Finally, the weather appeared to be clearing so next we headed on towards the Fagaras mountain range after a few rainy driving days. We had founds ourselves a nice 3 day ridge route (shortened route due to logistics of leaving the van and getting back to it) and also somehow found the only free campsite in the world that allows you to shower, wash up and park up for 4 days and not pay a cent.
The Touristca Sambata is also home to a working monastery, while waiting out the rain we had look around. We had just finished saying how peaceful and relaxing the surroundings felt when disaster struck. They had builders on the roof retiling it and we noticed them all suddenly running, I looked over at a man on the ground who appeared to be yelping in pain and another guy trying to lift a fully laden cart up then twigged. I nudged Lee and said his leg is stuck, quick go and help. This young builder guy must have been standing near the cart completely filled with tiles when it collapsed trapping his leg. Lee and the guy tried to lift it not even budging it an inch, then another 5 guys arrived from the roof and together they all lifted it just enough for the guy to begin to slide his leg out, then it fell again this time landing on his foot with a shriek of pain, quickly everyone lifted again and he pulled his leg clear. In obvious shock he didn’t cry or look that distressed, but as Lee told me later his leg was completely shattered and then his foot would be too. A really unfortunate accident, but considering the standard of safety measures out here, probably not that uncommon.
Finally time to head back into the mountains. We felt happier leaving the van there rather than a trailhead car park and being free was a bonus. We headed up the trail with the aim of getting up onto the ridge by mid afternoon. The paths had been completely destroyed by rainfall and melt-water so much improvisation was required although the way marking was still great. Whilst under soviet communism rule, hiking was promoted but they didn’t want the common folk to have any maps so they way marked everything in time, not distance allowing hut to hut travel in relative safety without navigation. Dangerous in some senses due to not knowing where you are until you reach a hut of a sign but safe for them as no-one had detailed maps.
Anyway, we had an exciting route up to the ridge. Firstly, shortly after crossing the river we heard a rumble and looking over the river, 2 huge trees slid down the side of the valley and came crashing down to the river. Had we been on the other side of the river there would have been a French crepe and Aussie pancake instead of Lee and Lisa. Being in bear country and not seeing another single hiker we suddenly felt rather alone, out came the cries “Hello bear” before venturing around any blind corners and lots of sing alongs to keep the bears entertained and hopefully safely away from us.
Later, the path up the gulley was snow filled with very hard compacted snow which we could not see until we got there and there was so little snow visible from afar that we did not take any snow gear. A little rope work, scrambling, snow traversing and bag hauling later we were on the ridge although it cost us a good few hours. We’d both made comments how we hadn’t been climbing at all this trip, so here we were forced to! We did a first ascent; improvised style, much to my (Lisa’s) horror and I was truly scared.
We carried on with moderate visibility and made it to a nice lake to set up camp for the night. A small storm blew through over night but nothing drastic, just a lot or rain to make for packing up a wet tent in the morning. The next day we set off in poor visibility and headed towards the target of Moldoveanu, Romania’s highest peak. On the way we bumped into a couple who had been hiking the ridge for a week and had had poor visibility every day and were planning their way off the ridge as they were fed up of being up high but not seeing anything.
We carried on and reached Moldoveanu’s summit at about half 10 in the morning with less than 2m visibility we had no views on the top. As we continued walking we were lucky when the sun would pop out occasionally and provide even the briefest of views, making the walking all that more memorable. We carried on the ridge and dropped off for the second nights wild camping. Just at the turn off point we were confronted by 2 shepherds, 6 dogs and 1 mobile phone. We had been warned in books that more dangerous than the animals were shepherd’s dogs so we had rocks in hand to deter them if needed, but thankfully one shepherd came and rounded them up as we walked past explaining in Romanian they were there to use the telephone. Times have changed, even shepherds out in the middle of no where are able to keep in contact with the world even if it means hiking from deep in the valley to the high point of a ridge to get the only signal. A classic moment.
Down off the ridge, past a few lovely lakes and we found a small sheltered valley and set up the tent on a nice grass meadow, overlooking Jurassic style mountains and thick forest in the valley below. We freshened up in the ice cold stream and set up for the night. That night a huge storm blew through. Most of the night was spent holding the tent upright from inside and hoping that everything would be in one piece in the morning. The storm blew through and eventually settled at dawn. We survived and so did the tent apart from one bent pole. The walk out was very tedious, 4 hours down logging routes with mud and puddles before walking down along a road for 7km we both absolutely detest road walking to finally get into Victoria. Still there was one funny moment on the way down when all we could see was this tree being shaken violently just off the road. Knowing this region was home to many different types of wild animals we slowly walked backwards away keeping an eye out, when it didn’t seem to move we started to make more noise hoping to scare it away. Then a flash and through the bush we could see a human, sigh of relief and a giggle it wasn’t a bear it was just someone randomly foraging off the road.
When we eventually made it to Victoria where the map showed a train station where we had planned to get a taxi back to the van. We were greeted with a sleepy town. It started to rain so we headed straight for the train station, but couldn’t find it, asked a local who spoke German/Romania and through broken communication she informed us no train station and no taxis, we needed to hitch hike. Hmmm what to do now!!! It started to rain and we got ourselves to the roundabout to consider hitching, otherwise we were literally stuck. It was here we met a really lovely man who spoke broken French/Romania and thankfully with Lee’s fluent French we found out that we needed to hitch our way back. He was so kind and told us where to stand and then flagged people down for us. We were picked up by a young couple who took us to a more central town though actually going past their destination to make sure we got as close as possible to where we needed to get to. Then it was still another 10km along a road to the van which we started to walk but remembered the drive in on a narrow road and decided to try hitch hiking again. 3 tries later another young couple stopped and took us 9 of the 10km’s, with a final walk back we were relieved to see all was well at the campsite, van safe and a wedding going on. Time to move on one thinks.
With lots of wet kit it was time for a campsite and sunshine to dry it all up. We headed to the North West part of the Fagaras and stayed just outside Sibiu in a nice little campsite where we got a super washing line rigged up and 3 wash loads later had the campsite giggling at the amount of washing we had accumulated. A stroll around Sibiu later that afternoon and then back to do some planning and reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment