Twists and Turns in Mountain Country

We awoke in our barrel early, but unsure of what we would find outside. Fearing the worst, another day of the same drizzle, we braved a peek outside. The morning air still sucked previous warmth out of self-heated barrel, but the skies were blue. We smiled.

I don’t usually wake early, but we started packing before the rest of the sprawling camp. We took still-damp clothing down from our make-shift mid-barrel clothesline and jammed them all into our packs. Carefully dividing our dwindling food, we gobbled breakfast before filling our canteens in a sketchy second-world bathroom sink and setting out.

An hour into our hike, having chosen to go the scenic route, the sun started beating down on our little trail, skirting a little creek cutting down an alpine valley. It was as good as it gets, the sun so easily erased the memories of rain and make the whole hike worthwhile. Elli and I were all smiles as we started to hang wet clothes from the backs and bottoms of our packs, letting the sun and gentle summer breeze air them. Even river crossings became joyous and pain-free in the sunshine, although Elli learned that she preferred to ford streams with her spare pair of shoes. (This silly man had neither a spare pair of shoes nor sandals.)

Three hours into our round-about descent from Padis, we came to the Castles of Ponor (Cetatile Ponorlului). Our blue dot trail suddenly gave out as five-hundred foot sheer cliffs of white limestone dropped straight to the bottom of a tight valley. The whole region is a karst-craver’s dream, speckled with caves and odd geologic formations. The view was marvelous, but the 1960s-era viewing platforms failed to meet several key safety guidelines and were in poor repair. We trekked on after snapping pictures. We’re not sure if any of them will turn out. Our little German disposable camera took some falls and water exposure over the course of our travels. But it did survive, it will have captured some pretty places.

After lunch on top of a ridgeline pass, we caught up with a slow-moving group struggling down the far side of the ridge. Two city slickers tip-toed down the muddy trail while their better-equipped guide led the way in obvious boredom. As we passed, he was so desperate he asked us where we were headed, then invited us along when he found out we were headed in the same direction. It could have been that he was impressed with Elli’s new Arctryx backpack, but I think Alex would have taken any company at that point. His friends didn’t enjoy their first – and presumably last – night in the outdoors. He was practically licking his chops at the prospect of adventurous friends to tackle the next challenge, the greatest challenge, ahead.

Alex guided us, in chiseled English, down a hill and around a river that emerged from an underground karst tunnel like a giant spring. The backside of the spring was so tight against the cliff that a cable was bolted against the rockface, four feet above a small ledge. Elli couldn’t believe the mission-impossible at first, then changed her mind in excitement and demanded I take a picture as she billy-goated her way across the traverse. Just as she crossed, our three friends from our warm-soup-dinner the night before came from the opposite direction. Even with smiles on their face, the demanded in impassioned Romanian that Alex not take us on the trail ahead, especially with backpacks. It was too dangerous they pled, that’s why they had turned around. Elli and I looked at each other nervously, but Alex was confident.

By the time we got to the third cable, we began to wonder what we were getting into. The rock-climbing-esque uphills and downhills weren’t designed for large backpacks. Or for tired hikers ready for the end. But as we traversed the edge of a tight valley, limestone cut by the river that stitched the terrain, above and under ground at different points, we crept lower and closer to the river, with beautiful cliffs rising above us. But then, the path gave out for good. Our two choices? Go back, uphill, or start really dangling from cables.

Ropes courses are generally pretend, safe for me. But this was real. I think that’s what made it so fun. Elli decided to kick off her shoes and ford her way, thigh deep, downstream. I had only one pair of shoes and a bit of an adventurous streak. I took the cables.

The river, emerging from another karst tunnel, cascaded back to the surface in the form of a waterfall, dropping out of the middle of a cliff. After a frothing into a river, the water turned right, completely occupying a thin crack of a canyon. On the left side, an old cable, 30 meters long, bolted six feet above the water level. A series of primitive footholds were chiseled into the rock, four feet below the cable, two feet above the water. Compounded by slippery rocks, my pack pulled me backwards, away from the cable toward the foaming river with each carefully placed step, but I slid along the cable until I was able to leap to a shoreline as the river slowed as the ravine spread out just a little.

Feeling like champions of the world, Elli and I patted ourselves on the back with giant grins, amazed by our accomplishment. Little did we know we hadn’t even finished half of our cables to traverse the rest of the ravine to the road. We still had to pull ourselves up cables through caves. Up ahead were cables with chain-link footholds straight across the river. One by one we battled them, I was way impressed at how Elli tackled each one. Lesser folks would have given up. We battled through. In essence, we survived.

At the end of the ravine, smiles and pictures. We waved goodbye to Alex, who raced uphill to rejoin his city-folk friends, who hadn’t braved the two hour voyage through the heart of the ravine. More friendly Romanians offered us (bad) advice on short-cuts to Pietroasa, and we set out with smiles down the long forest road (20 km) that twisted down to the little village. Our plan was to find our long lost old-lady friend Flori and sleep in her yard before catching a bus to Oradea on Sunday. Anything would be fine, just as long as we could get to the border city by 5 pm.

On the way down I drank the riverwater. Maybe I shouldn’t have, and I don’t think I ever have before, but it was hot. And I was thirsty. And my schnazzy Euro canteen looks so invincible I was lulled into the risk. Plus, I figured I wouldn’t have to pay the price for the luxury of cold water on a hot day until I was long out of the woods and back home in Budapest. It tasted good. I wouldn’t let Elli drink any, she still had plenty of tap water left, even if it was luke warm. Results? No problems.

We debated hitching a ride down on a logging truck, but none lumbered past, at least none with room in the cab, and we weren’t quite willing to ride, rodeo-style, atop the logs. All the cars were headed up-mountain, the opposite direction we were hoping. Some of the cars motoring up the incline, though, stopped for advice as they saw us rambling down the road, all spoke rather good English.

Things weren’t looking good after a grueling “short-cut.” To save 1 or 2 kilometers of trail, we had to bushwhack a non-existant trail, then march up the steepest incline of the whole trip, with no trail cutting up the tall-grass slope. But a funny thing happened just afterwards. Elli shouted up to me, she had been walking 10 meters behind me, asking if we wanted a ride. One of the cars we had given advice to on the way up and stopped on its way down, and offered. We weren’t that far from Pietroasa, so I thought about recommending we decline the offer, but it seemed too good to be true. We through our packs in the back, apologized for our muddy shoes, and climbed in.

That’s how I came to be riding in the trunk of a Romanian station wagon, drinking non-alcoholic beer, gripping anything within reach as a crazy Romanian man with an Australian accent zipped down the Transylvanian Alps…

They asked where we were going, we said Pietroasa, then Oradea. They laughed, they were headed to that very city at that very moment. The man had to drop his sister off back at home – they’d simply come into the mountains for a Saturday afternoon drive. Tickled pink by our good luck, we couldn’t do anything other than shake our heads and laugh. We were almost back home, misadventures far behind us.

Ahh, Romania…