Another route to Gropșoare

After Răzvan, YO9IRF successfully activated YO/EC-057 having also a very nice report about it, it was time for me to do a little climbing exercise and conquer the summit.

So in what looked a nice Sunday, together with friends Mihai and Sorin, we set out for a little hike to Gropșoare. To make things little more interesting we didn't used the easier track via Muntele Roșu as described by Răzvan, but decided to take from the other side of the mountain, from Poiana Valea Stânii, a small resort in the Telejenel valley.

Valea Stânii is accessible by car from the DN1A road from just outside the city of Cheia, the road is not excellent but doable in a bit more solid cars, in the first part it serpent in the forest climbing a small hill before descending to the Telejenel valley. This portion has some breaks along it due to torrents, so care should be taken. After meeting the Telejenel, the road becomes much better in shape, and also some weekend houses start to turn up. Finally at a large glade we arrive to the starting point of the track, actually it is a meeting point of at least 4 marked tracks, so the place is quite large and well indicated.

Even some horses were there waiting to make friends with them:

Across the glade the Gropșoare - Zăganu massif is rising above us:

unfortunately that is not the peak we are target, it only shows the valley (Sterp) we will follow to reach the ridgeline, the summit is much behind those in front. The valley is in the crack between the two peaks in the photo.

The trail is very well marked with blue triangle on almost every other tree along the path, it must have been repainted very recently:

 In the first part it goes in a dense forest, starting slowly

but soon it turns very steep, and keeps on for a good while, so we already spit out our lungs when finally reached the alpine region:

from here the trail joins in with the red cross coming along the ridgeline from Cheia. Of course some more climbing (this time on exposed rocks) awaits:

but after climbing the first peak, we can have a glance on the Gropșoare peak, it's the one on the background:

So some more hiking is needed, and we didn't got rid of rockclimbing yet, there is some portion of the trail where some via ferrata is also needed

not to soliciting though so in a little more than half an hour since reaching the ridgeline (and after about 3 hours hiking from down the glade) we were finally up on the peak, admiring... well admiring nothing because of the big cloud all around us.
Time for a little SOTA

however propagation was also quite terrible, and after about 9 QSOs in 45 minutes, and the team already getting cold it was time move along.
We continued the path along the ridge so that we can get down in the Alb valley (yellow triangle) on the northern side of the mountain (it also gets to Valea Stânii, which is as I mentioned earlier is an intersection of multiple trails).
After descending about 15 minutes, before leaving the ridgeline, the cloud cover already raised so that we could have a beautiful view towards the Ciucaș peak

another SOTA summit I really need to do sometimes soon.
Of course when we arrived down to the car, all the clouds were gone, and we had a beautiful sunshine afternoon, this is the usual luck.

YO/EC-107

Another summit without any trail on the last ascent, Tesla (no connection to the great inventor, although probably the name has some Slavic origin) is one eye-catching hill emerging from the lowland west of the Csukás mountains. Having a shape of a dome it is an easily recognizable feature even from the distant road below:

Tesla in the background

Being near the Csukás mountain, it is also a popular tourist destination, either in the way up to Csukás or just by itself, most easily accesible from Babarunca resort following the red stripe trail.
Together with YO6HXO we started out the conquer this piece of nature wonder in a nice sunny morning:

Start of the trail in the early morning

Unfortunately the right after this nice clear path section we just missed somehow the sign, which at a hardly visible point goes to the left, and the big clear path continues forward a few hundred meters, however after that it brutally ends, and we found ourselves in the middle of the forest without any path in forth. Now the wise choice would have been to turn back and find the marked trail, however, the forest didn't look that bad and we decided to go forward uphill, and at some point we will certainly cross the trail again. Big mistake. Unfortunately in the upper region was some serious wood-cutting, and although it was not a clearcutting, but a well arranged rarefaction, they left all the small branches and thin trunks on the ground, making the movement ahead a pain in the ass. It took us at least an hour wasted until we made it trough and back to the marked trail. So be careful and watch those markings.
After reaching the ridge, the trail joins with the red cross marking coming from the left and continuing towards the Tesla Glade, a very large clearing between the Tesla and a Csukás mountain, with beautiful view to both. From the clearing the dome of Tesla is rising out with menacing looking rocks:

Tesla from right below

The thing is that as I mentioned earlier, Tesla is also a popular tourist destination, 3 more marked trails are meeting us here coming from all other directions, however, actual the glade is the tourist destination, where everybody can admire the magnificent wall, but that's it. There is no trail up to the summit, nothing. But well, SOTA is SOTA, it's about going to summits, so we did go looking for a way up there. And found a possible entry: at the northern face, following the blue cross trail, near the end of the Glade, there is a smaller narrow clearing to the left leading to a pretty clear forest covering the northern face of Tesla. The terrain there is not so rocky, and we were able to follow some animal trails between the ravines up to the higher regions. They were left definitely by some larger animals, but fortunately we didn't met them, and smaller and nicer creatures:

A scared hedgehog, wasn't really used to humans in this area

After a heavy ascent (it isn't cliffhanging but still it is very steep) arrived on the flatter portion of the summit, and well in the activation zone, we could started looking out for a good place for the shack. It actually didn't need too much looking, there where plenty of fallen logs to sit down:

CQ SOTA

and also smaller tree trunks to fix the antenna to:

Shack on YO/EC-107

After about an hour of operating it was time to bring down the equipment and head down in the hope to also activate YO/EC-153. Unfortunately back down in glade, exiting the forest we realized that the very nice weather we left, turned into a very ugly covered sky, with a thunderstorm closing in. We still continued a bit our hike along the blue cross, however not long after the thunderstorm was very clearly near us, above the Csukás:

Ugly clouds

and the lightnings around us led to the decision to postpone the activation of YO/EC-153 and get down fast from the mountain. So maybe next time we will have better luck.
Here is the track with red marking the way up to Tesla (including the bushwalking everyone should avoid, and the the path up to the summit from the edge of the glade) and magenta the road down we took after realizing that the weather is not on our side:

YO/EC-349 Nagy-Somlyó

Pünkösd előtti napon, a Nagy-Somlyó és a Kis-Somlyó közötti nyeregben, több-százezer hívő, mi lehet az? Természetesen a csíksomlyói búcsú, amibe most azért annyira nem mennék bele, viszont pünkösd másnapján ugyanolyan szabadnap viszont sokkal nyugisabb a helyzet és kiváló alkalom a Nagy-Somlyó aktiválására.
A csúcs a maga 1033m-ével messziről kivehetően magasodik Csíkszereda felé, hívogatva az embert egy kis rádiózásra.

A túrát a legcélszerűbb a csíksomlyói templom előtti parkolóban kezdeni, fel lehet ugyan menni autóval is a nyeregbe, de az azért mégsem olyan szép. A nyeregig a rengeteg kitaposott út (főleg a búcsú után) közül választhatunk, nekem persze mint világ lustájának a legkényemelmesebb kerülő jön be egészen a nyeregig. A nyereg előtt letér róle egy piros pont jelzés ami szintén a csúcsra megy, de jó nagy kerülővel, gyakorlatilag átmegy a hegy háta mögé, na az viszont már sok.

Úgyhogy fel a nyeregbe, ahogy sokan mások is, meg lehet csodálni a kápolnát:

aztán onnan toronyiránt neki a csúcsnak. Ez az út is jól ki van taposva végig széles ösvény visz majdnem egyenesen felfelé, persze azért az emberből kiveszi egy cseppet a szuszt, mert azért szintkülönbség van elég.

Fenn a csúcson egy hatalmas kilátó-torony fogad, amire a ráakasztott tábla szerint tilos felmászni, de egyébként is elég durva érzés azért. Meg persze utoljára úgy volt megtákolva, hogy én már a szupervékony alakommal nemigen férek át az utolsó fellépőn. Na de ez van.
Rádiózni viszont elég körülményes, mert ugyan a kilátó az jól kilóg az erdőből, de az alja biza nagyon be van nőve, és hatalmas csihány-bozótok terülnek el körülötte. Szerencsére azért az ösvény környékén van annyi hely, hogy egy antennát kihúzzunk és kényelmesen rádiózgassunk, csak épp ügyelni kell a látogatókra, nehogy belefussanak az antennába.

Sajnos jó szokásom szerint úgy belemerültem a rádiózásba, illetve amikor az idő hirtelen rosszra fordult (ez utóbbi vajon miért nem lep meg) a bontásba és seprésbe lefelé, hogy megint elfelejtettem csúcsfotókat készíteni. De legalább itt van az útvonal fel a csúcsig (sötétzölddel van az általam bejárt útvonal a parkolótól a csúcsig, pirossal még látható a jelzett ösvény is, illetve a nyeregig tartó megannyi ösvény is fel van tüntetve a térképen):