I have looked up at the Bucegi from the train window more times than I can count. From the Prahova valley the mountains rise as a wall of grey cliffs and dark gullies, and it is hard to believe that at the top of that wall there is a wide, rolling plateau where you can walk for hours without climbing much at all. At the end of May I finally went up to see it properly, rather than in a rush on a crowded summer weekend.
Going up the easy way
My plan was to walk up from Bușteni on one of the steep valley trails. A friend who knows the area talked me out of it the evening before. In late spring the narrow gullies that cut through the eastern face can still hold old, hard snow, and the paths that climb through them become a different and far more serious proposition. So I swallowed my pride and took the cable car.
There is no shame in it. The cabin rises past the cliffs I had only ever seen from below, and a few minutes later you step out into thin, cold air and a completely different landscape: grass still flattened and brown from the winter, snow lying in every hollow, and a sky that seems much closer than it did in the valley.
The plateau and its stone figures
The first thing most people walk to is a cluster of strange rock formations near the upper cable car station. The best known are the Babele, which means something like "the old women": squat, mushroom-shaped blocks of stone. A short walk away is the Sphinx, a rock that from the right angle looks like a giant face in profile. There are plenty of stories about who carved them and why. The more modest explanation is wind, frost and rain working on layers of rock of different hardness over a very long time, and standing next to them in a cold wind I found that easy to believe.
Close to the station it was busy, as it usually is. Ten minutes along the path the crowds thinned to almost nobody. That is the pattern on the plateau: everyone gathers around the cable car, and the open land beyond belongs to the few who keep walking.
Turned back by the fog
I had hoped to reach Omu, the highest point of the Bucegi at roughly 2,500 metres, where a small hut sits right on the summit. The path heads north across the plateau, mostly gentle, marked with painted signs on rocks and on poles. For the first hour the weather was perfect. Then, quite quickly, the clouds that had been sitting in the valleys started to rise.
On a plateau, fog is not a small thing. There are few distinct landmarks, the ground looks the same in every direction, and that day snow patches hid parts of the path. I could see one marker pole, then the next, then not quite the next one. I waited for a few minutes to see whether it would lift, and when it didn't, I turned around. Omu will still be there in July.
Coming down through the clouds
Back near the stone figures the fog tore open again, and for half an hour I had the view I'd come for: a sea of cloud filling the Prahova valley, the tops of the far ridges floating above it, and on the edge of the cliffs the tall steel cross on Caraiman standing against the sky. I ate my sandwich on a dry rock and watched the clouds move in and out like a tide.
I took the cable car down in the afternoon, a little cold and very content. It wasn't the walk I had planned, but it was a good day in the mountains, and the plateau has a way of making you want to come back for the rest of it.
Practical notes
- Cable cars run up from the valley towns, but schedules change and they can stop in strong wind or for maintenance. Have a plan for walking down if yours isn't running.
- In late spring, expect snow on the plateau and in the gullies. Summer brings easier conditions on the paths, and much busier weekends.
- The plateau is high and exposed. Bring warm layers and a waterproof even if the valley is hot.
- In summer, flocks of sheep graze up here with their dogs. Give them a wide berth, walk calmly and don't run.
- Fog can arrive in minutes. Stay on the marked paths and know how to navigate without a view, or turn back.