19 Oct 2019
Frauenofen is a remote and highly protected cave which contained large ice accumulations and several ice lakes, which disappeared in the early 1970s. With permission from the Salzburger Landesregierung, Abteilung Natur- und Umweltschutz, we searched for and identified cryogenic carbonates, demonstrating the former presence of perennial ice also in deeper parts of this 6.1 km-long system.
The next day we went back to Eisgruben Eishöhle on Sarstein, one of the key sites of Tanguy's PhD thesis and sampled in detail the impressive ice body, whose basal ice layers contain the oldest dated cave ice in the Eastern Alps.
Back