The Booming Ice Chasm of The Canadian Rockies

Booming Ice Chasm is a stunning H2O ice cave inwards the Crowsnest Pass surface area of the Canadian Rockies inwards Alberta. The cave is then called for it's incredible acoustics. It is said that every bit rocks fall downward as well as crash to the cave flooring , 140 meters below , it causes booming echoes. The cave is located almost 700 meters upward the side of a mount amongst its entrance tucked behind a rocky ledge as well as nearly impossible to see. No wonder it remained undiscovered until 2005 when spelunker Chas Yonge showtime spotted the chasm every bit a mysterious night spot on Google Earth.

Booming Ice Chasm is what’s known every bit a “cold-trap” cave , where mutual depression temperature air enters the cave as well as sinks to the bottom displacing whatever warmer air which rises as well as exits the cave. The mutual depression temperature dense air is never able to escape keeping the cave frozen all yr round.

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Photo credit: Francois-Xavier De Ruydts

The entrance to Booming Ice Chasm is a gaping hole inwards the side of the mount , several meters across. It slopes downward , lined amongst unloose stones as well as snowfall that gives means to a sheer H2O ice gradient , dropping only about 200 meters. This natural icy slide is extremely treacherous every bit anything dropped hither shoots downward the steep gradient to the bottom of the cave at fatal speeds.

Because of the booming echoes , conversing within the cave is hard every bit each discussion sets off a serial of echoes that makes sentences unintelligible. So cave explorers convey to talk inwards hushed whispers into their radios or talk inwards syllables , past times halting several seconds betwixt each to permit the echoes to expire down.

The cave was showtime explored inwards 2008 , but at that topographic point are several passages that are soundless to last explored as well as mapped.

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