High altitude karstic environments often preserve permanent ice deposits within caves, representing a lesser-known portion of the cryosphere. Despite being not so widespread and easily reachable as mountain glaciers and ice caps, ice-caves preserve a great deal of information about past environmental changes and paleoclimatic evolution. Since one of their main characteristics is to have ground-ice older than 2 years, many authors are prone to consider ice-caves as sporadic permafrost phenomena. This photo was taken from the “Vasto ice-cave” looking through the entrance to the Canin-Kanin massif (2587 m above sea level) in the Julian Alps during an exceptional December in 2015, which had extremely dry conditions. This led to almost no snow on the ground in one of the most snowy areas of the Alps, which usually has a mean annual precipitation higher than 3300 mm w.e.
Description by Renato R. Colucci, after the description on imaggeo.egu.eu.
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