Transfăgărășan

Nice Routes - Reports and Recommendations
1

Hey,

so I’m back from a tour through east europe and I want to share one of the best routes I ever encountered so far, the Transfăgărășan. This is a well known ~90km long road within the romanian carpathians built for military purposes with a very good asphalt quality. The road leads up to an altitude of 2042m taking over the Paltinu pass through a tunnel next to Lake Bâlea (where you can eat something) and takes course between the two highest mountains of the country (Moldoveanu annd Negoiu).

It is opened from June to October, but you should always inform yourself before you go there since the weather is not stable and other sports activities might be going on there. So far I was not able to find a reliable source of information for these things, ask the locals!

The road also leads over the Vidraru Dam which provides a nice scenery. If vampires are your thing then don’t forget to visit Poenari Citadel.

I was very lucky since I actually did not know the route before a friend told me when I was taking a hotel in Sibiu (Hermannstadt). So I threw away all my plans and went straight back into the mountains on the next morning!

Here is the kurviger route: Kurviger

Warning: This road looks kinda easy and is a lot of fun but please take care of yourself! It is sometimes very steep in those sharp curves which climb up the mountains. Also the roads might be very icy even when the weather is very warm and sunny due to micro climates. I actually had an accident by slipping on a 1cm strong ice layer with 70km/h and sliding down the street for 100m. It was plus 19 degree Celsius … don’t underestimate this route!

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7 Likes
2

Awesome! Glad you got out of the slide ok! :smiley:
It’s quite strange with this road right, it’s difficult to find, but once you found it you get the impression that it’s really quite famous. Just not to us westerners…
Planning to go there in 2020 myself

3

Yea … nothing happened to me, not even a scratch. Just my bike’s crash bar lost 2cm of steel on the road.

According to Top Gear it is even “the best road in the world”. So I thought it must be famous and I am just uneducated ;).

4

Thanks for sharing your ride.

The Transfagarasan and the Transalpina (which is about 50km west of the Transfagarasan) are on my todo list as well :heart_eyes:. I am glad that you didn’t hurt yourself in the accident. Unbelievable that there was still ice on the road at 19°.

BTW: I would like to list the Transfagarasan as mountain pass on Kurviger, so it might be easier for others to find the road. Would you be willing to give us usage rights for this picture, so we could use it on Kurviger? If you are ok with this, it would be also interesting to use a shortened version of the description you provided here in the forum. We could also link to the forum entry here :slight_smile:.

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5

I think there is already an POI on open street maps iirc?

Sure, go for it :).

EDIT: I guess you need to rotate the pic a little bit to make it look fine o.O

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6

Yes, but for custom POIs we can do a lot more, like images, links to the forum, description etc.

I added it :slight_smile:, thanksfor helping us out.

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