Scărișoara Cave (, ), is one of the biggest

ice cave An ice cave is any type of natural cave (most commonly lava tubes or limestone caves) that contains significant amounts of perennial (year-round) ice. At least a portion of the cave must have a temperature below 0 °C (32 °F) all ye ...

s in the

Apuseni Mountains The Apuseni Mountains (, "Western Mountains"; , "Transylvanian Mountains") are a mountain range in Transylvania, Romania, which belongs to the Western Romanian Carpathians. The highest peak is the Bihor Peak at . The Apuseni Mountains have ab ...

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

, in the western part of the

Romanian Carpathians The Romanian Carpathians () are a section of the Carpathian Mountains, within the borders of modern Romania. The Carpathians are a "subsystem" of the Alps-Himalaya System and are further divided into "provinces" and "subprovinces". This is an ...

. It is considered a

show cave A show cave—also called tourist cave, public cave, and, in the United States, commercial cave—is a cave which has been made accessible to the public for guided visits. Definition A show cave is a cave that has been made accessible to ...

and one of the natural wonders of Romania. It has also been described as a

glacier cave A glacier cave is a cave formed within the ice of a glacier. Glacier caves are often called ice caves, but the latter term is properly used to describe bedrock caves that contain year-round ice. Overview Glacier caves form in the bottom edge ...

.Scarisoara Ice Cave – the biggest underground glacier in Romania
Travel Guide Romania website, December 24, 2014, retrieved 17 January 2016.

History

First mentioned in 1863 by the Austrian geographer Arnold Schmidl, who made some observations and the first map of the cave,Steve Kokker, Cathryn Kemp (2004).
''Romania & Moldova''
Lonely Planet Publications, p. 232. it was later explored by the Romanian scientist and

speleologist Speleology () is the scientific study of caves and other karst features, as well as their composition, structure, physical properties, history, ecology, and the processes by which they form (speleogenesis) and change over time (speleomorpholog ...

Emil Racoviță Emil Gheorghe Racoviță (; 15 November 1868 – 19 November 1947) was a Romanian biologist, zoologist, speleologist, and Antarctic explorer. Together with Grigore Antipa, he was one of the most noted promoters of natural sciences in Ro ...

between 1921 and 1923, who mentioned it and its origin in his 1927 work ''Speologia'' (Speleology). The ice cave was formed 3,500 years ago, during the glaciations, when these mountains were covered by snow and ice. The exact date when the cave was first discovered by humans is unknown.

Description

The cave is located at an altitude of approximately above sea level. It is deep and long. The entrance shaft, which is in diameter and in depth, gives access through metal stairs to a large chamber, the Great Hall, which is approximately long and wide. The Great Hall includes an ice cliff nearly tall, which overlooks a pool called the Pool of Ice. From the Great Hall, passages lead into several other named rooms: the Church, which features over 100 ice stalagmites, the Great Reservation, Coman Gallery to the left, and Little Reservation to the right. The ice within the cave has an estimated volume of and in some places can be as thick as . The temperature is up to +1 °C in the summer and down to -7 °C in the winter. In the part for tourists the average temperature is around 0 °C.

Bat Bats are flying mammals of the order Chiroptera (). With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most birds, flying with their very long spread-out ...

s live in the ice cave, as do small bugs (2–3 mm long) called ''Pholeuon prozerpinae glaciale''. In the ''Big Reservation'' a

Rupicapra ''Rupicapra'' is a genus of two species of goat-antelope called chamois. They belong to the bovine family of hoofed mammals, the Bovidae. Taxonomy Two extant species are accepted. Description Both male and female have hook-shaped horns th ...

skeleton was discovered.

Access

The portion of the cave open to tourists includes the entrance shaft, The Big Hall and The Church. Access to the other chambers is reserved for scientific research by the agreement of the Speological Institute of

Cluj-Napoca Cluj-Napoca ( ; ), or simply Cluj ( , ), is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (), Budapest () and Belgrade ( ...

References

External links

Scărișoara Cave
- Romanian Monasteries.org {{DEFAULTSORT:Scarisoara Cave Caves of Romania Geography of Bihor County Geography of Transylvania Ice caves Show caves Western Romanian Carpathians Tourist attractions in Romania Tourist attractions in Bihor County

History

Description

Access

See also

References

External links