Treacherous: The walls of the cave are made entirely from slippery ice, and climbers face a 20m plummet to jagged ice below if their ropes fail to hold them

Courage: Alexandre Buisse clung to supports screwed directly into the walls of ice to capture these spectacular images of his friends climbing in the caves

Look! No hands! Ms Vassail reaches the narrow mouth of the crevasse - and heartstoppingly lets go to allow the rope to take her entire weight at the top

As the sun's rays pour into the narrow cave, the ice looks decidedly unstable - but the frozen cliff faces are more than capable of holding the weight of the climbers.

Mr Buisse said: 'I was shooting from inside the cave by hanging on to a couple of ice screws I'd fixed on the walls.

'I was belaying the climber and shooting at the same time. The climber was on a top rope as the angle was too steep and the ice too hard to allow easy placement of ice screws on lead. Once I was done shooting, I climbed out myself.
 
'The first cave was about 20m deep, and three by six metres wide. The second one was deeper, around 30m, and much narrower, one by two metres for most of its length.

'Both caves were connected to tunnels underneath, but they were either sealed by ice or too narrow for us to explore.

'Climbing out took between 5 and 20 minutes, depending on the chosen angle of the wall.'

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