Fagaras introduction

this is the highest compact mountain group from Romania

Relief

By the end of the quaternary, the highest part of the Fagaras was above the permanent snow, thus, leading to the formation of glaciers and ice. Therefore you can find here many glaciar lakes; also this is the group with the majority of peaks over 2500m.The altitude is responsible for the vertical zonation of climate and vegetation, which implicitly induce the setting of the systems of relief modelling, too.

Weather

One can harldy find a full summer sunny day in this group; taken the west side, from Balea small chalet to Negoiu Peak, is possible to be lucky and get a sunny day, but the other east side,from Balea to Moldoveanu Peak always offers at least one rain/day. During the winter fog is always present, winter storms are often, and avalanche imminent.The quantity of rain/snow is much heavier then other groups, nevertheless, it has decreased in last years, due to massive deforestation.

Tourism

In summer, this mountains are filled with tourists till the highest peaks, which means trails are quite easy and popular, with no dangers at all. In the forests placed lower, from 1800m down, you can meet wild animals, but nobody bothers with the forests when one can do only the peaks with the help of a road which cross the mountains from south to north, the famous Transfagaras build during Ceausescu reign...

other facts about Fagaras

Summer tours

In this group, trails are long and exhausting....but very easy; they organize marathons here to the highest peaks; the paths are large, with no jumps over precipice! Very rare during the summer, somebody has accidents; people can climb them with no training, but they must expect a road which never ends - a bit boring for our tastes, no dangers, no adrenaline, if you wanna lose fats, that is the right place then.

Winter tours

As a difference from the boring summer trails, in winter call this a total danger! Why? It is not for the range, which is welcoming and easy to climb, but for the weather! Fog and avalanche can occur even when they announce a perfect day! When fog occur you have 1-2m visibility, usually fog announce rain, snow, avalanche! So only very few path are safe in this season, you need refugees from 2-2 hours, and one can find them unfortunately 5-5 hours! We tried several short path to small peaks...

transfagarasan road

We consider this road a very important part of our trails; without it, the paths to peaks would be too long; this road was finished in 1974, measures 91 km, is longer on the south side, on the north side , there are also other means of transport like cable.The middle or highest point of the road is Balea establisment, a group of several chalets; summer time sun can get there to 33 degree, there is no shadow, unless you shelter in one of them. The good part is that from there you can see fast both biggest peaks from Fagaras - Negoiu west side 2535m (6h) , and Moldoveanu 2544m east side if you can do 7 hours with fast move.

Negoiu Peak

This peak is even easier to be reached from another chalet "Negoiu", 3h away. Summer time is just funny easy to reach it. The views are wonderfull. Though coming also from the other side ,Balea, offers a lot, like the glaciar lake Caltun, which has a refugee.


Vidraru lake

    This is a huge lake making electric energy for the country, rather depleted of water right now because of the diversion of river Buda and other afluents which used to feed the huge basin (more then 90m deep once); picture near is the lake now