The owners of the Coudersport Ice Mine, a unique tourist attraction in Potter County, said they've had their busiest season since reopening in 2014. The mine naturally grows ice in the spring and summer months, which then melts in the fall and winter.
Gary and Diana Buchsen bought and restored the property in 2013. It had been abandoned and fallen into disrepair.
The mine is believed to be leftover from a prospector's search for silver, which instead struck ice.
"It was a tourist attraction since its finding in the late 1800s, all the way until about the 1980s," said Gary Buchsen, Gary and Diana's son. He said he helps out at the mine, including giving tours.
On a recent sunny August day, Buchsen led a tour of about ten people. Some people wore winter coats or flannel, even though the outside temperature was close to 80 degrees.
As Buchsen led the tour group into the wooden house-like building, people reacted to the temperature difference with comments about how cool it felt. Inside, the temperature was in the 30s.
"You’ll notice that we keep our tea and soda on the left hand side," Buchsen said. "They used to store beer here, and we always tell people that’s the 6:00 tour.”
Walking down a short hallway, the group came out into the open air again, entering a roughly circular space surrounded by mossy rocks. The floor is wooden decking, and in the middle is a big rectangular hole. That hole is the opening of a 30-foot-deep mine shaft filled with ice.
Visitors leaned over the railing to see stalactites of ice hang from the rock walls, and chunks of ice lying on the rock floor below.
”During the last 12 years that my family's reopened this, this has been the hottest summer that we've had," Buchsen said to the group. "Ironically, it's also the most ice that we've had."
Buchsen said the shaft was overflowing with ice in the late spring and early summer.
"I actually had to chop out about 4 to 5 inches of ice through the little area that you walk into to see the mine itself," Buchsen said.
As for why ice grows in the summer and melts in the winter, Buchsen said the popular theory is that the surrounding mountain acts like a sponge. The rocks absorb cold air in the winter.
“And then in the springtime when the outside air temperature increases and when it becomes more humid, the cold air gets released from the rocks," Buchsen said. "It comes in contact with the warmer, humid air and the ice grows.”
There’s a similar ice mine at Trough Creek State Park in Huntingdon County. The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources published an explainer sheet in 2016 on that mine and offered a similar explanation to how it works.
But the Coudersport Ice Mine grows more ice and attracts visitors from all over the United States and the world. This year, Buchsen said they've had visitors from 49 of the 50 states. He said nobody from North Dakota visited yet this year.
"We've had visitors here from Israel. We just had a family from Australia that was here. Ukraine was here last week," Buchsen said.
Buchsen said this year has been their busiest on record. He credits that to increased social media outreach, profile stories by local and national media and the mine’s proximity to the famous dark sky viewing area at Cherry Springs State Park.
Sunday is the last day the Coudersport Ice Mine will be open to visitors for the year.
