A Tour of Fire and Ice

That’s the billing for the privately owned ice cave we visited yesterday.

The first part of the tour was a walk around the side of and into the cinder cone crater of the Bandera volcano that erupted 10,900 years ago. That’s the volcano that produced the lava fields I walked on the day before. If you look closely at the photo you can see a couple of places along the top of this truncated cone where nothing is growing. I think the cinders collapse taking any trees with them.

On the way up we encountered this spatter cone. This formed when hot gasses vented bringing molten lava splashing out and solidifying into a cone like this.

The trail up was composed of the same cinders that made up the majority of the cone. There was some more solid lava, but not much.

We got a good view of the lava flow and other volcanoes in the area.

The crater, which has one side blown out where the lava flow came out, is about 1400 feet wide and 800 feet deep. This is looking down into the crater from the end of the trail.

And this is looking up at the rim of the cone.

Many of the trees, like this juniper, are very old and very twisted.

That was the fire part of the tour, although it was cold yesterday with a cutting breeze and we could have used a bit of actual fire.

The ice part of the tour was a visit to a cave formed in a lava tube. These are the first set of steps leading down into the cave.

The Bandera volcano produced a lava flow that is 23 miles long. It has many lava tubes, but the largest is continuous for over 17 miles, the longest known in North America. Much of this tube is collapsed, but some remains as caves and it is one of these caves we were entering.

This is the second set of stairs into the cave. The very deep cave in lava, that is a good insulator, is what has enabled this ice cave to exist.

No one knows for sure how the ice first formed, but it is now 20 feet deep. The oldest ice is 3400 years old. The temperature in this deep hole remains at 31 degrees Fahrenheit and new rain continues to build the ice. The green color is an arctic algae.

The cool entrance to the cave creates an environment where lichen and alpine moss thrive.

To me the history of this land was as interesting as the sights. We talked to the woman who now operates and owns this. The land was bought by her great great grandfather from the railroad. Her grandmother inherited it and asked her father to come and manage it in 1946. He saw the potential and developed it as a tourist attraction. He stopped the mining of the ice, which the previous manager had used to cool drinks for the saloon he ran.

She and her family are very dedicated to preserving these natural wonders and sharing them with others.