The Glacier Cave Scarisoara

The Glacier Cave Scarisoara or The Glacier Scarisoara shelters the largest underground glacier in Romania.

The road to the cave starts in the village of Upper Garda, situated on the Valley of Great Aries, 32 km upstream Campeni (on DN75).

  The Glacier Cave Scarisoara is part of the glacier karst - Ocoale - Dobresti. It is formed in limestone in the upper Jurassic age, at an altitude of 1165 m.Sometime, The Ocoale Valley flowed on the surface. With the dissolution in phreatic waters it descended underground. Following the collapse of the pit entrance, the gap, remained dry, Scarisoara fills with ice during the ice ages. After warm weather ice begins to melt and half of the volume vanishes, but is replenished every winter with a new layer at the surface. Melting takes place at the base of the glacier, so that one section melts away from the base and another is forming up. The oldest ice in the base is 4000 years.

The entry into Scărişoara Glacier is through an impressive pit, whose mouth, with a diameter of 60m is open in the forest edge of the plateau. A narrow path carved into the rock and some metal stairs anchored in the walls facilitate the descent of the 48 m, the pit depth. The base keeps a thick layer of snow all year round . Here we enter the Great Hall through an impressive gateway measuring 24 m wide and 17 m height.

The cave is a single room with a total development of 700 m. In the middle of this room is a huge block of ice with a volume of 80000 cubic meters that lasted over 4000 years.

 Near the glacier ice stalagmites occur, some of which have a permanent existence and others melt in the summer, but they recover in similar forms in the winter months.

Beyond these frozen speleoteme, the appearance of the cave changes totally, ice being replaced by concretions of great diversity and beauty. Stalactites, stalagmites, columns, parietal curtains, coralites...