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Scarisoara Cave, home to the world's second-largest underground glacier
The Scarisoara Cave or the Scarisoara Glacier - the largest ice cave in Romania, boasting over 3,000-year-old ice, is located in the Apuseni Mountains in Alba County, 16 km from the Scarisoara commune that also lent its name to this geological marvel. It currently pertains to the Garda de Sus village.
Declared a natural monument and a speleological reserve, the cave holds the world's second largest underground glacier after the Dobsinska cave in Slovakia. Situated at an altitude of 1,150 meters, it is famous for housing inside a glacier with an area of over 5,000 sq. m. and an ice layer between 26 and 37 meters thick.
The shape of the ice block changes frequently as in the warm season a layer a few centimeters thick melts at the base of glacier, but is restored every winter with a new layer on top of the glacier. Although the ice block has been there for over 3,000 years, it is in permanent evolution, morphing through a variety of spectacular images every few months. The entrance is guarded by the impressive 'Ice seal,' that seemingly bares its teeth towards the cave ceiling.
The Scarisoara cave is part of the Ghetar-Ocoale-Dobresti karst system and formed during the glaciation, when the surrounding mountains were covered in snow and ice, having just one opening at the top, allowing air currents to flow between the above-ground and the cave and thus preserving the ice.
The date of the cave's discovery is not known precisely, but Austrian geographer Adolf Schmidl, the one who made the first observations on it and the first to chart the cave, mentions it in 1863.
With a total length of 750 m of which 250 m fitted out for visitors, the cave is 110 m deep. The access to the glacier is made via some metal stairs anchored in the rocks, which facilitate the entry of visitors through a sinkhole (an opening, or cavity) with a diameter of 60 m and 48 m deep that connects with the Big Hall.
The actual entrance of the cave is at the base of the sinkhole, whence a 20-m long sloped ice wall descends and continues with a gallery (68 m) that runs downwards in a steep declivity to a depth of 105 meters where the Big Reserve of the cave lies. This gallery with ice trails and numerous concretions stretching at the maximum depth of the cave was called the 'Maxim Pop' Gallery. On the right side of the Big Hall ceiling is a steep ice slide ending in the hall suggestively called 'The Church' because of its formations of ice stalagmites shaped like the silhouettes of saints, of lighted candles and even the Virgin Mary. This is a tourist area, while the rest is a Scientific Reserve with two distinct sections.
The Small Reserve is on the right side of the entrance to the cave, stretching at the foot of a 15-m high vertical ice wall. Here is the so-called Palace of Sanziana, decorated with beautiful concretions. The appearance of the cave totally changes beyond these sections, as concretions of great diversity and beauty take the place of ice, displaying an abundance of stalactites, stalagmites, columns, calcite draperies, cave corals, rimstones... To be seen here are ice stalagmites, some of which are permanent and others that melt in the summer but regenerate in a similar form in the winter months.
The Scarisoara Glacier, a site of extraordinary beauty at the heart of the Apuseni Mountains, is important for science, especially due to the complex of ice-induced phenomena it displays and to the general structure of the cave: morphogenesis and evolution of the ice formations, the layering of the ice massif etc.
The access sinkhole provides, through its varied flora that is differentiated by levels, an interesting and permanent research field for botanists. The
cave fauna is rather poor, the chief representatives being bats and ice-cave beetles, some 2-3 mm long (Pholeuon proserpinae glaciale). A skeleton of Rupicapra, the ancestor of today's goat, was discovered in the Big Reserve.
In 1938 the Scarisoara Cave was studied by great Romanian biologist, zoologist, speleologist and explorer Emil Racovita, who declared it a speleological reserve, the first in our country.
Several legends are spun around the cave; one of them has it that in ancient times here lived a dragon whom the villagers called Solomat. The dragon would steal a beautiful girl from the village either in the night of New Year's Eve, or in the night before the Maidens' Fair on Mount Gaina, hiding them in an ice palace inside the cave the locals have never set their eyes on.
Another legend says that behind the limestone formation in the area known as 'The Pines' there are two pools which are always filled with water. Whoever kneels before these pools, head uncovered, makes a wish and sips the water directly with his lips, will see his dream come true. Provided that one respects this 'ritual' and does not disclose the wish to anyone for one year. (Source: AGERPRES.ro)