Corobana lui Gartau Cave is located in the commune Garda de Sus, Alba County, in the Bihor Mountains. Corobana lui Gartau Cave is located on right side of Ordancusa Valley, at an altitude of 800 meters in Triassic limestone. You can reach it through the valley of Aries, Garda de Sus village, following the forest road for about 2.5 km that starts from the center of the commune towards the cave Scărişoara.
“Corobana” means in local language hollow, burrow, a natural shelter. That’s what it is, an indentation in the limestone wall of the Ordâncuşei gorges, of impressive size, 38 meters wide and 30 meters deep with a maximum height of 14 meters. In speleology, this type of cave is called “abri”.
The cave is marked by J. Vass since 1857, and in 1921, is visited by P. Chappuis, R. Jeannel and Emil Racovita . It was certainly used as by the primitive man as a dwelling, but the traces were not kept because the floor is subject to frequent floods of Ordancusa stream. The hallows were used in the communist times when the forests were taken from the peasants , depriving them of one of their sources of income. They processed the wood into barrels, beams and planks which they exchanged in the country, for food. Because they would have been caught if the took the wood home, they cut and hid it in hard accessible hallows, where they processed it with primitive tools: hand-saws, axes and big knifes.
The cave looks like a huge oven dug into the limestone wall of Ordancuşei gorges, located between two paths leading to the two neighboring caves which are genetically related to it: Ionele Gate Cave and Ghetarul de sub Zgurăşti. The floor is now directed through development works done by the Town Hall of Garda de Sus, and the ceiling shows some signs of parietal leaks.
The Town Hall of Garda de Sus has built and maintained this site as a camping area for tourists. The floor was directed and were installed benches and tables of stone and timber. Besides tourism, here are held very scenic folklore events.
