We have to hurry up
Ice is melting.... is melting faster and faster at each visit to this ice cave.
We are in the Canin massif, at about 2200 m a.s.l. in the Julian Alps and we've been monitoring this ice deposit and this ice cave since 2011. Rock, air and ice temperature are recorded in different sectors of the cave as well as the annual mass balance. Now we are looking at cryogenic calcite crystals besides other proxies and we found quite a bit of it in the last visits.
The ice surface decreased almost 30 cm since the first visits in summer 2011 and even the room below the surface is opening fast. The risk is to "loose" the inclusions in the ice which are still undisturbed once the ice will possibly melt away.
02 August 2016 we went up to check the situation, download dataloggers and taking pictiures and samples of coarser calcite cryogenic crystals. Here with Barbara which is working on her MSc thesis in this cave.
Photo credits Arianna Peron
