This story originally aired on July 31, 2008. It was rebroadcast on Dec. 31, 2008, as part of our "Best of 2008" series.
On a mountain in eastern West Virginia, plants that are normally found in arctic regions manage to survive. The place is appropriately named Ice Mountain.
That’s because ice is visible in small natural openings at the base of the mountain throughout much of the year.
The Nature Conservancy bought Ice Mountain in 1991 and allows guided tours through the preserve.
A tour of Ice Mountain starts in the community of North River Mills. Local resident, Terry Bailes, leads tours on behalf of The Nature Conservancy.
Bailes points out the rare plants and explains Ice Mountain’s cooling phenomenon.
In addition to knowing about Ice Mountain’s environment, Bailes also knows a lot about its history.
“They would talk about getting ice on the mountain for the Sunday school picnic, which they would have 200 people,” said Bailes. “And with that ice they made ice cream and lemonade. Everybody in the neighborhood talked about how good ice mountain lemonade was.”
West Virginia University Geology and Geography Professor Steven Kite is collecting temperature data at Ice Mountain. Inside some of the “vents,” or natural openings at the mountain’s base, Kite keeps thermometers, but he also brings a portable thermometer to take readings at the largest vent, the “Big One.”
“There’s a marked temperature contrast if you get over next to the vent, you can feel cold air coming out,” said Kite.
On the day we visited Ice Mountain the outside temperature was 80 degrees, but just inside the “Big One” vent, the temperature was only 44 degrees.
That’s actually one of the warmer temperature readings here. 35 degrees is the year round average. Why is that?
One common theory is that Ice Mountain’s deep rock, or talus, slope traps cold air, snow and ice.
The nooks and crannies in the rock slope are able to hold onto the cool air throughout the year, because cold air is denser and sinks.
The rock slope does not absorb the warmer outside air very well either.
But some have also wondered if Ice Mountain’s cooling effect comes from age old ice, buried in these rocks. Kite doubts that.
“There is certainly ice in the vents up until late May,” Kite said. “What’s going on underneath of the talus slope is hard to determine.
“Typically in the Appalachians we’re looking at six to 12 feet of loose boulders in a talus slope. Here, our geophysics suggests there may be 60 feet of loose boulders and a lot more void space for storage of ice and storage of cold air,” said Kite.
Kite says as many as 150 vents at Ice Mountain act as drains, releasing the cold air that’s trapped under this thick rock slope.
Unexpected plants grow where the cool air flows out.
“This is the Appalachian Woodfern, which grows on moss. It’s one of the rare plants that we’re monitoring on the mountain,” said Bailes. “They, at one point, thought that it was extinct, but as you can see, we have a number of ferns growing here near the cold vents.”
“Bristly Rose is the most widespread rose in the world, but occurs in the Canadian and Siberian Arctic,” said Kite. “It’s not that it’s a rare plant in the world, it’s a rare plant here.”
A tornado hit Ice Mountain in June and several trees fell onto the path. One of the vents that Kite has monitored for more than five years is now in direct sunlight. He keeps a thermometer inside this vent.
“I have it set up to record temperatures every hour,” said Kite. “My data files on temperature here at Ice Mountain actually will no longer plot using Excel, because there are too many data points.”
Even with all of these readings, Kite says it’s not enough information to notice a pattern of warming temperatures.
“People have been coming to Ice Mountain for well over 200 years, and I have six to eight years of temperature data,” Kite said. “So it’s hard to make big interpretations out of that.”
However, anecdotal evidence suggests Ice Mountain is changing.
“We have a journal from one of the ladies who talked about getting ice from the mountain,” said Bailes. “Her journal would say: Sunday, went on the mountain to get ice to make ice cream. That would be almost every week, and I never saw enough ice that we could have made ice cream after the end of May.”
Also, a 1998 Environmental Protection Agency report on climate change in West Virginia said the ice around the vents is disappearing earlier in the year. The report said this could negatively impact the plants found here.
“If we see the temperature conditions break down, then this area would become a free for all for other species to take up the niches that these plants are now occupying,” Kite said.
Bailes would hate to see that happen to this special place.
“If you go down on a hot day, you have the ice vents, which are blowing out at 40 degrees, and you have the river right there; it’s wonderfully peaceful,” said Bailes.