HAMPSHIRE COUNTY, W.Va. (WCHS) — Ice Mountain in the Eastern Panhandle is a marvel of nature.

This Hampshire County ridge is only about 1,500 feet high - far below West Virginia's highest point, Spruce Knob at 4,863 feet - yet it produces the coldest air you'll find in the state during the summer.

A geological accident explains how this natural refrigerator came to be.

"We have a large talus slope," said Mike Powell, director of land management and stewardship for the Nature Conservancy in West Virginia. "The talus is a bunch of rock that has fallen down over the geologic time period, and it collects cold air in that deep talus that's slowly released throughout the year, including during the summer. You can feel quite a dramatic effect of that ice coming out of the vents."

Most talus slopes in the Appalachians have crevices that are six to eight feet deep, but the ones at Ice Mountain are up to 60 feet. This means cold air during the winter gets trapped deep in the rocks.

Emeritus Professor of geology and geography at West Virginia University Steven Kite has been studying Ice Mountain for years now.

"After years of study, we discovered the very simple model that cold air sinks is really what's driving the system here," Kite said. "There's a huge volume of air in the rubble of the talus slope, so that it doesn't exchange rapidly. It sinks out the bottom, but it never rises up, because cold air doesn't rise. So the only time that it warms up is when summer passes, and month after month it gradually warms up.

"After June or July, the ice is usually gone where we can see it. There may be a little ice left way under the talus, but I think by the time late July or August comes around, that ice is all melted, and it's just the coldness of the rock that allows it to stay cool for another couple of months."

The history of this mountain is just as fascinating.

"The settlers that lived here, they knew of that refrigeration type effect associated with those ice bins," Powell said. "So, they would use it to, you know, that was before electricity, before refrigeration, so they'd build little spring boxes on top of it and utilize those to preserve meats, dairy, different things like that.

"There's also talks of church socials going out and harvesting the ice to make ice cream. There's tales of that happening in August."

"The middle of summer was really common in 1800s, and with time it seems to have lasted shorter and shorter periods," Kite added. "I know there was still ice here in early June because of some docents who took some pictures and sent it to me. That's pretty good."

Due to the colder environment, some unique plants and animals more commonly found in New England and Canada live on Ice Mountain.

"That's one of the things that really attracted the Nature Conservancy here is the presence of several rare plants in West Virginia," Powell said. "Usually we lead docent-led hikes every Saturday at 10 a.m. We also do them occasionally on request, but our docents are volunteers, and we have a limited number of docents available. But if you're interested in doing a designated hike here, it is the only way that you can go to Ice Mountain because of its fragile nature."