# Why Eislufthöhle?

This shows the caves in the area with 4 additional fake vertical shafts indicating the entrance locations and depths of (from left to right) 97 (Schneewindschacht), 76 (Eislufthöhle), 107 (Gemshöhle), and 82 (Bräuninghöhle):

[Download 3d file of this]

76 is striking for going notably deeper (in absolute terms) than anything else apart from the lower reaches of Stellerweg.

The caves under the Schwarzmooskogel ridge show definite levels of major horizontal phreatic development. These can be seen to some extent in the screenshot above, but they're clearer if you play around with the survey in Aven. The Austrian cavers tell us that corresponding phreatic levels are seen in many caves all over the surrounding parts of Austria, so there are good reasons to think they're not a phenomenon only associated with this ridge.

These levels haven't been observed so clearly in the caves out under the Loser Augst-Eck plateau subarea, but Tony Malcolm noted signs of them. Exploration in the early years of CUCC in Austria followed a pattern of "drop pitches to a sump or other conclusion, derig, try another entrance" - the major horizontal levels under the ridge were mostly found much more recently once we got a bit more thorough.

A particularly notable feature of a number of the caves in this area is strong outward draughts (in Summer at any rate). The very names of the caves indicate this: Eislufthöhle is "Ice air cave" or "Ice breath cave", while Schneewindschacht is "Snow wind shaft". 99 is noted as having a "strong draught".

Wildly hypothesising for a moment, this might indicate air coming through from higher entrances, in the same way that the strongly draughting entrances on the East side of the Schwarzmooskogel ridge are most likely due to airflow through from the higher entrances of Kaninchenhöhle and Steinschlagschacht. It would be very interesting if there was significant horizontal development linking some of the caves under the plateau with those under the ridge!

Scanned surveys (these are missing from the website - I need to clean them up and stick them in, but for now, here they are):

Upper half of 76
Lower half of 76
3D sketch of 99

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