Hiking in the Bucegi mountains

The mountains of southeastern Transylvania provide much of the best hiking in Romania, with easy day-walks in the Bucegi and Piatra Craiului massifs, as well as longer expeditions through the Făgăraş and Cindrel ranges. Most walks in the Bucegi mountains (Munţii Bucegi) are easy day-hikes, with cable cars an alternative on the steeper sections. There are plenty of mountain cabanas, offering food and accommodation, and if you’re really stuck, maps show refuges and sheepfolds (refugiu and stână), where you may find shelter.

Snow covers Mount Omu, the highest point of the Bucegi (2505m), for two hundred or more days a year. Elsewhere the snow generally retreats during April, and the meadows are soon covered with wild flowers such as ladies’ gloves, grape-ferns and edelweiss. Golden eagles circle above forests that shelter woodcock, hazel grouse and nightingales, while other wildlife includes the Carpathian red deer and wild boar. The last, like wolves and bears, are only a potential threat in winter (when food is scarce), or if their litters are threatened. Above the forest, on the cliffs to the north of the massif, you may well see chamois.