Hiking Through the Romanian Carpathians

While the Alps may be the most famous European mountain range for climbing, the Carpathians are far more of an adventure. No one will deny that the Alps can be rough; the fact of the matter is that the mountains are largely tame today and help is just a mobile phone call away. The Carpathians, on the other hand, represent some of the last true wilderness left in Europe, including real wildlife (bears, wolves, and so on). Coming from Colorado and finding myself in Bucharest for a summer, hiking at least a portion of the Romanian Carpathians was almost inevitable.

Generally speaking, I prefer to set off across fields and the like and walk up through the foothills in order to reach a ridge line, but this is not really practical in a lot of Romania as the foothills just go on forever. So I set out from Bucharest to Braşov by train and from Braşov to Zărneşti by minibus. This was more or less my starting point. Zărneşti is a nice little town with all the shops I needed to get supplies for the hike. The goal was to cross about half of the ridgeline of the Făgăraş Chain (the highest bit of the Carpathians in Romania), reach the summit of Moldoveanu (the highest peak in Romania) and then climb down eventually ended up in town of Victoria.

The first day was something of a warm up, as the walk from Zărneşti to the Plaiul Foii cabana (Romania has a great network of cabanas all through the mountains) was just about eight miles and along a dirt road. The actual hiking did not begin until after Plaiul Foii. The walk was pleasant enough, except during this time of year the occasional truck passing by kicked up a lot of dust. It was also quite hot, as one does not want to be in the high mountains in winter (very cold and very hungry bears and wolves).

Using a trick from back home in Colorado I bought an air horn (one of those compressed air cans with a horn used by small boats) as these are excellent at scaring away bears and mountain lions in Colorado, so I assumed it would do the same with Romanian bears and wolves as well. Further, water was something of an issue because Romania is notorious for the amount of pollution in its open water – even in the mountains – as a result of some bad policies in the past. The cabanas all feature safe drinking water, but they are spaced about twenty miles apart. Therefore I knew my M.U.L.E. 100oz (3L) Hydration Pack would in very useful for the trip.

Despite the reputation that the Romanian Carpathians have, I personally had no problems at all with this hike. The whole thing only really took two days after that original road walk. Obviously the most challenging bit was reaching the summit of Moldoveanu, but the trail was well worn and quite obvious, so it didn’t pose many challenges. The descent, through the Vistea valley was lovely, though somehow I got myself lost trying to find Victoria, adding an extra six miles to the trip; but after that it was all easy enough. This is a great moderate hike I would recommend to anyone, during the summer at least, just bring a better map than I had and be sure to keep your hydration pack full.