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.