Apostle Islands ice caves frozen enough to visit? Not yet

The caves off Wisconsin's Lake Superior coast are breathtakingly beautiful in the winter, but the weather is not cooperating so far this season.

The ice is still too dangerous to venture out to explore the caves, and it's not certain if or when that will happen this year, the National Park Service warns.

"A large open water gap in the ice emerged over the weekend, extending from Little Sand Bay to Sand Island," the park service said in a Facebook post late Monday.

While it has frozen up again, at least on the surface, officials say there's an open water finger developing off Romans Point extending toward Eagle Island.

The ice is definitely moving, and ice fishermen outside the Little Sand Bay marina report poor quality ice, which is likely the conditions at the caves, the agency added.

"It's highly dangerous out there now, and very unstable," rangers wrote. They left some hope for change, saying the ice may be "strong and stable later in the winter but it definitely isn't yet."

When they are accessible, the Apostle Islands ice caves are incredible. Visitors during 2014 and 2015 were treated to spectacular beauty. In 2014, the caves drew more than 138,000 tourists as the deep freeze made the caves accessible to pedestrians for the first time in nearly five years.