Ice wonders of the Nature

Helping with the Winter Marathon led to some magnificent discoveries

If I can I always try to help with mountain marathons organised by local, Kielce branch of Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society. I check paths, mark trails and spend time on the marathon’s checkpoints.

Especially popular among runners and hikers is the Winter Marathon of the Holy Cross Mountains. Online registration for 500 available slots usually lasts less than 4 minutes. Because of the third edition of this event one year ago, I visited Hell Cave near Chęciny twice in a span of 3 days. That gave me an opportunity to discover ice marvels and learn how the nature creates them.

Hell Cave near Chęciny and the karst process

In a previous post about caves in the Holy Cross province there’s a picture of Hell’s interior with visible calcite dripstones. I explained in the post how limestone and caverns form and what is the karst process.

The famous Paradise Cave, also placed near Chęciny, is known for 80 centimetres long stalactites. They grew so big because the cave was cut off from humans presence for few millennia.

Hell Cave however, was open for humans almost constantly. We can even find a few hundred years old hole inside left by miners looking for lead ore there. That’s why calcite stalactites are small, around 1cm long. The nature simply didn’t have enough uninterrupted time to create more spectacular dripstones . So, as you can even tell by the names, Paradise Cave has more to offer in terms of the nature’s beauty than Hell. But that’s not always the case.

Ice wonders in Hell Cave, Miedzianka preserve and Hell rocks near Skarżysko

One year ago, the day before the Winter Marathon, The Hell Cave looked as usual. Some snow near the entrance, limestone walls inside covered with calcite veins. Temperature was around 0 Celsius degrees. Yet later in the afternoon, a quite intensive snow blizzard came leaving drifts of snow over the cave. During the weekend the snow melted and dripped to the cave trough cracks in rocks. On Sunday’s night heavy frost occurred and turned dripping water into beautiful ice stalactites.

We cannot really say it is the real karst process as we need calcium carbonate, water and carbon dioxide for this to happen. But due to similarity and the beauty of these evanescent forms let’s call it the “ice karst”.

The interesting fact about Hell’s ice stalactites is that I was able to see “before and after effect”. That helped explain the whole phenomenon behind the creation of such marvellous ice formations. But there are other examples of ice karst in the Holy Cross province to see in a gallery on the bottom of this webpage. The picture of a huge stagnate from Hell rocks near Skarżysko or fantastic forms of a harp in the old cave Zofia in Miedzianka preserve near Chęciny.

Artificial Ice Karst. The Ice Waterfall in Kielce.

Each year in winter, if the temperature drops well below zero, we can also visit an artificial ice waterfall made by people. It’s placed in the Kadzielnia preserve in Kielce, on the Rock of Geologists. I have mixed feelings if it should be created in the protected part of the old quarry but one cannot deny the beauty of fantastical forms of frozen water there.

Gallery – Ice karst in the Holy Cross province

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