Ninety seconds on Piatra Craiului National Park
Bear and lynx density on the forest approach is high enough that the standing advice is to walk in groups and make noise under the trees. It is the rare hill walk where going quietly is the wrong instinct.
A national park built around a single limestone ridge running twenty five kilometres north to south, narrow enough in places to straddle, with the country's densest population of large carnivores in the forest below. The ridge traverse is a serious day.
Two entirely different days start from the same town. The common one climbs through the Zarnesti gorge, a narrow limestone corridor with a track running along the floor of it, up to the Curmatura hut and back down through open meadow: eleven kilometres, six hundred metres of ascent, five or six hours at a walk, and nothing harder than the distance. The other is the chained route from Plaiul Foii to the main summit, about five hours of steep and exposed ground with fixed chains where the rock runs out of holds. The gorge walk is what nearly everyone comes for. The chains are what the mountain is known for among people who climb.
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