I got off the bus in Zarnesti and walked into a cafe which turned out to actually just be a bar with a bunch of geriatric Romanians drinking way to early. I ordered a machine cup of cappuccino for a lei ($0.25) and began walking. I made my way past town, down a dirt road and up into a trail that went up and up and up some more for about 3 hours into Cabana Curmatura.
In a average setting if you hike deep into bumfuck and are surrounded by the majestic beauty of nature and there is a man with a cabin with hot food and cold beer somehow in the middle of nowhere with you, the free market suggests that he will charge you a ridiculous amount of cash for anything because he is the only option and he has you by the chode.
Not so here. A cabin for the eve was 30 lei (7.50) and a meal was 10 lei (2.50). The man was quiet but had a genuine smile. He lived in that cabin all year round. He was either in tune with nature in a way that I can only hope to achieve one day, or borderline insane preparing to chop everyone up into pieces during the cold cold winter of the southern Carpathian mountains.
The next day I suffered from a great stomach pain and I was covered in bug bites as I hiked on with a camera, 16oz of water and a snickers bar. The camera went first as the battery died, the snickers next and finally I was out of water. This was not before climbing straight up a damn near vertical rough rugged mountain.
After three hours and a lot of sweat I was up top riding the crest of the Piatru mountains. The hike was tough and dangerous, but it looked more dangerous then it actually was. There were long deep drops into rugged sharp limestone 60 -100 feet down on both sides but the grounding was always strong. The rocks beneath my feet were heavy and not budging and so long as I don’t allow vertigo or the fear of the visible drop all around me effect my concentration then I stay safe.
This was the easy part though. I had to be in Zarnesti by 8 so I had planned take the crest trail to the blue cross trail to make it back down into town. I don’t like to re-trace my steps. After 3 more hours I made it to the blue cross trail and looked down.
It was tight on both sides with brush and steep. It was the ass crevice of two mountains coming together and there was tight and steep decline allowing an escape at a very high risk. I knew the danger rating for this trail was worse then the crest trail but I figured it would still be doable.
At the start I was apprehensive. I would have slid deep down into certain slow and painful breaking of bones and possibly life if not for the brush surrounding me on both sides, smacking me in the face as I slid down the muddy decline. I figured at the start of a trail going down the highest peak in the land I should expect danger and assured myself it would get better. It got worse though.
My last big hike was through 6 feet of snow off a trail straight up a mountain in the sonora pass at 11,000 feet. I went numb in both feet and suffered snow blindness and could hardly breath the lack of oxygen at such a high altitude. Still I felt safer there then this trail.
This trail was loose limestone rock. Every step was a small avalanche. It didn’t look as dangerous as the crest trail, it wasn’t as dramatic, but it was much more dangerous. My sense of danger and death is described best in the book “To a God Unknown” by Steinbeck. He kills off a main character in that book with one sentence in such a simple dumb way. Just a tiny mistake on a normal day, nothing dramatic, a bit boring but so real.
One mistake would mean a bruised ass and possibly bloody head, but a mistake coupled with a coincidence would have been unforgiving and the way the terrain was setup there was land teeming with possibility for all kinds of coincidence. I took it slow and steady and that worked well but after hours of the same terrain around every steep corner the energy it took to stay focused suffered a bit.
I made five mistakes during that passage. Not good numbers for me but still okay. I was so happy to make it to flat land and eventually back to Brasov for South Indian Curry.
It was beautiful, if you get the chance go! Don’t bring a tent, stay in the hut with the nature man and keep your pack light, and avoid the blue cross trail! Thats my best advice.
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