Roaming in Romania
The high montane forests of Romania have their own elfin grove, the dwarf pine forest in the wonderful Retezat Mountains of Romania. Here’s a blog I’ve been meaning to write for a long time about a hike to remember.
A butterfly sucks the salt off my sweat-soaked socks as they dry on a boulder in front of me. Flies buzz around my face and I am very hot and very thirsty. Leaning back on the bench I hug the small strip of shade cast by the overhang of the cabana roof and look up. The old man at the cabana is bringing us hot, sweet wild tea, brewed from the wild herbs he gathers each day here in a narrow valley between great mountains of broken rock and dwarf pine. Nestled in a thicket of spruce, silver fir and stone pine, Cabana Gentiana is the gateway into the heart of the Retezat Mountains.
To get here, Dog and I caught a ride to the mountains and hiked up the track through a tiny village with beautiful, newly set haystacks and free-roaming chickens. Entering the forest we climbed steeply well into the afternoon until finally we round a corner, there it was, a wooden cabin set in a small clearing which was to be our base for the next few days. Dog knows these mountains well and we’ll look for wildlife as we take in the high tops the following day. For now, we drink tea until I’ve got my put back and the warden lends me a pair of (well shoggled!) binoculars to watch northern nutcrackers flumping about in the tops of pines.
The tree line is very sudden - one minute you’re in the tall trees and the next you’re in a thick band of pines, head height, dense and impenetrable to all but bears. On the subject of which, they are here, somewhere, though they’ll have heard us coming a mile off. More on that in a bit.
The next day we walked up the river, into the dwarf pines. It was all quiet save for the little river. At a meadow dotted with alpine butterflies we crossed over and took the path via distant scrub, up onto the ridge proper. We hiked all day, chatting to other hikers on the peaks, including the tallest, Vârful Peleaga at 2509m. The views were spectacular and the national park here is famous for its glacial lakes with one known as ‘Kermit' Island’ for obvious reasons!
Far below, the water in Lake Galeşcu was really cold, great for hot and thirsty hikers. Slipping once more into the dwarf pines, we took trail along a quiet section of forest and stopped: at a tiny water hole, there were fresh bear prints in the mud. A bit later on, as we walked between clumps of dwarf pines, we found fresh bear scat among the dwarf pines and decided we ought to talk a little louder from then on!
Back towards the cabin, the trail cut across fallen logs and although so silent, the forest felt a very special place. Lynx have been seen here and there’s all kinds of other wildlife, it’s just really good at hiding when so many people hike this way every year. Anyhow, I was more than happy with my first ever sightings of Nutcrackers and it’d been a great few days. Big thanks to Dog and I look forward to another trip there soon.
