The ice floor
Twenty-five metres of ice beneath you.
Jan Pešula — CC0 · dariusz woźniak — CC BY-SA 3.0 · dariusz woźniak — CC BY-SA 3.0 · dariusz woźniak — CC BY-SA 3.0
A national park of gorges and waterfalls with routes equipped with iron ladders and chains where walkers climb beside the water — among central Europe's finest hiking areas, with the cave at its edge.
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Permanent ice underground in the heart of Europe: the Dobšiná Ice Cave in the Slovak Paradise is among the world's most important ice caves and a UNESCO site — holding more than a hundred thousand cubic metres of ice up to twenty-five metres thick on its floor, with frozen columns and ice waterfalls that never melt. Its secret is its shape: the cave is a "cold trap" with a single upper entrance that lets cold air sink in during winter and settle without escaping — so the temperature stays below freezing all year and the ice has accumulated since the Ice Age. Discovered in 1870 and electrically lit in 1887, among the first illuminated caves in the world. The tour lasts half an hour on walkways above the ice at sub-zero temperatures (winter clothing is required even in July), reached by a twenty-minute forest climb from the car park. It opens from mid-May to September only.
Twenty-five metres of ice beneath you.
Frozen waterfalls lit from behind.
Dobšinská Ľadová Jaskyňa, Slovakia