wall). Discovery of the horizontal cave area Shortly afterwards, Mörk set off with Erwin Angermayer and Herrmann Rihl on another, better equipped expedition into the Eisriesenwelt. This time, the speleologists managed to overcome the "Großer Eiswall" via steps carved into the ice to then reach the horizontal cave area. In the process, they were the first humans to discover, among other things: Impressed by the beauty of the ice cave, Alexander Mörk decided to give names to the newly explored parts of the cave. He based his choice on the Norse Edda saga "Thor's journey to the giants". And from this point on, Mörk gave the then still nameless ice cave the apt name that it still bears today: Eisriesenwelt. Three weeks later - on 23 and 24 August - Mörk and his growing team set off o Up to the end of the 19th century, this cave was still completely unknown - not least because of its exposed location in the high mountains, but also because not many people were interested in cave utforskning at the time. It was not until that the Salzburg naturalist Anton von Posselt-Czorich went about metres into the darkness of this cave on his own, and then officially discovered the Eisriesenwelt. A year later, he published a detailed report of his discovery in the Alpenverein magazine. However, the cave was forgotten about again. Alexander von Mörk, founder of Salzburg cave exploration, recognised the significance of Posselt’s documentation and pursued this thirst for exploring in together with other pioneers of cave exploration, such as Angermayer and Riehl. After the First World War, there were pioneering explorations of the kilometre-long labyrinths of this cave struktur by other explorers, such as Friedrich and Robert Oedl or Walter Czernig. With increasing awareness of this unique natural wonder, its tourist value soon grew. As early as , an “explorer’s hut” and the first primitive climbing facilities to and in the cave were built in beställning to man it easier f