Scărișoara Ice Cave

Ghețarul de la Scărișoara, also known as Peștera Scărișoara, lies in the village of Ghețari, Gârda de Sus commune, Alba County, at an altitude of 1,165 m, on the edge of the Ghețari-Ocoale karst plateau in the Bihor Mountains. It holds the largest underground glacier in Romania. The name comes from Scărișoara commune, to which the cave belonged administratively when it was named. The entrance is a shaft about 60 m wide and almost 50 m deep, descended by metal stairs anchored in the rock. A portal at the bottom of the shaft leads into the Great Hall, whose floor is the upper surface of the ice block, with an estimated volume of more than 75,000 m³. From the Great Hall visitors go down to the area called the Church, with ice stalagmites, some permanent and others re-forming every winter. The rest of the cave (the Small Reserve, the Great Reserve and the Coman Gallery) is reserved for scientific research. The earliest written mention of the cave dates from 1847, and Emil Racoviță studied its ice formations in the 1920s. The cave has been a natural monument and speleological reserve since 1938 and is part of Parcul Natural Apuseni. Visits follow the developed route (the shaft, the Great Hall and the Church). Road access is from Gârda de Sus, on the paved road that climbs through Cheile Ordâncușei to the village of Ghețari. Did you know that the ice here is considered the oldest known cave ice in the world? Radiocarbon dating of leaf and wood fragments trapped in the ice, published in 2017, shows it is more than 10,000 years old, and its layers preserve a record of winter climate over the past millennia.