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Cave

Dachstein Giant Ice Cave

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A pale blue dome of ice fills the right side of a wide cave chamber while a railed metal walkway runs across the frozen floor beneath the ochre rock wall.
A long steel walkway bridge crosses high above the grey ice floor of a broad chamber in the Dachstein Giant Ice Cave, with icicles hanging from its underside.
A tall blade of white ice rises from the floor of a warm-lit rock chamber in the Dachstein Giant Ice Cave, seen from the top of the visitor stairs.
A frozen cascade of milky green ice with a fringe of icicles fills the foreground of the cave, the visitor walkway a thin line along the rock wall behind it.
The banded, vaulted rock ceiling of the Dachstein Giant Ice Cave arches over a smooth ice floor, with the lit walkway running along the right-hand wall.
A broad field of layered white ice sweeps across the cave floor, with the metal stairs and railings of the visitor route climbing the rock wall on the left.
A dark Dachstein Salzkammergut board reading Goodbye from the Dachstein Caves stands on the gravel outside the cave exit, high above the Hallstaetter See in its wooded valley.

Snapshot

For thirteen years after a goat herder first spotted the ice glinting through a fissure in the Dachstein above Obertraun, no one dared go in. When they finally did in 1910, they found 13,000 cubic metres of permanent ice, bear bones with possible human marks, and chambers large enough to hold a cathedral. The cave has been running guided tours since 1912.

The Story

The Rieseneishöhle sits within the Dachstein massif, accessible from the Schonbergalm middle station of the Krippenstein cable car above Obertraun. The cave is not fed by the glacier above it; the ice formations inside exist because cold air is trapped year-round, allowing winter snowmelt to refreeze into the formations that now define the cave’s interior. The main ice body reaches 20 m thick in places, with a total estimated volume of around 13,000 m³.

The discovery came on July 17, 1910. Hanna and Hermann Bock and Georg Lahner crossed an ice abyss inside the cave using ropes and a makeshift bridge, reaching chambers that had only been rumoured before. A local goat herder named Peter Gamsjäger had first reported the ice glint in 1897, but stories of a cursed abyss kept the village away for over a decade. Bear bones bearing signs of ancient human handling were found deep inside, suggesting the cave had been entered briefly in some earlier era.

Guided tours began just two years after the discovery, in 1912, making this one of the earliest show caves in Austria. Electric lighting followed in 1928. The most recent lighting overhaul, completed in 2018, replaced sodium lamps with an LED system that uses 90% less electricity and includes a colour-shift show designed to highlight the major formations, including the Tristan Dome and the Big Ice Mountain, which rises roughly 30 feet from the cave floor. A separate Mammoth Cave (Mammuthöhle) at the same cable car station contains limestone formations; the two are often combined in a single visit.

The cave is part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing of the Hallstatt-Dachstein landscape. It should not be confused with the Eisriesenwelt near Werfen: both are major cave systems in the broader Salzburg region, but they are in entirely different mountain ranges, with different geology and different characters.

Visiting

The cave is reached by the Dachstein Krippenstein cable car from the valley station at Winkl 34, Obertraun. The ice cave is at the Schonbergalm middle station, not the top. Guided tours only; collect a tour time from the cave ticket counter on arrival. Tours run daily from May through October, last approximately 50 minutes, and cost around EUR 12 for adults. Dress warmly: the cave temperature is a constant -2 degrees Celsius regardless of outside conditions. Sturdy footwear essential. The Mammoth Cave is a separate guided tour from the same station. Combined cable car and cave tickets offer the best value. Obertraun is approximately 75 minutes from Salzburg by car. A full day is warranted if combining the ice cave, the Mammoth Cave, and the Five Fingers platform at the summit.