Winter Vacation
January 3rd, 2002
A Happy New Year ! I managed to
safely return home from the Romanian mountains, not an easy job.
Funny usually people go up in the mountains during winter especially
because of the snow. Well, we almost spend the new year eve at home
because of it 
Even if last year we promised to go somewhere else we found ourselves without many other options this year so we choose again Valea Vinului / Rodna, small preparations and in 30 Dec up in the cars and went we where. The whether was definitely not our ally, all the 260 Km it rained, rain on snow is never pleasant at driving and things get worse as the altitude grew and the melted snow started to freeze, road maintenance barely started cleaning the roads.
With only one flat tier (for two cars) we managed to get to Rodna. We saw serious snow but that was not unusual, the surprise came when we found that it is fresh snow (almost 1 meter thick) from the last night. Rodna is a small village from where a 8 Km road up on the mountain Valea Vinului is situated. At the base of the up going road there where lot's of cars waiting, that was not a good sign. Apparently there where three avalanches and the road was completely blocked, but work on cleaning it already begun. The only problem was that nobody knew when it will be ready and if it will be we will be able to climb it with regular cars. Happily we managed to find a very nice family who took al 8 of us in their house till next day, so we was not forged to go home.
Next morning, nobody was sure exactly if the road was clear or not but everybody had it's own unverifiable opinion and you could not find two people to agree on it. Sick of waiting and not knowing exactly what is going on two boys and two girls with some baggage went with one car to see what is the situation, if the road is clear they will go up and then the driver will come down with the car to get the rest of us up. We decided that one care will remain in Rodna in case things get bad in the mountain and there is no way to get down with a car. After a couple of ours rumors started circulating in the village that one car remained stuck on the road and a couple of guys have a hell of a time trying to free the car.
Not having any better idea myself and a friends wife decided to climb on the mountain. If the rumor is true at least we will be able to give them some help, if not we will reach Valea Vinului in about two hours and will be two person less to get up. We managed to get at our destination, there where lot's of cars stuck on the road but not ours, however we found that our fellows had indeed a hell of a time to get up but the real problem was that they where not able to get down again after the remaining people. Because of the avalanches there was no electricity and the phone lines where also down.
Lucky us we managed to find a peak where some mobile signal got reflected from somewhere and we managed to inform the rest of the team about the situation. Even luckier the remaining persons where able to find a tractor ( which doesn't have a climbing problem ) and get up else we would have been forced to go down again and climb again with the remaining lugages.
About the new years eve I can not tell many things, it wasn't really a success, but it really didn't mattered, we where up in the mountains, the nature was splendid the air fresh and strong and I actually had some 8 Km walk up on a snowy mountain which I'm sure managed to get some plus oxygen to my brain, which doesn't really happen in my normal life as I am a convinced sedentary.
In 2 Jan we where supposed to return back, the problem was again that all the night snowed which was beautiful except that a small car has a couple of problems going through 30 cm of fresh snow. At the end a couple of us had to made the road down again by foot, which I didn't minded at all (you know the oxygen and brain thing) but it wasn't a pleasure walk that was for sure. Happily the cars managed to get down, we also managed to get down safely and what's more important we managed to get home safely as in a strange way, it snowed in the whole country and many roads where blocked not no mention that we had to get through another mountain which given the fact that we started the trip early only begun to get cleaned. There where portions of the road where we catch some snow storm that we could not see at 10 meters in front of the car.
If I would sum up, it was worth it, the nature was beautiful despite it was not easy on us.
Uau, while searching for pictures with Romanian mountains during winter I actually found one western guy who likes Romania, this is so rare.
Entry Filed under: Life
