Piatra Mare

After the nice trek to Curmatura I decided to continue my knee rehabilitation with another short and easy route: Dambu Morii – Drumul Familiar – Piatra Mare Hut – Prapastia Ursului. Although I spent most of my life in Brasov I have to admit that I’ve never been on Piatra Mare. I know … shame on me.

We’ve started at 9 Am on Drumul Familiar. I have to admit that is a nice route through the woods. A little long for my taste by nice and easy.

After1,5 hours we’ve finish the woody section and entered into a beautiful glade. The sun was shining and a lot of hikers were on the track.

These are the final meters before reaching the plateau where the Hut is built.

After 2.5 hours we’ve reached the hut. The view was incredible along with the weather.

And the city of Brasov … not a very clear view.

It feels great to just sit on a rock and feel the warm of the sun …

The Piatra Mare plateau is quite big and needs more exploration this year. Its beauty is in the upper part of, after passing the long route through the wood. Next time I need to try its most famous route – 7  stairs canyon. Piatra Mare seen from the city of Brasov it doesen’t look more than, well a Big Woddy Rock, but after exploring it a bit I saw its big potential for Rock Climbing.

Because we had a lot of time we’ve decided to do some climbing also. On our way back we saw some nice cliffs on the right side of the route. Tudor and me climbed by side and mounted a rope. Unfortunately we couldn’t see the route from above and we ended up with an awful one. Tudor first gave it a try.

I also gave it a try … most of the rocks I used as holds were falling down. And several times me along with them 🙂

I had to really stretch and do some acrobatic moves to finish the route because neither of us wanted to climb again from the side to recover the rope.

Piatra Mare was a pleasant surprise for me. It has a lot of bolted routes for Rock Climbing and I’m really looking forward for the spring or another warm day to try some routes in Prapastia Ursului.

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Piatra Craiului: Curmatura – 26.02.2011

After a looong recovery due to some knee injury I’ve started again to go out. I’ve been to Grind Hut at the end of January (coming soon after recovering the photos) and my left knee didn’t quite enjoyed this trek. In fact it’s not my knee who is not enthusiastic about hiking. It’s one of the tendon inserted below the knee cap. It seems that I’m suffering for ITBS – Iliotibial Band Syndrome. Like any medical diagnostic is sounds kind of … “what?“. I’m not gonna talk about this here, but if anyone is suffering from side sharp knee pain when climbing down the mountains they can take a look here.

Anyway coming back, 2 weeks ago, Rose and me started on an easy trek between Botorog and Curmatura hut around 11 AM. The plan … to have a tea at Curmatura and to enjoy the nice weather outside.

The snow was not too big, probably 10 – 20 cm. It was a little windy from time to time and the trees were throwing away their snowy clothes … on us. It was refreshing anyway 🙂

After finishing the woody part of the route we’ve reached Zanoaga glade. From here we had a nice view on the main Piatra Craiului ridge. The sun was shinning ans warming us.

This guy took pictures the whole day 🙂

Bufni was waiting for us at the entrance …

Rose couldn’t refuse the delicious bean soup from Curmatura… and Bufni was just happy to see us I guess.

After enjoying the tea (and soup) we’ve took some nice shots from the balcony.

We really enjoyed this relaxing trek to Curmatura. The weather was just great and it was the perfect way to spend a Saturday. I’m glad that my knee responded well to physiotherapy and some stretching exercises that I’m doing at home and I hope it will not stand between me and the mountain 🙂