There are still wild places left in Europe. Places where you won’t meet a living soul for many kilometers and where, as far as the eye can see, you only witness grassy alpine meadows. Places where you feel completely free and where sunsets taste different. I know this because I happened to spend a few wonderful days in one of these lands in August 2023. It was during the “Summer Crossing,” a hiking camp organized by the Student Mountain Club (SKG) in Warsaw. I invite you to a tale of the unknown Baiului Mountains, a forgotten part of the Eastern Carpathians. There will be plenty of enchanting scenery, the most beautiful campsites of my life, a pinch of Romanian folklore, and (of course!) photos of cute dogs. In the first part, we cover a significant fragment of the main ridge of the Baiului Mountains, topped with the ascent of Băiuțu (1,826 m) and Rusu (1,903 m). Stay with me!
Table of Contents
Day one in the Baiului Mountains
We begin the day of August 13, 2023, on the charming Poiana Coștilei meadow (approx. 1,300 m), still located in the Bucegi Mountains. We spent the last two days in this range, reaching its highest peak – Omu (2,514 m). After preparing breakfast and folding the tents, we take the yellow trail running towards the town of Bușteni. We reach the town after a five-kilometer walk: first along a forest path, then along the shoulder of an asphalt road. In the meantime, our guide changes – Kuba replaces Antek at the lead. For those interested in the organization of the trip and its rules, I refer you to my first entry about Romania – I explain many of those issues there.
We check in at the town of Bușteni (approx. 850 m) around 12:00 PM. The town lies in the vast Prahova Valley, which separates two of the three basic Carpathian groups – the Southern Carpathians from the Eastern Carpathians. The town is also one of Romania’s most famous mountain resorts, sometimes called the “gateway to Bucegi.” This is where the “Telecabina Babele” begins, a cable car popular with tourists that takes them up to an altitude of 2,150 m. In Bușteni, we stop by an Orthodox church, and then everyone gets some time for themselves. We walk through the colorful streets of the town, admiring the aesthetic buildings, absorbing the incredible panoramas of the Bucegi Mountains, and treating ourselves to local sweets – chocolate-covered chimney cakes. At the same time, the trip organizers go to a nearby Lidl, where they stock up on significant food supplies for the following days. This is crucial because we intend to spend the next few nights in mountains completely devoid of tourist infrastructure. This means that everything we plan to eat, we have to carry on our own backs. We share food collectively, and each of us carries a fairly divided share. As for shopping in Romania, the country has its own currency – the leu. Its exchange rate is, of course, variable but generally close to the Polish złoty. As of summer 2023, I would describe store prices as similar to those in Poland.
After a field lunch in one of the local parks, we put our heavy backpacks back on and begin the hike towards the Baiului range. The trail we chose is marked with red crosses on a white background. Along the way, we pass the 20th-century Cantacuzino Castle, which has recently gained popularity as a filming location for the Netflix series “Wednesday.” In this way, we leave the last buildings of the town of Bușteni. We are now walking along a wide, forest road, and this will continue for the next three hours. The trail has a rather gentle course – over a distance of 6 kilometers, the terrain rises by only 400 meters.
At an altitude of approx. 1,400 m, everything changes. Straight from the forest, we emerge onto an open, massive alpine meadow (połonina). The sun is slowly sinking towards the west, which adds a special charm to the place. Not far above the tree line, we still encounter lonely farms. On our hike, we are accompanied by cows, horses, and sheep grazing carefree, as well as boisterous shepherd dogs (though a word of caution regarding the latter – be very careful with them in Romania, as they are not necessarily friendly towards tourists). In this way, traversing the gentle slope of Zamora (1,520 m), we cover the last kilometer and a half of today’s trek. We set up camp in a wonderful spot – on a shallow pass between Mount Zamora and Mount Băiuțu, at approx. 1,500 m. From our today’s campsite, there is a truly stunning view of the massive ridge of the Bucegi Mountains and the nearby peaks of the Baiului range. A fairy tale, simply a fairy tale.
Having reached the campsite, the standard evening procedure begins: some are assigned to kitchen help, others pitch tents, and the rest look for firewood. The Baiului Mountains are not covered by a national park, so for the first time during our trip, we can peacefully light a campfire. Working on camp duties while the sun sets over the Bucegi Mountains has a great charm. I feel free, fulfilled, grateful… There is no lack of rather funny situations as well. At one point, part of our group goes to a nearby shepherd to ask for drinking water. Not wanting to come empty-handed, they take a piece of good sausage, bought a few hours ago at the Lidl in Bușteni. After a moment, it turns out that a moment of inattention is enough for the piece of meat to end up in the maw of one of the shepherd dogs. Oh well, at least the dog ate. And the water? We get the water anyway!
For dinner today, we prepare juicy rolls with fresh products and… a field interpretation of a traditional Romanian dish – mămăligă. When everyone is full and it gets completely dark outside, we all sit around the campfire as one. The organizers tell us a bit about Romanian history (each of the eight trainees passing the exam had to prepare a “gawęda” – a mountain tale – on a specific topic), and then they recommend we close our eyes and begin to spin a dark tale about the local demons. At the same time, the silence is broken by the ringing of our phones. As it later turns out, what came to us was a warning about a bear roaming nearby (it works a bit like an emergency alert). We go to our tents slightly nervous. Well, you know. While the voice of reason says we are a large group and a bear won’t be interested in us, an intrusive thought remains in the back of the mind, spinning a vision of a great brown beast attacking our humble camp by surprise. As a precaution, everyone is instructed to leave their food-scented mess kits outside the tents.
Date of the trip: August 13, 2023
Trip statistics: 23 km; 800 meters elevation difference
Day two in the Baiului Mountains
The next day, some of us get up early – for the sunrise. The spectacle is truly impressive and only confirms my belief that this unknown and strange Baiului range is one of the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen. After sunrise, we return to our camp, waiting for the rest of the company to wake up. Then we proceed to typical morning tasks: breakfast over the campfire, folding tents, brushing teeth… However, we set off on our way only at 11:00 AM, because the SKG trainees are having a test on panorama identification. It basically consists of the examiners pointing out specific peaks, and the examinees, based on the map, should name them correctly. So the trainees wander with maps across the meadow, while the rest of the trip peacefully soaks up the late morning sun. By the way, the materials used by the examinees are unique in a sense. The trainees carry specially laminated old Soviet maps with them, as they are reportedly the most accurate.
The first part of today’s trek takes us on a less than two-kilometer ascent up a grassy meadow. We walk along a wide trail with an obvious course, surrounded on every side by idyllic, green slopes. The views are wonderful… it’s surprising that this place is not only not covered by nature protection, but also devoid of any tourists. I imagine that if a similar range existed in Poland, people would be flocking to it. At an altitude of approx. 1,750 m, we reach a clear junction. Here, we leave our heavy backpacks for a moment and, traveling light, have a joyful race to the nearby peak of Băiuțu (1,826 m), lying slightly off the marked trail. The summit lies on the main ridge of Baiului and offers fantastic views of the other parts of both this range and the nearby Bucegi and Ciucaș. Magic…
To keep the group dynamics going, another person takes the lead after descending from Băiuțu – this time it’s Paulina. We continue the excursion on the “cross trail,” only to stop again shortly after. We encounter a spring, which becomes an excellent opportunity to replenish our water supplies. It might sound strange, but remember that August is a truly warm month in the Balkans. The mountains are dry and parched by the sun – water is hard to find. So if a suitable opportunity arises, you must take advantage of it – especially in the heat we have today. After taking the water, we move on, traversing the slopes of the peaks Cazacul (1,753 m) and Ceaușoaia (1,615 m). On the right, we now have a scenic panorama of the part of Baiului that includes the Băiuțu we conquered and the Baiul Mare peak (1,895 m) lying a bit further south.
After traversing the slope of Mount Ceaușoaia, our trail is again on the main ridge of the Baiului range. In this way, about seven kilometers from the descent from Băiuțu, we check in at the small pond Orjogoaia (approx. 1,490 m). We take a longer lunch break here. A real sweltering heat is pouring from the sky, while the kitchen group chosen by Paulina prepares delicious tortillas for the whole group.
After lunch, we continue walking through the endless meadows of the main ridge of the Baiului Mountains. The marking of trails in this range can be quite modest, but their course is rather obvious. By the way, I suspect that these routes are used much more often by local shepherds than by tourists. Despite the beautiful weather and the peak of the season, we did not meet even one hiker throughout the entire day today. The Romanian version of Wikipedia, where the article about Baiului counts only a few sentences, also testifies to the low popularity of these mountains. So while foreign ranges are usually less crowded than our native ones, the emptiness of this place is a true phenomenon for me.
Moving away from the pond, we begin the last physical difficulty of the day – an over three-kilometer ascent to the peak of Rusu (1,903 m), one of the highest in the entire range. Up to the level of 1,750 m, the route is tedious and laborious, but further on the trail becomes much gentler. The views are crazy throughout. In the west, the panorama of the Bucegi Mountains still looms, on the other side – the eastern part of Baiului (where we will be the day after tomorrow) and the rocky Ciucaș range (which we visit in three days).
We reach the highest point of today – the peak of Rusu (1,903 m) shortly after 7:00 PM. Interestingly, while most of the ridge is treeless, this particular summit is covered by slight vegetation. The next few hundred meters pass on the descent to the pass separating Rusu from nearby Stevia (pass altitude: approx. 1,780 m). This is where we end today’s trek, beginning preparations for the highest night of the entire trip. By the way, for those starting out on mountain hiking with tents, I warn you against making my own beginner mistakes. For the night, take really warm clothes, even if the temperature reaches 30 degrees Celsius during the day. Seriously, it’s worth it.
From the pass between Rusu and Stevia, I watch the most beautiful sunset of our entire Romanian trip. It might have been a long day, and we covered some kilometers slower than I would have expected. In such moments, however, fatigue does not count – you just sit on this endless meadow and watch the ball of fire approaching the horizon. And although the sun puts on this show for us every day, the wonder remains.
And tomorrow? Tomorrow we set off further into the Baiului range.
Date of the trip: August 14, 2023
Trip statistics: 15.5 km; 850 meters elevation difference
Thank you to Alicja Szostak (check out IG!) and Michał Kobryń (check out IG!) for sharing beautiful photos!
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