Ice Caves Revisited

I visited the ice caves near Shivling on 6th Dec 08, this time with Uttam Chand a member of the new team. We went at around 9 PM. Time was not a problem because of 24 hours daylight.

I went there to see how much the caves had melted. But I saw that on the contrary, there is more snow than there was in September, when I last visited them. This time around, the snow had accumulated almost to the roof in the middle. We did not go in because of the risk of the ice caving in on us and there were some cracks visible on the roof. Moreover, there was no point in going in because there was too much snow. The ground had also not melted at all. The only signs of melting were the icicles all around. This was surprising.

The smaller caves were quite a contrast to the bigger ones. Half of the roof had caved in and roof of the remaining half was very thin. They could not be called caves any longer.

All around the caves were footprints as if someone had come here with crampons. They could be none other than the tourists from the nearby White Desert Tourist Camp, or the dhabawaalas as we call them. The tourists coming there are stinking rich, paying $40,000 for a ten day trip. It is sheer madness. All they end up doing is walk upto the ice caves, a few rounds on the snow scooter, a trip to the shelf on foot, some ice climbing and probably a day trip to the Humbolt Mountains, 100 km south of here. All this goes down the drain if the weather is not good, as it is these days. For us, the weather would not create problems, but not so for those who are not acclimatized to the cold here. The proprietors are all adventurers, who have skied to the South Pole a few times.