Fagaras NE Ridge Traverse

March 2014

At the beginning of March, Alex Paun proposed our team to accompany him and two members of Swiss Alpine Club on a ski touring traverse of NE ridge of Fagaras Mountains. Christoph Liebetrau and Thomas Kähr from UIAA were experiencing for the first time ski touring in Fagaras Mountains. Although Swiss Alps are much higher than Transylvanian Alps they were not disappointed at all. Our route was challenging, far from civilization and offered beautiful views over Fagaras, Piatra Craiului, Iezer-Papusa and Bucegi Mountains.

We started at Rudarita, the Eastern limit of Fagaras Mountains, and soon after start one of Thomas’ ski pole baskets broke and got lost. Adi Benga fixed the problem instantly. He asked some forest workers we met on the way for two lids of big jars and handcrafted an emergency ski pole basket. The cold strong wind convinced us not to push it too far in the first day, so we stopped at Comisul Bivouac Shelter and the next day went to Curmatura Zarnei. The third day was the most interesting, because we entered the technical part of the ridge. The sections with little snow alternated with wind slabs and good snow, so we alternated walking with skiing. We chose to descend on Sambata ridge because the next day we had to return in Brasov. We did the last bivouac on this ridge. The final descend brought us a nice surprise. Although there was not much snow this season we were able to ski down to 1450m. Our adventure finished on Valea Seaca a Lisei with a cold bath in the creek, which wasn’t too dry this time.

Good weather, jokes and fun were present all the time. We hope this was a good introduction for ski touring in the Transylvanian Alps and more members of the Swiss Alpine Club will come next time.
Christoph was kind enough to share with us some of the pictures he took during our journey.

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