Renowned climbing film makers Dave Brown and Ben Pritchard recently returned from an unusual trip filming Will Gadd and Swede Andreas Spak climbing ice formations 1,000 feet under ground in some abandoned iron mines in Sweden! Spak researched the old mines with the help of Swedish mine spelunker Daniel Karlsson. The mines were worked for up to 800 years, and the shafts plunge as deep as 1,000 feet below the surface. The climbers arrived late in an unusually warm Swedish winter, and surface temperatures were in the 60s and 70s; meanwhile, deep in the mines the ambient temperature was too warm for ice. But 150 to 500 feet down, the ventilated mine shafts seemed to lock in refrigerated air. The ice appeared to be many years old; some formations had ?growth rings.?
Photo courtesy of Chris Pondella. Photo courtesy of Hot Aches. Check out the account from the film makers perspective on the Hot Aches Blog, or from the climbers perspective at Climbing.com
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