Predeal mountains - continued

Last time was well half a disaster with depleting the batteries, so now with every battery fully charged it was time to visit the other two summits in the Predeal mountains.
First target was YO/EC-247, the closer one when going from Rosenau to Predeal. The path starts at the last serpentine before Pârâul Rece, with an unmarked forest road which goes up to the saddle between YO/EC-247 and 252 (activated last time) and continues towards 247. The forest road is closed by a barrier at the entry from the national road, but hiking past it is not a problem. Soon after passing the barrier a large pasture opens with nice view of YO/EC-011:

A view from behind of YO/EC-011

and also the YO/EC-247 ahead of us:

YO/EC-247 ahead

The pasture turns soon back into forest, however large clearings are still around the road with the spring already being manifested:

Springtime beauty

After reaching the col another great panorama opens to the south with the Bucegi plateau dominating the horizon:

Bucegi mountains

Bucșoiu (YO/MC-008) to the left

After the col the the road turns towards the summit, but before reaching the summit however the road takes another right turn, leaving the last portion of the ascent a direct through the forest one. I also made a mistake to take the straight away approach and had some very thick bush to fight through, however on the way down I found a much cleaner way along the ridge (which I also marked on the gps track below).
The summit is also thick woods, just enough room for the vertical antenna, but at least the summit stone offers a good place to sit on. After a good hour of operating packed together and went on towards the next summit. On the way back down, at the pasture it can also be glimpsed towards east:

YO/EC-241 in the distant

The hike to the YO/EC-247 was a longer one, it took almost 2 hours for the 5km hike (especially the last part in the bush and also coming back down along the ridge to avoid the bush) so it was kinda late so I decided to approach the summit from the other side, starting out from Predeal. This time fortunately on very good marked trail which goes from Predeal through the summit and going down to Pârâul Rece. It can also be hiked from the latter one, but is a longer trail, and already being late I wanted better of staying longer on summit activating than hiking.
The path is marked with blue cross, and starts right at the DN1 in Predeal first following the road which takes to Trei Brazi resort (it is well marked on the lampposts). After exiting Predeal the trail breaks off the paved road and climbs up to the ridge. The hiking trail starts near a table warning about the bears in the area:

Start of the blue cross trail

The bear threat should be taken seriously in this parts, as although they do avoid human contact, but they actually like to prey on goats, mountain goats that is. Fortunately I'm not there yet, and unfortunately the trail has too much motorcycle traffic, so no encounters for me this time. The trail is very good and easy hike:

Well marked trail to Leányka-havas

so about 40 minutes of walking I was up on the summit, which is actually a crossing road of three blue cross marked trails (the third one goes down to Trei Brazi), but the proper summit is not really marked, you just get some tables showing the directions and the hiking times:

On the summit

Although there is large clear spot at the crossroads, I wouldn't recommend rising the antenna right there, as there are too many riders passing by (with quite speed) and they would definitely bring down any antennas or guy lines spreading across the trail. So I operated a few steps into the woods not interfering with anyone (indeed while I was activating a few motorcycles passed by)

Shack on YO/EC-241

The decision to go from Predeal proved to be a wise one, getting down back to car just before sunset. This means that a three summit activation of YO/EC-252, 247 and 241 is only feasible in the summer with longer days to have enough time also for activating. (personal note: I do like to stay on activation as long as possible and work every chaser looking for me, instead of doing a 10 minute 4 contact run to accumulate many summits a day).
Finally here is the tracks I hiked:

Tracks to YO/EC-247 (red) and YO/EC-241 (blue)

Predeal mountains

A nice multi-activation area close to Brassó can be found in the Predeál mountains where 3 qualifying summits in close proximity waits for the adventurous SOTAer: YO/EC-247, YO/EC-252 and YO/EC-241. They also appear being doable in one day (well in summer day anyway), and although it is still late winter with pretty short days, I targeted these on this weekend.
Best approach is by the 73A road connecting Rozsnyó (Rosenau, Râșnov) with Predeal, where a small mountain resort Hidegpatak (Pârâul Rece) situated right at the col offers a good starting point to all 3 summits.
I was of course beginning with the closest summit, YO/EC-252, Piatra Arsă, which is right next to the resort and also has a quite good forest road up to near the summit. Actually half of the road is also paved and leads to the Forrest Administration's hut, so it might be doable up until there by car, but I think you might need a special permit to access this road by car, at least this is what the panel at the entry of the road suggests:

The starting point of the forrest road

This road is the easiest approach as it gently ascends along the ridge up to the hut, so it is an easy walk, but starting from well over the exit from Pârâul Rece towards Predeal, some can find it a bit too long away, for those there is a shortcut directly from the center of the resort, pretty much in the middle of the forrest up to the hut, from there the normal road can be taken. I also took the latter approach and stopped right at the col, which can also offer some nice panorama towards north with the Schuler (YO/EC-011) in the background:

Panorama from Pârâul Rece

Either way, not far from the Forrest Administration's place there is a logging road splitting out from the paved road mentioned earlier, which takes up to the close vicinity of the summit, with about 50m left cut through the forest up to the summit. Which is well pretty much the same full of tree (one large one right at the summit), except for the other side which is a big ravine. Not too much space for an antenna either, just enough to put up the vertical and guy it to the nearby trees. Here's a game of spot the antenna:

The summit of YO/EC-252

On the other hand, some rocks on the summit form actually a quite nice shack, albeit still a little cold this time of the year:

Shack on YO/EC-252

It was quite nice pileup in the morning, with several s2s, so time was flying by very rapidly, and I only noticed this, when to my great surprise (and of course annoyance), the radio went silent, as it turned out to my great embarrassment the battery went flat (both the LiION and the internal ones) so that was it for the activation, and also for the rest of the day, as without batteries it wasn't going to be a next summit.
So that was it for today, but at least I could check out the tracks to the summit, so I can give you two possible approaches as I mentioned before:

Track to the summit YO/EC-252 from the 73A road (blue the forrest road, yellow the shortcut)

Már megint a Hargita

Szerintem most már lassan kihagyhatatlan lesz a Hargita, ami végül is érthető, mégiscsak a Szent Hegy-ről van szó. Persze amikor az embert ez várja a tetőn:

akkor nincs mit tenni muszáj felmenni. Ez természetesen idén is így volt, és nem is rosszul, 118 QSO-val idáig ez a legjobban teljesítő aktiválásom. Ebben még a szél se tudott megakadályozni pedig majdnem lefújt a hegyről.
Na de tovább nem is részletezném, a múltkor leírtam már mindent, újabb fényképek a szokott helyen én még már várom a jővő évi aktiválást.

Last activation of the year

The end of December was quite unexpected WX-wise this year, almost 20°C near Arad is indeed a surprise, but also allowed us for some hiking in the Zarand mountains in like early autumn conditions. Never would have thought that nearing the end of year I can hike in the circumstances as below (doesn't really look as my last YO/EC-145 and YO/EC-123 activation):

Following the red triangle in "mid-winter conditions"

Anyway, following a recap activation of the YO/WC-189 which is practically the same summit as YO/WC-034 I activated earlier this year, but was promoted to a 2 point summit in the meantime, the obvious next target was the highest summit of the Western Zarand mountains, YO/WC-024 (Hegyes) with its 800 meters rising well above the surrounding plains (of about 120m average altitude). Together with my brother started out to the mountain resort of Kaszolya (Căsoaia) at the foots of the summit, near the village of Székesaranyág. There is paved road in very good shape to the resort, from where we get to choose between two trails up to the summit: red triangle and yellow stripe. Both are very well marked, the red triangle following the ridgeline up to the summit, while the yellow stripe follows the valley until right below the summit, then ascends quickly up. We chose the former one (red triangle) just by random, but it turned out to be a good choice as it is the better trail of the two, almost entirely a large easy to follow and easy ascend along the ridgeline. Coming down I decided to check out also the yellow stripe, but that one is a really tough trail even on descent, well at least the last quarter near the summit, where it is very steep, and the trail also many fallen logs across so it is tedious work.
The summit is entirely covered with forest, but is marked with a large stone, so it is easy to find, and has enough room to rise an antenna.

YO/WC-024 summit

There is also another option to access the summit, and my brother was also maniac enough to explore, on can take the yellow triangle road from Solymos to Kaszolya and midway switch to red stripe which also leads up to the summit. It is about 16km long trail, but also very good shape, it took my brother 2 hours to get down on it (of course it is mostly downward, but a nice hike anyway). Here is a map of the two trails: (us going up, and the long way down):

The red triangle trail from Kaszolya to Hegyes (in red) and the red stripe combined with yellow triangle from Hegyes to Solymos (in green)

YO/EC-145 and YO/EC-123

End of November brought a chilly but otherwise very nice weather, so it was time for another activation in the Prahova valley. I chose the YO/EC-145 (Clăbucetul Taurului) and YO/EC-123 (Clăbucetul Azuga) near Azuga. The former one has many trails up from Azuga and from Predeal, however we tried another trail up starting from the fishing pond near Azuga, situated right between the to two summits. Initially I wanted to activate both summits in one day, but well I stayed too much on the first one, very good propagation, including my very first VK contact and exceptional panorama, made us to leave the other summit to the next weeked. This in the end proved to be a bad decision as next week the WX was all against us, and while we did manage to get up to the summit, I could barely qualify it using VHF before the intense snowing and the wind practically blew us down the mountain. As usual I have uploaded the photos to the G+ page so I will add here only the track we made both days:

Tracks up and down to YO/EC-145 and YO/EC-123

Looking again I think (especially summer time) they can be both activated in a day starting from the location where we parked and taking the direct route. We came down some alternative trails which had quick descents and then a long walk on the road, but it was just for fun (after we decided to do only one activation per day).

YO/EC-331

Just a quick recap, while I'm stranded at home due to bad weather (right now, when otherwise would be the best opportunity to some DX, but this is my luck as usual), so last time I was out on YO/EC-331, one of the many summits in Romania, which don't have any trail whatsoever to the summit and I think maybe sharing the way to access it can prove valuable to others in the area of Poiana and the summit YO/EC-011 (Keresztényhavas) one of the easiest and most activated summit to this point.

YO/EC-331 is not far away from Poiana towards Rozsnyó, and although it is rather hidden from average tourist it still can offer a quick nail of 6 points to anyone nearby. To get to the summit (assuming you got to Poiana from Brassó, just continue on the 1E road to Rozsnyó (Râșnov) right at the entrance to Poiana. After some descent the road goes through a saddle with a large opening and a few lodging houses called Poiana Cristianului.

Here is a photo of the lodge:

Pensiunea Poiana Cristianului with YO/EC-311 in the background

and another photo from across the road (taken in the dark when I was returning)

Pensiunea Petrișor

Anyway the summit is right behind the Poiana Cristianului house, in the middle of the previous photo. As you can see it is covered with woods and as I told you earlier there is no trail up to the summit. There are some tracks hovever starting from the left of the lodge which takes right were the forest begins. Looking back from there on can snap a very nice view of the Keresztényhavas, YO/EC-011:

YO/EC-011 and the ski resort below

From that point there is only one way: straight through the forest up to the summit. The climb is rather steep albeit a short one, and fortunately almost no undergrowth so it is still an easy summit I would say. At the top is a smaller plateau, but not too much clearing, still it is enough for erecting an antenna (I had the vertical with me, but I think the trees would offer also a good support for a dipole as well):

Activating YO/EC-311

 Overall it is a nice easy summit with about 30-40 minutes of walking up and 10 minutes down :)

YO/EC-312 and YO/MC-035

Yesterday was another great SOTA day, along with two friends first visited YO/EC-312 (Secăria) and Lake Paltinu then on the way back home made also a little detour to YO/MC-035 (Măgura Sultanului).
Secăria hill is situated between the village with the same name and Doftana valley on the western coast of Paltinu lake (a reservoir built on the Doftana river) accessible from the county road connecting Valea Doftanei with Comarnic. Coming from Brașov we took the obvious choice of going trough Comarnic and taking left to the 101S road towards Secăria. We actually found the road quite easily although there were no markings, it is mostly the only road to the left in Comarnic. However it turned out to be not the best choice, as it happened to be under serious working (I'm guessing communal water, maybe) anyway quite hard working even in saturday, andwe had to wait quite a bit and of course a road being digged up was not that easy to drive through. Except this the road to Secăria is in really good shape and hopefully when the working is done it will be a good drive all the way.
Driving along is also quite fun, lots of serpentines going up the ridge, then going down into Secăria village and after that again going up. The YO/EC-312 hill is at the other side of Secăria village, the road reaching it's highest point right under the summit, right next to some cell phone towers. There is also good spot for parking the car (on the photo taken from the summit you can also spot my car if you have good eyes - it's one of those darker pixels):

Phone towers

From there we can take the road going to the right which takes us directly to the summit. The road is actually deserving an old quarry, it even has markings of forbidden access but still it is pretty much a go, nothing much is left there sadly. The road to the summit is an easy 1.3km hike with about 150m altitude difference, so about a half an hour later we were already at the summit. The usual marking for the highest point is a few meters to the right of the road:

Summit stone

Of course a few photos on the summit before getting into action: here are my two companions with Paltinu lake in behind:

Fluky and Make

After the photo session, it was about time for some on the air action, setting up the antenna and turning on the radio. As it turned out there was quite a stir with lot of Jamboree stations in the air, so I had to find some unusual QRG upper in the band (20m) but after a quick self-spot (fortunately the phone towers from down the road were close enough for data connection) the big pile-up formed up almost instantly. I already forgot how good propagations can be on such clear summits. Initially I had quite hard time getting anything out of the madness, so again have to apologize if getting back so slowly to you. But things were calming down ok, except for the wind which was getting ever worse. Here is a pick of my shack on the summit with the antenna which was perfectly vertical so imagine the wind:

High winds bending the antenna

Fortunately the guying hold out firmly, so I had a chance for another big pile-up on 12m as well, I think the band is getting ever better with each activation I'm having, just hope the tendency holds on.
After about two hours on the summit, and running out chasers it was about time to pack, and also I didn't want my friends to wait just for nothing, they were really interested in the beginning, but the cold wind made everyone anxious. So took down the antenna, took some last photos from the summit:

Paltinu lake

Baiului mountains with Secăria in front

After we got down to the car, we headed to the other direction, continuing the road down to Valea Doftanei, and from there towards Câmpina, so we had a chance to visit the Paltinu lake from up close. The lake has some marvelous color, too bad I cannot reproduce it on photos but here are some tries:

Azure lake

The summit from where we came can also be seen (is the last one to the right):

YO/EC-313 seen from the coast of Paltinu lake

 And from a little bit away (it's the furthest behind):

Paltinu lake

 On the coast (which is also a good picnic site) we had some lunch, and also a curious guest:

Guest

 The road to Câmpina continues down next to the dam, it's quite impressive view from down below:

Paltinu dam

As we were early in the afternoon, and anyway arriving to Câmpina, we headed out towards east of Câmpina, through Poiana Câmpina and then Provița so we could make another visit to a SOTA summit, making a double activation (I'm getting to like these). This one however is a little bit more adventurous. The road to Provița is excellent in condition, and also from somewhere the middle of the village there is a bridge through the Provița river (also paved) taking us to Plaiu. Of course we first missed out, and only after consulting the GPS managed to get back. Up in Plaiu the paved road continues towards Sultanu but before exiting the village, we have to take right at about the third road. These are not paved any more, and we had to leave the car not too much away from the junction, continuing on foot. The good news is that the road exits from the village and continues along up to the summit. Here is a picture from where we exit the village, the summit is still quite far away:

YO/MC-035 in the distant

 It is bit long hike, about 3km and 350m altitude, took us about an hour walking before reaching the summit:

Up on YO/MC-035

It was a little bit late, so quickly set up, and of course immediately found SV3IEG/p on SV/ST-088 fighting through his pile-up, I also could barely manage to get through with a couple of s2s calls (it was actually another chaser, I think Don, G0RQL who alerted Dinos about me, so many thanks to him as well). After that moved up, and spotted myself to dive in quickly into the pile-up. We were in bit hurry, as the road was quite long and wanted to get to the car before sunset, so after about half an hour I called QRT (no 12m this time, and sorry for any other chaser who did not fit in). We did manage to get down to the car and still in the twilight to have some more adventures towards home. As it turned out we were continuing towards north from Provița instead of going back to Câmpina, to shorten our way to Brașov, however the paved road between Provița and Adunați actually misses itself by a couple of tens of meters, but between them is the river and the old carriage road through the riverbed. Having no other choice we also crossed through the riverbed, wasn't a too big challenge but anyway whoever wants another activation of YO/MC-035 I would advise taking the road from Câmpina and then back. After this intermezzo there was no other problem back home.
Thank you all the chasers for another pleasant SOTA trip, amongst them to S57MS and S52Q having also some multiple activations on their own (caught them both times), SV3IEG (mentioned earlier), DM1LE and DM7MM for the very nice S2S QSOs.