Into the icy void, photo by Anapko.

I know that winter is here when the searchers start showing up – 50 or 100 or more each day – for the Eben Ice Caves. In our first post on the Eben ice caves, Northern Michigan University professor Dr. John Anderton (who I got to know by chance this spring) explained that the Eben Ices Caves are located just a few miles north of the little town of Eben, within the Rock River Canyon Wilderness Area.

Within its interior there are two short user-developed trails (totaling about 1.75 miles) leading to Rock River Falls and the Eben Ice Caves. An estimated 1,700 people visit the area annually (USFS records) …

The Ice Caves are not true caves at all. They consist of walls or vertical sheets of ice that form across the face of overhanging rock outcrops. In the summer, small unimpressive waterfalls and groundwater seeps may found along the overhangs. In the winter, however, the water hits the cold air, drips downward under the influence of gravity and freezes, creating spectacular ice caves. Each winter they look a little different, but typically there are openings in the ice that allow you to walk behind the ice walls.

The rock overhangs, where the ice caves form, consist of outcrops of Munising Formation (Cambrian) with a capstone of AuTrain Formation (Ordovician). The outcrops are found along the south side of the valley of Silver Creek, which is part of a network of secondary glacial drainage channels that formed during the Marquette Advance (about 10,000 years ago). Theses secondary drainage channels flowed easterly into the AuTrain-Whitefish Channel, a primary glacial meltwater channel that flowed south to the Lake Michigan basin. Groundwater naturally seeps from these rocks, providing the water necessary to form the ice caves in the winter.

Check this out background big and definitely do not miss Anapko’s Eben Ice Caves slideshow which includes a lot of great, wallpaper sized views and also a sign with more about this incredible natural wonder!