The Snow Cone is one of the more surprising little features at Craters of the Moon National Monument, a small, narrow, deep spatter cone on the volcanic Snake River Plain of central Idaho that holds onto snow at its shadowed bottom year-round, even through the heat of an Idaho summer. It's a quick, easy, genuinely fascinating stop that lets you peer straight down into the plumbing of an ancient volcano and see winter surviving in the depths of a black lava landscape in July.

Spatter cones like this one tell a vivid geological story. They formed during the dwindling stages of an eruption, when hot blobs of molten lava were thrown a short distance into the air and fell back around a small central vent, cooling and sticking together to build the walls of what amounts to a miniature volcano. The Snow Cone is a particularly deep and narrow example, and that shape is exactly why snow, sheltered from sun and warm air at the bottom, lingers all year.

Visiting is easy and rewarding. A short walk up the Snow Cone Trail, roughly half a mile round trip and rated an easy stroll of about half an hour, brings you to the rim where you can look down into the cone. The trail is wheelchair accessible, and it pairs naturally with the adjacent Spatter Cones Trail, letting you take in several of these mini-volcanoes in a single short outing.

The lava landscape is exposed and shadeless, and the black basalt bakes in summer, so this is a spot best enjoyed with sun protection and, in warm months, in the cooler morning or evening hours, and the rims of the cones are real drop-offs, so keeping back from the edge and watching children matters.

The Snow Cone sits within the strange, beautiful volcanic expanse of Craters of the Moon, easily combined with the monument's caves, cinder cones and lava flows for a full day among the lava. For a short, accessible, only-here experience of standing over a snow-filled mini-volcano in the middle of an Idaho summer, the Snow Cone is a memorable little wonder.