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Inside the west entrance of West Ice Cave, a lava tube located in a deep collapse pit south of Medicine Lake, California. The cave starts w/ a crawlway into a room w/ a level ice pond that has some floating liquid water on top. Past a squeeze through two large breakdown boulders is where the ice drops into a frozen slide a good 15 feet down before sloping additionally further down, reminding me a bit of Crystal Ice Cave in Lava Beds National Monument. A rope was handy to have as well as microspikes - there is no other exit once you descend. The rope I tied to a leftover chain - an old chain ladder led the way down but it was already long buried under a foot of ice. The ice here has accumulated for centuries I would imagine as I cannot see the breakdown floor below. This view is further in where there are some lovely formations coming from the ceiling, almost like a limestone cave as they are 10-12 feet in height. A massive wall of ice completely chokes the passageway leading to a dead end - a comparison photo from the early 1970s showed the ice floor to be sloped nearly five feet lower than it is now.
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