Just chillin in the snow with one of the local huskies

Woke up this morning, looked outside, and there was cloud everywhere. Arghh, not again. So I decided to go up to the Dachstein Ice Caves, being that its indoors the crappy weather wouldn’t matter. Walked the 20mins or so to the cable car base station and paid 33 euros for my ticket which included rides on all 3 sections of the cable car, both ice caves and a free photo which is likely to be really stupid looking.

Caught the cable car to the first station which is the stop for the two ice cave tours. Never been in an ice cave before…turns out they’re pretty awesome. The tour guide was explaining things in English to anyone that was at the front of the group, but I was staying at the back so I could take photos (I also think its kinda obvious how the caves formed). They say you aren’t supposed to take photos but if im paying 33 euros to do something then im taking photos. Its mainly just to keep the group moving along cause most people take 7 years to compose a photo. So yeah i just hung at the back like i do in most tours and snap away. Was kinda cold in the caves as well, temperatures hover from about -3 to 1 degrees. Both of the tours were about an hour each and really worth it. To think that there is about 60km of tunnels and the tour is only 1km is kinda crazy. Some of the caverns are absolutely huge, with massive waterfalls flowing constantly, but you cant see them because they are flowing under the ice. Just wish I had the money to pay for one of the cave exploring tours where they go down some of the hektik tunnels and crawl through caverns etc.

Slightly off topic and nerdy camera talk, but thank god for the high ISO capabilities of the 5d2. Ive been in some pretty dark places taking photos on this trip, including these ice caves, and where everyone else’s point and shoot cameras are failing the 5d2 is taking awesome clean shots. Most of the cave shots were done at 1/5th f/4 ISO1600. I’ve got pretty steady hands so 1/5th is ok for me, and I can always go to ISO3200 if I needed to. Very well worth lugging around the world.

By the time the second ice cave tour finished the weather was still bad, even more low lying cloud around. But my ticket included rides on the other cable cars that go higher so I thought what the hell ill go up anyway, I can always just come straight back down. Got up the top walked outside and there was fresh snow from last night, the first of the year. Went for a walk around and came across some husky kennels, most of them were inside sleeping, but one was unchained and walked up to me and was quite friendly. Their fur feels like it is really matted, its quite strange. While I was walking around the weather got even worse and it started snowing. I’ll just add that I was also only wearing shorts, and the temperature was probably about -3 with the wind chill being even lower. Lets just say I was getting a lot of strange looks from other people thinking I was a crazy person. I personally didn’t think it was THAT cold, just gotta keep your head, hands and feet warm and its all good. Snow was starting to get pretty heavy now though and my camera doesn’t fit in my backpack so I had to call it a day.

After seeing what the weather was like this morning I thought it was going to be another day where photos would be useless because of the weather and I just wouldn’t get much out of the day in general. I was pleasantly surprised though, experiencing my first snow way way earlier than I ever would have thought, and also came up close to some huskies which are awesome animals.