The photographs from Gorj are nearly always of two things: the Brancusi ensemble in Targu Jiu, shot at an angle that removes the traffic, and the painted exterior of a monastery church in a gorge, shot from the one spot where the concrete of the access road is out of frame. Both are real. Neither tells you that the county is a working coal and forestry district with an unhandsome middle, and that the walking is not in either of those photographs at all. It is above them, on grazed ridge that runs for miles without a tree.
The second thing people get wrong is the mountain itself. Gorj sits under the southern face of the Carpathians, and southern faces here mean limestone: Cheile Sohodolului, Cheile Olteței, the Polovragi cave system, sinkholes in the pasture that will swallow a boot. Water disappears. On the ridge sections you will walk four hours between springs, and on one day, five. The party carries three liters each on those days and the guide will check that you have it before leaving the guesthouse, which some people find officious. It is not officious. There is nothing between.
The third is scale. Romania is not a small country to move around in and Gorj is at the far end of it from the airport. You will spend most of a day on the road at each end of this week, and the road from Bucharest is good for two hours and then merely adequate. We put a town night at both ends for exactly this reason, and people who try to cut one of them out arrive at the first guesthouse at ten at night and walk badly the next morning.
- The week in one sentence
- Nine nights: two in a small hotel in Targu Jiu, four in family guesthouses in the Jiu and Olt valley villages, two in a stone refuge below the ridge, one back in town; a driver moves the party and the bags, and you walk carrying a day pack.
- Why this and not the next one
- Bucharest is the practical airport at roughly thirteen hours in the air from the middle of the country, then four and a half hours by road northwest. The rock is limestone and it drains fast, so the paths dry within a day of rain while the valley tracks stay greasy. Beds are family guesthouses with shared bathrooms in two of the four villages, plus two nights in an unheated stone refuge with bunks. The season runs from late April to the middle of October. Nine nights from $3,050 per person.
- Inside the figure
- All nine nights of lodging, two people sharing; breakfast every morning and a cooked evening meal on seven of the nine nights; the driver and vehicle for every transfer including airport pickup and return; two full days with a local mountain guide on the ridge sections above 5,000 feet; entry to the sculpture park grounds and to the four monasteries on the route; a printed route card with grid references and the two escape descents marked; luggage moved between every lodging; drinking water refilled at the refuge from the spring line; and the office standing behind the booking with the operator if anything on the ground goes wrong.
- Outside it, and what that runs to
- International flights, which have run $780 to $1,340 round trip from central US hubs depending on how early the dates are set; lunches, which are $6 to $11 in the villages and must be carried on ridge days; the two evening meals not covered, roughly $14 each; alcohol; the $32 per person cave entry at Polovragi if you want it; single occupancy, which adds $560 for the nine nights and is not available at all in the refuge; tips for the driver and guide, customarily $60 to $90 per person for the week; travel insurance, which this office does not sell or advise on; and anything you break in a guesthouse.
- Reasons to book something else
- Do not reserve this if you cannot walk nine miles on a rough surface on consecutive days. Two of the nine days climb 2,600 and 3,100 feet on limestone scree and root steps, with no vehicle access between the start and the end of either. The refuge has bunks in one room, a wood stove, no shower and a pit toilet forty feet from the door, for two nights running. There is no reliable phone signal from the second morning to the fourth evening. If you need a private bathroom every night, or if a knee has stopped you on a descent before, this week will hurt.
What the limestone does to a walking day here
The ground is the whole argument for coming. Above about 4,500 feet the forest stops and the grazing begins, and it has been grazed by sheep for long enough that the ridge walks like mown ground with rock through it. That makes for fast, open miles, and it also means shade is finished for the day the moment you clear the treeline. On the two high days you are exposed from about ten in the morning until you drop off at four.
Below the treeline it is the reverse. The gorge paths are beech and hornbeam, the footing is root and wet leaf, and they hold water long after the tops have dried. The record for the last several seasons is consistent on this: a heavy afternoon in June leaves the ridge walkable by the following midday and leaves the valley track from Runcu greasy for two days. If your week catches rain, the guide will usually flip the order of the days rather than sit it out, so the shape of your week is not fixed in advance and you should not plan around a particular day being a particular walk.
Temperature, from the record rather than any prediction: July and August afternoons in the Targu Jiu basin have generally sat in the high 80s and occasionally passed 95, while the ridge at the same hour has been fifteen to twenty degrees cooler with wind. The refuge nights in late September have gone to the high 30s. People pack for the town temperature and then spend two nights cold. Bring a warm layer you would not otherwise take to Romania in summer.
The kind of walker who finishes this week happy
This suits someone who has done multi-day walking before, is content with a bunk room for two nights, and actively wants the days when nothing is arranged. Fifty-five percent of the waking hours of this week are decided in advance, which is middling: the two guided ridge days, the transfers, the meals and the monastery entries are fixed, and the rest is four afternoons and two whole days that belong to you in villages where almost nobody speaks English and the shop shuts between one and four.
It suits people who are unbothered by a place being ordinary in the middle. Targu Jiu has one extraordinary thing in it and a great deal of postwar apartment block around that thing, and travelers who need a town to be uniformly attractive tend to be disappointed at both ends of the week. The monasteries are working houses with services running and dress rules at the door, not attractions with opening times built around visitors, and twice a season a party arrives during a long liturgy and waits ninety minutes or leaves without going in.
The same twenty-four trips are printed in five orders. This one sits in a different place in each, and none of the five positions is a judgement about it.
- Hours in the air
- 17 of 24 at 13 hours. The whole order
- Miles walked a day
- 21 of 24 at 9 miles. The whole order
- Per cent decided in advance
- 19 of 24 at 55 per cent. The whole order
- From, per person
- 21 of 24 at $3,050. The whole order
- Different beds
- 21 of 24 at 6 beds. The whole order
What each stretch of the season has actually been like
- Late April to late May
- Snow still lies in the north-facing gullies above 6,000 feet and the high ridge days are usually swapped for lower routes. Everything green, water everywhere, few walkers. Price at the floor figure.
- Early to mid June
- The best combination in the record: ridge clear, springs still running, long light until nine. Guesthouses not yet full. Adds $180 per person over the floor.
- Late June to mid July
- Hot in the basin, afternoon storms building over the tops perhaps two days in seven. Starts move to six in the morning. Same price as early June.
- Late July and August
- Sheepfolds fully occupied and the shepherds are around, which is the reason some people come. Also the hottest stretch, thin water, and Romanian domestic holiday traffic in town. Adds $240 per person.
- Early to late September
- The other strong window. Cool mornings, hard light, first color in the beech, springs at their lowest of the year. Adds $180 per person.
- October to the middle of the month
- Quiet, cheap, and genuinely cold at night in the refuge, which has run to the high 30s. Some guesthouse kitchens have already closed for the year. Price at the floor figure.
- Middle of October to late April
- The office does not place this week at all. The refuge is shut, the high traverse is not a walking route, and the road over the mountains closes.
The refuge is the thing people underestimate
Two of the nine nights are in a stone refuge below the ridge, and every complaint this office has passed to the operator about this week has been about those two nights rather than about the walking. It is one room with bunks, a wood stove, a spring-fed tap outside, and a pit toilet at the end of a short path. There is no shower for roughly forty hours. If the party is eight people, eight people sleep in that room, and one of them will snore. We tell you this in writing before you commit because it is the single point where the week and the expectation part company.
There is no substitute available, either. The high traverse only works with a night on each side of it, and the alternative is a fourteen-hour day with a road transfer at the end, which the guide will not run. If the refuge is genuinely not something you will do, the honest answer is that this is not your week and we would rather say so now than have you find out on the fifth evening. Ask us and we will say which of the other trips in the catalogue puts you on similar ground with a bed and a door every night.