I've been to Iceland's famous glacial caves and this is what it is like - as tourist killed in deadly ice cave collapse

It’s truly no wonder they’re so popular with tourists, attracting thousands every year to explore inside the country’s famous glaciers. But as is the case with many natural attractions, they can also be perilous - especially outside of the colder and more stable winter months. Climate change and warming global temperatures threaten not only to cut this period short, but the caves’ very existence.

A massive search and rescue operation was launched in Iceland over the weekend at the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier in southeast Iceland, after an ice cave began to collapse at about 3pm on Sunday. One person was tragically killed and another seriously injured, both part of an organised tour.

Police initially believed there had been 25 people in the tour group, and rescuers spent much of Sunday and Monday cutting through icy debris at the remote site with chainsaws to search for two missing people. However on Monday afternoon they called off the search, after discovering there had only been 23 people there - and all were accounted for. Most had thankfully been outside the cave when it came down, PA reported.

The Association of Icelandic Mountain Guides has called for a full investigation into the incident, the Independent reports, as well as tighter regulations on ice cave tours. Glacier trips during the warmer summer months can be very dangerous, the association added.

The Breiðamerkurjökull glacier is any icy tongue of the much larger Vatnajökull ice cap, which has a surface area of 7,900 square kilometres and takes up about 10% of the country. According to the Vatnajökull National Park website, Iceland’s glaciers have been receding since about 1890, but this rapidly sped up around the early 2000s.

“Due to climate change the glaciers will continue to melt and retreat and they could lose half of their volume by 2100,” it writes. “After 200 years, only small ice caps will remain on the highest mountains.”

What it’s like inside Iceland’s ice caves

Reaching the caves that snake through Breiðamerkurjökull’s icy mass is no easy feat. They are usually only accessible via ‘super jeep’ - colossal four-wheel drives with tyres as tall as a small person, as part of a guided tour.

I visited the Crystal Ice Cave beneath Vatnajökull back in April. We were picked up from the carpark of the Jökulsárlón Lagoon - filled with enormous floating icebergs that make it a popular tourist destination in its own right - and driven up into the national park. The rough, rocky terrain means passengers are tossed around like dolls inside the jeep, and even the highest point the vehicles can reach is about a half-hour hike from the glacier itself.

Kitted out with crampons to prevent slipping on the glacier’s surface (one person in our group still took a tumble on the ice) and a helmet and torch, we climbed up to the cave’s entry point - a deep, shadowy hole in the ice. The climb down felt like a plunge into darkness at first, but the cave soon opened up to a breathtaking sight.

Illuminated by numerous ‘skylights’ where melting glacial water rained down from above, the cave’s rippled ceiling was cast in almost unnatural shades of greeny-blue. The ceiling was so low you could touch it in most places, and eddies of frigid meltwater swirled across the stony ground.

The cave was smaller and wetter than usual even in April, the tail-end of Iceland’s cold season, our guide told us - a natural seasonal change the cave systems and glaciers go through each year. One of the cave’s main entrances was already unusable and fenced off due to falling debris. While we were there watching, rocky clusters broke off and clattered downwards.

To get through to the Crystal Ice Cave’s incredible domed cavern, possibly its most famous feature, already involved a tight crawl the claustrophobic were advised to skip. We made it in, only to find it was lying-room only. Just you and the stones, staring up at the vast, vivid colours of the ice wall above.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime sight I was grateful to have experienced while I still could, with some local experts fearing Iceland’s glaciers will be gone altogether within the next 150 years. And after the uncharacteristically boiling summers I’d recently experienced in London - especially as the world faced its hottest year on record last year - I can almost believe it.

It also makes me wonder what the future of travel will look like to natural but weather-dependent wonders like glaciers. Perhaps something does need to change, to both preserve the sites, and to keep people safe.